Sporting events are notorious for the food and beer venders who roam the aisles selling overpriced crap while the game is in progress. I think this is how many teams make their money. The vender yells out during the game that he's got beer and hot dogs, cotton candy and ice cream. In my neck of the woods (New York), the vendor sounds something like this: "Getchya beer, here. Scorecards! Hot dogs! Getchya beer here!"

This week, President Bush signed into law a measure that has greatly expanded the government's wiretapping authority. The Democratic Party went along with this, fearful that they will be seen as weak on terrorism. A good summary of the new scheme is here:

In the N[ew] Y[ork] T[imes], James Risen, the reporter who first revealed the existence of the NSA program, described the legislation as one which "broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants." As Hiatt also pointed out, Risen explained that "its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists," and instead, "the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside." Risen quoted the excellent Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, saying: "This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program."

The NSA program was exposed a few years ago and caused great outrage when the New York Times revealed that the Bush administration was ignoring the FISA law in listening in on certain phone calls without a court warrant. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law enacted in the 1970's after we learned that our intelligence agencies were running amok in wiretapping leftist activists and, for all we know, listening in on Grandma describe her delicious cherry pie.

Instead of hammering Bush for actually ignoring a law (something Bush swore to do when he became President), Congress instead gave in. What is this shit? Do we have an opposition party in this country? The super-secret FISA court gave out warrants like Halloween candy and even did so after the fact. That's right, search today, and get the warrant for it tomorrow. Why couldn't the Bush administration get warrants through this court? Why does it want to bypass the Court all together? Probably because the administration wants to do things that even the lenient FISA court would disallow.

This unprecedented wiretapping program raises the obvious question: who exactly will listen to the tapes after they start the wiretaps? Will the Bush administration hire interns? Will the White House secretaries listen to the tapes on their way home from work? My suggestion is that we hand out cassette tapes of targeted phone conversations and give them to the vendors at Yankee Stadium. Have them throw the tapes around with the beer and hot dogs. "Getchya beer here, Getchya wiretaps here!" The baseball fans can bring the tapes home and listen to them at their leisure. If anything funny comes out of them, they can call the Justice Department.