Dear Mr. Bush,

THE PRESIDENT: I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live. You might remember last week working with the -- with people in Great Britain, we disrupted a plot. People were trying to come and kill people.

This country of ours is at war, and we must give those whose responsibility it is to protect the United States the tools necessary to protect this country in a time of war. The judge's decision was a -- I strongly disagree with that decision, strongly disagree. That's why I instructed the Justice Department to appeal immediately, and I believe our appeals will be upheld.

I made my position clear about this war on terror. And by the way, the enemy made their position clear yet again when we were able to stop them. And I -- the American people expect us to protect them, and therefore I put this program in place. We believe -- strongly believe it's constitutional.

And if al Qaeda is calling in to the United States, we want to know why they're calling.

Mr. Bush, I want to take this opportunity to express my strong agreement with you.

It seems like a completely sensible and reasonable precaution for the defense of our country. If agents of al Qaeda are calling people in the United States, who may quite possibly also be agents of al Qaeda, I want the people in charge of my nation's defense to be paying attention.

Guess what? The idea that agents, even Americans, working for a foreign enemy might exist, and that we would want to wiretap them, is not new! Al Qaeda isn't the first foreign enemy this nation has faced, after all. Though it's also been our experience as a nation that completely unsupervised government surveillance of Americans has been abused, perhaps the worst kind of 'big government'.

Which is why Congress has established a process providing for legal, warranted surveillance in such situations. That is why there is a special court, where classified materials can safely be shown, and which has been notably ready to grant warrants when the government requests them.

What's more, clever legislators long ago imagined the possibility that such surveillance might need to happen in a crisis, and built into the law the ability to start surveillance immediately, and get the warrant after, just in case.

This, Mr. President, is what they mean when they keep talking about 'FISA.' That is the law that the judge says you've been breaking.

I don't know if you've heard this before, though certainly many have said it in various ways. The whole flap about the NSA program isn't that people don't believe we have enemies, it isn't that we don't want to have intelligence about al Qaeda communications, no,

IT'S THE WARRANTS, STUPID!

You might want to make a note of it.

Thanks,
Me