NSA Spying Shell Game
… Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of
judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far
more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of
Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from
the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.Let's call this what it is: a shell game. The
question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the
National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States
without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans
to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents
of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which
it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence
that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls
and e-mail messages while following the existing rules. …
Not only have we got a Kabuki Congress, but we've got close to
that in the media. The graphic on firedoglake
says it all.
Anonymous
liberal is guest blogging over at Glenn
Greenwald, having an excellent post up this morning, all about the “media
firewall,” which keeps the truth from getting heard.
It's yet more proof that my pick for movie
of the year was warranted, but desperately correct.
Tomorrow is the Senate Intel hearings over the NSA illegal spying program, which appear to be a “shell
game,” because the rubber stamping Republicans are at it yet again.
However, even if we were to believe that Bush's illegal spying
were actually worth it, which it's not. The worst part of it, besides that it's
illegal, is that it's not even working.
The scale of warrantless surveillance,
and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush's circumvention
of the courts. National security lawyers, in and out of government, said the
washout rate raised fresh doubts about the program's lawfulness under the Fourth
Amendment, because a search cannot be judged “reasonable” if it is
based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable. Other officials said
the disclosures might shift the terms of public debate, altering perceptions
about the balance between privacy lost and security gained.
There Must Be a Secret Somewhere
The Roots
Project is having an affect, with my part focusing
on terrestrial radio's importance, as always. Check out more here
and here, with Nebraska action here.
The states being targeted are Kansas (where Roberts lives and breathes), Ohio,
Nebraska, Maine, South Carolina and Pennsylvania, with others to come. NOTE: Full round-up found here.
With the NSA hearing tomorrow, at least one thing's certain.
Deadeye Dick
is back and he's gunning for Harry Reid, because Frist could never have thrown
the gauntlet down without him. He just doesn't have the spine.
Frist was humiliated and shown for the weak leader he was when Harry
Reid invoked Rule 21 of the Senate, shutting it down and demanding phase II of the Senate Intelligence report. It reminded everyone of Frist's video diagnosis of Terry Schiavo, and just how politically feckless the Republican leader of the Senate really is.
As Gonzales
said on “Charlie Rose,” Deadeye is the real “expert” on
the NSA spying issue, which can only mean one thing. With the Senate Intel committee
set to meet tomorrow, Deadeye has likely threatened all wayward Republicans
that even when he misses his target, people standing around still get hit. Maybe that's why Chuck Hagel has all of a sudden gone silent.
I'll let Lawrence Tribe bring it home.
“If as a country we get used to a
regime in which the president can basically treat laws that give him power as
a basis for expanding his own authority beyond what anyone dreamed and treat
laws in which Congress tries to restrict his power in a way that only Lewis
Carrol, Franz Kafka and Alice and Wonderland and the trial could take seriously.
What that means is that essentially the president is saying I'm a monarch. I
can do what I want. I can play with Congress. I don't need their authority.
…”
Lawrence
Tribe (professor of constitutional law at Harvard)
Comments are closed.