Two Views from the Inside

Today's WaPost has two interesting articles that purport to tell the inside story of two important issues that Washington has grappled with lately. The first is about the genesis of the administration's enhanced surveillance program (often called "Warrentless Wiretapping") and the second is about the growth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

On the surveillance front, I was happy to read of dedicated officials at Justice calling "BS" on the NSA program, forcing it to change in ways that made it consistent with the law. There are in fact, real issues at stake here, including the President's powers as Commander-in-Chief to prosecute a war. Ultimately, these sorts of things are either settled by the Supreme Court, or by the Senate (in an impeachment trial). But they (intrabranch constitutional issues) are always huge. That we could "spy" on international calls is a good thing; that we routinely do so when both ends of a call are international is also a good thing. What went awry here was that the Bush Administration improperly applied this standard to calls in which only one party was international...with the other being in the US (hence the cries of "domestic surveillance". This had civil libertarians up in arms, and folks like me a bit distressed. What is notable about this whole issue is that it was people in government who identified this and drove about the changes...this didn't change as a result of the New York Times scurrilously reporting about it; it changed because brave, honorable men who are as patriotic as anyone, decided to push to have the changes made.

In the second article on Fannie and Freddie, we see the perfect storm created by weak regulation these favorites of the Democratic Party under the Clinton Administration, followed by the loony "ownership society" pushed by President Clinton. Both organizations were there to help folks get mortgages, but the greed and lack of oversight turned both into engines of ridiculous mortgages peddled to people who had no right to enter into such a long term financial commitment.

Washington's an interesting place to live and work, and good reporting like this helps one understand the landscape a lot better.