So what is the fundamental problem in spying?

How do we solve the problem? Impeaching Bush? Throwing Rove in jail? Would that even be a good start?

The CIA, and other intelligence agencies, were created for the purpose of gathering intelligence on "foreign" countries and/or persons. If you have that as a foundation, what do you expect to happen?

Power expands, and that's all it does. Domestic spying has happened before, and it's still happening as we speak. Yes, "laws" were broken, but the people in power hardly care. I'm guessing they got more information in this round of spying, than they have in previous rounds. The next time they conduct such exercizes, and it will happen again(yeah, yeah, I know, laws...which stopped this administration from doing it this time), they'll get even deeper into total information awareness, with whatever new technology they dream up.

My solution to the problem would be to abolish the entire intelligence gathering(i.e. spy) infrastructure. Now I have no power, so I can say that. The people with actual power in Washington that could do that would never say such a thing. Therefore, the problem will not go away. As we should all know, in the past events of domestic spying, there was no Patriot Act, and there was no W, so those do not need to exist for spying on Americans to be conducted.

I hope everyone has time on their calendar for fighting this fight over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, like we do with every other problem. I know the American people are finally awake, but I'm sure they were awake the first time we found out about domestic spying years ago, or lying our country into war, or war profiteering, or hit sqauds in our sphere of influence, or this issue, and that issue, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is about the President being above the law and ignoring our nations proud tradition of checks and balances for government.

That's it in a nutshell. ;)

But, I'd also include that, spying on the private lives of law-abiding American citizens by US Government employees is unconstitutional and fundamentally un-American.

The Law Is The Same For All .Equals.

Period.

The royal pain in the ass.He should go to jail do not pass go do not collect 200,000 dollars.

to a judge and a wiretap warrant would have been issued. Bush believes he is above the law. Fuck him.

The arguement is not spying, intelligence gathering or fighting terror. it is violating the Constitution that specifically bans spying on American citizens without following the due process of getting search warrants.
Only an incompetent who is completely unsure of his ability to succeed would want to change this good constitutional guarantee.

He could not follow due process because that would mean he would have to divuldge the real reason for spying. Political gain. I doubt terrorists were the only targets.

That's why Congress is running scared.