Specter's 'help' is not necessary

Some politicians are drawn to the limelight like moths to a flame. Arlen Specter is one of them.

The Pennsylvania Republican, who chairs the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, is gearing up his panel to investigate whether it was legal for President Bush to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop, without obtaining a court warrant, on phone and e-mail communications between U.S. citizens and suspected terrorists abroad.

We're all in favor of Congress exercising its oversight responsibilities, but the House and Senate intelligence committees are the proper forums for that - not the judiciary committees. Judiciary should leave the investigation of lawbreaking to the Justice Department.

Specter, of course, wants to get his committee - and himself - in on the excitement of this high-profile case. But he'll add nothing to it. In fact, he'll only cloud and confuse the issue. Besides, his panel will have a full plate starting Monday, when it launches hearings on confirming Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The hard left's claim that Bush's wiretapping is on the scale of another Watergate is nonsense. This isn't President Nixon's GOP "plumbers" raiding Democratic headquarters to steal campaign plans. Nor is it Big Brother eavesdropping on Americans communicating with other Americans.

It is the National Security Agency trying to protect Americans from another 9-11 attack, or worse, by wiretapping U.S. citizens in cahoots with overseas terrorists. Do we really want to strip the government of that authority?

The courts may very well find this kind of federal wiretapping in wartime is constitutional even without a judge's warrant. In any event, that's a legal matter which, even if the president loses, would simply show he was on the wrong end of a controversial checks-and-balances issue - not engaged in a grand criminal design worthy of calling forth an impeachment trial.

Most Americans fully understand what's at stake in the spy case. A just-released Rasmussen poll shows that 64 percent of the public - including a majority of self-identified Democrats - agree with President Bush that the NSA should be allowed to intercept messages and phone calls between American citizens and terrorist suspects in other countries.

Indeed, the greater crime could turn out to be the damage done to national security by the Bush foes in government who leaked the story about the wiretaps to The New York Times. That is also under investigation, and properly so.

Again, let this spy case run its course in the courts and the appropriate congressional oversight committees. This can be competently accomplished without any help from Arlen Specter.