Yankee Doodle

A few years ago, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy tried to have Lake Champlain designated a "Great Lake". Now, no one actually believed - even in Vermont - that Lake Champlain qualifies for that status - I mean, look at a map, for crying out loud - but that wasn't the point. No, the reason was simple: money. Senator Leahy was trying to grab some of the funds the Feds dish out each year for the care and maintenance of the lakes, something which Lake Champlain needed then and still needs. Senator Leahy's attempt to have our lake designated "Great" failed and, as I like to point out to visitors to Vermont, what we have here is a "pretty good" lake.

Now, some might call the Senator's efforts noble, some might call them misguided but what no one can argue with is that he told a lie, or what the good Irish stock from which Leahy comes would call a "makeeup". Like the myth of the Lake Champlain Monster - called "Champ", naturally - Leahy tried to stretch the truth a bit to get what he wanted for his home state. And since stretching the truth and members of congress are not mutually exclusive terms, there no reason for any of us to be surprised or shocked by this.

So why bring it up? Glad you asked.

This past Sunday, Senator Leahy had the following exchange with host Tim Russert on "Meet the Press":

SEN. LEAHY: ...what I don’t want is this open-ended idea that they had at the White House, until the press found out about it, which would allow, for example, if they didn’t like some comment that you made on NBC, they could then go without any warrant, wiretap your phone, check out your bank account, surveil you. Well, we don’t want that in America.

MR. RUSSERT: Even if I had no contact with someone overseas?

SEN. LEAHY: Even if you had no contact with someone overseas under the broad way that they were talking about...I don’t want us to ever go back to the situation that we had 30 years ago when we put into place this FISA court, as you called it, where they were wiretapping somebody who disagreed with the government on the Vietnam war. In this case, somebody disagrees with the administration on the Iraq war, under their broad views, you could just go in and wiretap them. This, this is America. This is not a, this is not a dictatorship.

So Senator Leahy is concerned about domestic wiretapping and the stifling of political dissent. Fair enough. However, here is the Vice-President describing the program he's talking about:

"This notion [is] peddled out there by some that this is, quote, 'domestic surveillance' or 'domestic spying.' No, it's not. It is the interception of communications, one end of which is outside the United States, and one end of which, either outside the U.S. or inside, we have reason to believe is al-Qaeda-connected. Those are two pretty clear requirements, both of which need to be met."

Now, as James Taranto of Best of the Web points out, based on the above statement by the VP, Leahy's statement about the administration's intent with this program is either a "shocking revelation or a scurrilous charge" and the Senator should either back it up or stop making it up.

But then, maybe Senator Leahy still believes he's got a Great Lake to support.