There’s been a big flap in Washington about wiretaps. The Bush Administration wants to listen in on ‘foreign communications’ it suspects may be tied to terrorism without court orders (The New York Times, 8-4-07).

That sounded reasonable even to a fair amount of Democrats (who voted for it). But a lot didn’t and the usual groups, like the ACLU, are up in arms about President Bush taking away our civil liberties.

Now, granted when it comes to civil liberties it’s best to err on the side of caution. But in this case it looks like the politicians could have found a solution just about anyone could find reasonable – except, maybe, the ACLU.

It doesn’t take much common sense to see how a CIA agent chasing a terrorist – who might vanish in the next ten minutes – might not always have time to trudge over to a federal judge’s office to get a warrant to listen in on a cell phone call.

So fine. Let him go ahead and tap the phone. Then, for instance, why not require that the wiretap be reviewed (and a warrant issued) within, say, 48 hours? And, for that matter, why not take a few million from the billions we spend on farm subsidies and create special federal judges to issue the warrants so it can all be done quickly and secretly?

Then we’d have a minimal affront to our civil liberties, judicial oversight, and the terrorist’s phone would get tapped.