BEHIND THE LINES: Our Read of the Other Media’s Homeland Security Coverage

By David C. Morrison, Special to CQ Homeland Security

In a press conference yesterday, President Bush defended anew his program of warrantless surveillance, saying “there’s no doubt in my mind it is legal” and suggesting he might resist congressional efforts to address the matter legislatively, The Associated Press’s Terence Hunt tells. Varied rationales offered by administration officials to justify the domestic tap effort are part and parcel of the “apparent contradictions and mixed messages from the government since the program was revealed last month,” The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus report. A new poll, meantime, finds Americans willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but concerned that Bush’s aggressive antiterror programs are encroaching on civil liberties, The New York Times’s Adam Nagourney and Janet Elder report.

All-day thumbsucker: “Domestic surveillance is hard to defend, regardless of how long Bush campaigns behind it,” The Los Angeles City-Beat opines. “Defenders of increased surveillance routinely say that the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new reality. But law enforcement has waded into these waters before,” Jarrett Murphy mentions in The Village Voice. “The weak state of our nation’s security today is a result of inefficient, incompetent and mismanaged government,” not insufficient executive powers, FBI-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds asserts for OpEdNews.com. There’s really “nothing new” about federal snoops, Ralph R. Reiland recalls for American Spectator.