ON FISA

"Passed in the wake of the infamous Church hearings on the CIA, FISA is an artifact of post-Vietnam and post-Watergate hostility to executive power. But even as Jimmy Carter signed it for political reasons, his own Attorney General declared that it didn't supercede executive powers under Article II of the Constitution. Every President since has agreed with that view, and no court has contradicted it.

As federal judge and former Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman explained in his 1978 testimony on FISA, the President is accountable to the voters if he abuses surveillance power. Fear of exposure or political damage are powerful disincentives to going too far. But judges, who are not politically accountable, have no similar incentives to strike the right balance between intelligence needs and civilian privacy. This is one reason the Founders gave the judiciary no such plenary powers."

From Opinion Journal
Abolish FISA: A Congressional power grab, using judges as a cudgel.