The Arizona Republic urges Pelosi to “seriously consider the national-security implications” of not passing the bipartisan Senate FISA bill.

An editorial from The Arizona Republic calls on Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to “seriously consider the national-security implications” of not passing the bipartisan terrorist wiretapping program.  The editorial lauds the bill as a “reasonable, 21^st Century method” for tracking terrorists.  To read the entire editorial click here.

The contentious national debate over electronic surveillance of suspected terrorists finally has boiled down to a digestible nugget:

Should the nation’s telecommunications companies, which control the vast databases of electronic communications, be granted retroactive immunity from lawsuits for having cooperated with the National Security Agency, which sought their data without a court order to do so?

That key provision now constitutes the biggest stumbling block for the Democratic-led House of Representatives - which itself constitutes the final (and most exasperating) obstacle to enacting a reasonable extension to this essential element of our national defense.

Led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House has refused to vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act modernization bill, specifically out of opposition to providing legal-liability immunity to the telecoms.

Pelosi’s opposition - erected on behalf of the trial lawyers and political activists who are pressing almost 40 lawsuits against the telecoms on this issue right now - exasperates even the Democrats in the Senate, where a solidly bipartisan FISA modernization bill passed three weeks ago, 68-29.

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Pelosi and other Democratic House opponents of telecom immunity - including Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz. - should more seriously consider the national-security implications of not passing this legislation.

Trial lawyers, among the chief opponents of the FISA extension, have utterly failed to explain exactly why telecoms would engage in a conspiracy with the Bush administration to mine the electronic communications of innocent Americans.

Which brings us to the great, as-yet unexamined story of this “domestic spying” debate: the cynical, fear-pandering presumption of guilt that the ACLU and its opportunistic allies have created regarding telecom cooperation in the NSA program.

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Since virtually the day after Sept. 11, 2001, the ACLU and others have opposed nearly every measure enacted by Congress, or conducted by the administration, to enhance the nation’s defenses against terrorists.

And they have done so - repeatedly and emphatically - on the argument that the Republican administration of George W. Bush and its cronies are plying the public’s irrational fear of terror attacks to . . . well, that part of the Bush-conspiracy theory never seems to get fleshed out.

But the great irony is that those opposed to the electronic-surveillance program have shamelessly exploited the other side of the fear coin - that is, the instinctive opposition of Americans to an intrusive federal government.

Radio ads sponsored by the ACLU in Arizona and elsewhere have plied those themes, making outlandish, baseless claims that a program dedicated to ferreting out terrorists overseas is actually an attempt to “go through our e-mails and listen to our phone calls for any reason,” and that the telecom-immunity bill is “really about protecting (Bush’s) corporate friends.”

Simply put, that is cynical, manipulative propaganda based on exploiting the nation’s weariness with George W. Bush.

It is no good reason to hamstring reasonable, 21st-century methods for tracking people overseas who wish to do great harm here.