To the editor:

The Journal-World has published two recent articles noting that U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts defends the president’s legal right to authorize conversations of Americans to be wiretapped, in the attempt to safeguard us from al-Qaida, in spite of the FISA law that requires court approval for all such activities. In the first article, Sen. Roberts indicated that Democrats who question the wiretaps are politicizing the issue. In fact, it appears that it is Sen. Roberts who is playing politics.

First, he references Democrats when many Republicans also question the legality of the wiretaps and, second, he appears to have resolved the issue in favor of the Bush administration without sufficient objective evidence to support his conclusions. He should be calling for a fair and impartial investigation into the issue.

Likewise, as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he should have sought a thorough investigation of the Valerie Plame outing. Instead, he played politics by questioning whether she was, in fact, an undercover operative simply because she had an office in the CIA building.

If voters want our country to continue to be governed by the rule of law, with appropriate checks and balances on the executive branch, we should remember Sen. Roberts’ rhetoric and actions when he again seeks re-election.