News Flash -- Reporters actually checking their facts!

Along with numerous constitutional scholars as well as plenty of Democratic and Republican politicians, Al Gore has criticized Bush's apparently illegal/unconstitutional warrantless wiretaps. The White House has been attempting to smear Gore with the charge that the Clinton WH did much the same thing (on the apparent assumption that mainstream reporters would be as inattentive as usual and simply quote without checking).

But instead of just playing the usual lazy-ass he said/he said game, some reporters really are checking their facts.

>> [Bush presidential spokesman] McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.<< http://tinyurl.com/akne8

In other words, the Clinton WH never engaged in illegal warrantless searches as McClellan insinuates. There was no law prohibiting the Ames search at the time it was conducted (and because no law existed against it, no law was broken). There IS a law against the warrantless secret NSA domestic wiretaps ordered by Bush. The "inherent authority" that Clinton claimed was to conduct a search where no law prohibited it. The "inherent authority" that Bush claims is to ignore the law. Very different claims.

Hats off to Nedra Pickler of the AP for that catch. What's especially promising about the AP reporting this is that it won't simply be mentioned in one paper while all the others run with he said/he said quotes (that make WH twisting appear as if if were simply a different point of view instead of the smear it is). It will be everywhere. Will reporters start checking the truthfulness of WH comments on a regular basis? Wouldn't that be a nice change.