The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill’s opponents — mostly Democrats — want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush’s order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the White House directed telecommunications carriers to cooperate with its efforts to bolster intelligence gathering and surveillance — the administration’s effort to do a better job of “connecting the dots” to prevent terrorist attacks. In its review of the effort, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the administration’s written requests and directives indicated that such assistance “had been authorized by the president” and that the “activities had been determined to be lawful.”

We now know that they were not lawful. But the companies that followed those directives are not the ones to blame for that abuse of presidential power.
Contrary to what the Nancy Soderbergs