a) The banking transactions of all politicians are monitored closely as a matter of course by banks, as required by federal law. This is a law-enforcement tool to catch corrupt politicians, and so it’s questionable if it qualifies as a wiretap or even an invasion of privacy. And even if it does, the question you have to ask yourself is whether a public figure like a Governor deserves the same right to privacy as a private citizen. IMO, no, although they should have more right to privacy than they do at present.

b) The federal IRS wiretap you talk about could very easily have been granted by a standard, good-old-fashioned federal judge, just like any judge will grant a warrant when there’s evidence of a possible crime being committed. In this case, Spitzer’s bank records gave the banking transaction monitoring software pause, and it was sent up to the IRS, which decided that there was ample enough evidence of illegal activities for a wiretap.

I realize that the Spitzer situation was just your jumping off point for the rest of your post, but I wanted to make sure that you, and all our readers, understand that the situation with Spitzer is somewhat more nuanced than you implied.

If I were a Congressweasel, gods forbid, I’d get to work on that on Day 1.

When a man as powerful as Elliot Spitzer can be felled by a wiretap, what hope do any of us have in a world where our every movement, spoken word, and action is being catalogued in a database?…