Quote:

Lawmakers seek review of eavesdropping rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. surveillance laws should be reviewed and possibly rewritten to allow the type of eavesdropping that U.S. President George W. Bush has been criticized for authorizing, lawmakers from both parties said on Sunday.

Democrats and some Republicans have said the Bush administration's classified warrantless eavesdropping program is illegal. The White House has strongly defended the National Security Agency surveillance as legal and essential. The Senate Judiciary Committee starts hearings on the issue on February 6.

The NSA has been monitoring communications, including e-mail and telephone calls, into and out of the United States by people believed linked to al Qaeda or related groups.

An audio tape by Osama bin Laden that emerged last week threatening new attacks on the United States has heightened security concerns. Neither party can afford to be seen as failing to protect the country, particularly as corruption scandals and public questioning of the Iraq war loom over November's congressional elections.

Lawmakers on several Sunday talk shows said that if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) does not give Bush the tools and legal framework he needs to monitor potential threats, the president should ask Congress to change the law rather than bypass it.

Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, who endorsed former Vice President Al Gore's call for an independent investigation of the Bush program, said on ABC's "This Week" that some Republicans like Bush adviser Karl Rove are trying to equate Democratic opposition to warrantless spying as weakness.

"What he's (Rove) trying to pretend is somehow Democrats don't want to eavesdrop appropriately to protect the country. That's a lie," Kerry said. "We're prepared to eavesdrop wherever and whenever necessary in order to make America safer."

'THERE IS A WAY'

But Kerry said the spying has to be legal and constitutional and if Bush needs the law to be changed, "then come to us and tell us. ... There is a way to protect the Constitution and not go off on your own and violate it."

Other prominent Democratic senators including Dick Durbin of Illinois, Charles Schumer of New York and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut made similar comments about re-examining the breadth and modernity of FISA in television interviews a few days after Rove urged Republicans to campaign on national security and the war on terror.
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Reuters
I think the White House made a mistake letting Rove speak in public. All the networks including FOX covered this.

Fair play!