What Happened to the FISC Appeal?
Both the WaPo and the NYT have stories today explaining how the crisis in the warrantless wiretap program got so bad that Congress got punked into passing a shitty bill. The story is simple, on its face. The FISC rejected a government subpoena in March, another in May, and those two rulings resulted in the government losing the ability to wiretap a great deal of foreign communication.
Two Rulings?
No wonder BushCo wanted oversight of FISA totally out of the hands of the FISC. If I'm reading this WaPo article correctly, there were actually two rulings that went against the Administration--one in March, and one in May.
But in a secret ruling in March, a judge on a special court empoweredto review the government's electronic snooping challenged for the firsttime the government's ability to collect data from such wires even whenthey
None of the Above
Here's the way I figure this math, from the Iowa Straw Poll.
They had 24,000 voters in 1999.
They wanted 20,000 voters today.
They got 14,000.
That says, presumably, the Iowa Republican Party wrote off 4,000 votes because Giuliani and McCain pulled out and Thompson's not in yet (24,000 minues 20,000).
But that still leaves 6,000 people (20,000 minus 14,000) they expected--and didn't get.
A Reverse F.U.
You know how Thomas Friedman's six months always seem to end up being indefinite forevers? Well, the reverse seems to be going on with Republican accusations that:
For months, congressional Democrats ignored warnings from Director ofNational Intelligence Michael McConnell that FISA's antiquatedprovisions were tying the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies fromcollecting against terrorist communications.
In fact, it appears that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell actually sat on the information for months, from
Hoekstra's Leaks/Cheney's Leaks
Steven Benen writes most of the post I was going to write (thanks Steve!) in response to the news that Pete Hoekstra is a big fat hypocrite about intelligence leaks. Steve links to Justin Rood's coverage of Hoekstra leaking details about the supposedly secret intelligence budget; RawStory first noticed Hoekstra's leak.
Photographs
If you haven't already, go read Jane Mayer's article on our methods of torture. The short version: we're using psychological methods to impose "learned helplessness" and dependency, and as a result, we're getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we're turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.
I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:
Well, Of Course
Holden asks:
They're just thinking of this now?
U.S.military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how securePakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. PervezMusharraf were replaced as the nation's leader, CNN has learned.
Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons after a shift in power.
[snip]
The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, according to the U.S.
Republican Self-Hate
Crooks & Liars links to Bobo Brooks informing Chris Matthews that Republicans hate Matthews' man-crush, President Bush.
BROOKS: Bush…you gotta remember though…a lot ofRepublicans hate Bush. I mean, we look..we talk about the Democrats,how they hate Bush, in private…
MATTHEWS: What do you mean, “hate Bush?â€
BROOKS: They think Bush is incompetent and destroying their party.
Having just taped a Sunday show of my own (this one may be good--I'll actually provide a link, but
This Is What Nancy Should Have Done on FISA
Josh marvels at the (big surprise) latest galling corruption from a member of the Alaska delegation: Don Young snuck an earmark into a 2005 bill after it had been passed by both houses of Congress, but before Bush signed it.
The 'Coconut Road' earmark wasn't in the bill passed by the Houseand Senate.
This Time, We'll Bail Out the S&Ls without a Congressional Debate
The former econ professor notes that we're already bailing out big money:
Fed to the rescue. Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve added $19billion in temporary funds to the banking system through the purchaseof mortgage-backed securities to help meet demand for cash amid a routin bonds backed by home loans to riskier borrowers.
The Fed accepted only mortgage-backed debt as collateral for thismorning's weekend repurchase agreement.
The Leak Wars: Revisiting the Pre-Indictment Leaks
Since we're talking about leaks in the Foggo-Wilkes trial, I wanted to return to the leaks leading up to the Foggo-Wilkes indictments. As a review, Wilkes lawyer Mark Geragos asked the court to dismiss the indictments, arguing that leaks just prior to the time Wilkes was indicted made it impossible for Wilkes to get a fair trial.
The Leak Wars: Elston Accuses Lam
I promised to come back and talk about those bits of the latest document dump that don't support HJC's allegations of a cover-up. In this post, I'm going to look at how DOJ tried to claim that Lam was responsible for leaks about her resignation. The discussion was a response to two local San Diego newspaper articles predicting Lam's resignation.
McConnell and Dick
There are two stories out today claiming Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, is really wearing the pants in the Executive Branch's dealings with intelligence. The NYT has McConnell describing tremendous pressure from Congress, yet insisting he got no pressure from the White House.
In an interview in his office, Mr.
Brief Lies
Joe at AmericaBlog says most of what needs to be said about this Eric Lichtblau article, which very gently call BS on White House attempts to discredit a James Risen article from the previous day.
Okay, the height of hypocrisy is anyone in the Bush administrationchallenging anything as "highly misleading." Liars don't have thestanding to call anyone else a liar.
What If the Media Reclaimed Their Role as Fourth Estate...
And nobody cared?
ThinkProgress has a great compendium of mainstream newspaper editorials criticizing the weekend's FISA debacle. Just about every major paper in the US (with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal) has come out against the new FISA law. I'm even on the same side of this issue as Fred Hiatt, which kind of scares me.
Which means the next six months will be a test of how irrelevant the
Lurita Doan, Round 2043: Davis v. Bloch Edition
Since I seem to be the only one interested in Lurita Doan now that Bush has apparently refused to fire her for clear Hatch Act violations, I thought I'd point out the interesting tidbit that shows up in a profile of Scott Bloch, the guy in charge of Office of Special Counsel, the office that carries out Hatch Act violations that Bush studiously ignores.
Meanwhile, the Doan matter is breeding some ironies.
The Latest Email Dump: Growing Evidence of an Iglesias Cover-Up
DOJ dumped another stash of emails while I was at YKos. Unlike the other late-in-the-scandal email dumps, this one doesn't consist primarily of emails listed on Kyle Sampson's list of withheld emails. These are new, previously unidentified emails. That's not surprising, necessarily, since this dump comes from the Deputy Attorney General's office, not the Attorney General's office (where Sampson worked).
My Guess on Kontogiannis
TPMM reports that there is a non-public hearing on whether the plea bargain hearings for Tommy Kontiagiannis will be unsealed.
Tomorrow morning, three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appealswill gather in a courtroom inside an elegant 104-year-old building inPasadena for an extraordinary hearing involving one of theco-conspirators in the Randy “Duke†Cunningham bribery scandal.
The court hearing will be closed to everyone – the public, the newsmedia, the defense attorneys
Thoughts on FISA
The smart lawyers who (I think) didn't attend YKos have already posted some really important things on the FISA debacle this weekend. Go here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here's one from a smart lawyer who was at YKos. But the short version is that Bush now has even more rights to wiretap than what he was known to have had under the secret programs that he instituted after 9/11,
Security Clearances
I'm sitting here with Kagro X, wating for Glenn Greenwald to interview Anthony Romero. I suspect the FISA bill will be a topic of hot conversation.
Meanwhile, I wanted to point to the "clarification" given by the guy whom Congress wants to give complete power to decide whom to wiretap and whether those wiretap targets are in the US or not.
