With Power Set to Be Split, Wiretaps Re-emerge as Issue

WITH POWER SET TO BE SPLIT, WIRETAPS RE-EMERGE AS ISSUE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eric Lichtblau]
The Bush administration escalated its defense of the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program on Thursday, even as Democrats in Congress vowed to investigate the program aggressively once they assume power. In Washington, President Bush urged that during the lame-duck session that starts next week, Congress pass a bill effectively authorizing the program. And in San Francisco, the Justice Department told a federal court that public scrutiny of the operation risked “exceptionally grave harm to national security.” But Democrats sounded impatient to begin getting more answers after what they characterized as 11 months of stonewalling by the administration since the program was publicly disclosed last December. The shift in power on Capitol Hill sets up the likelihood of a showdown between the White House and Congress over the direction of not only the N.S.A. program but also a range of other aggressive counterterrorism operations that the administration has undertaken since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/us/politics/10nsa.html
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* Bipartisanship on Hold
[Commentary] President "Bush made it clear that, for now, his idea of how to “put the elections behind us” is to use the Republicans’ last two months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the law that limits a president’s ability to abuse his power in this way."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/10/opinion/10fri1.html