House Holds Closed Session To Discuss Warrantless Wiretapping

The US House held a rare closed session last night to discuss the pending FISA bill that would regulate government spying on phone calls and emails. Ironically, according to the Rachel Maddow Show, House members had to wait several hours to start the session so the chamber could be swept for bugs.

George W. Bush, who insists that the new FISA bill must include immunity for telecom companies who broke the law by allowing the government to eavesdrop on customers without proper authorization, is pulling out all the stops now. Having failed to frighten House Democrats with the specters of national security breaches or telecom bankruptcy, he's now playing the patriotism card. To wit, telecoms that broke the law were showing their love of country and should be rewarded for it.

Apparently it has slipped his mind that those same telecoms cut off their "patriotic" wiretaps when the government failed to pay its phone bill.

The House is expected to vote on the bill today before adjourning for the Easter recess. Bush has vowed to lie down on the floor and kick and scream veto it if he doesn't get his way.

UPDATE: The bill passed 213-197. It goes to the Senate after the Easter break.

Duh

Concerns Raised on Wider Spying under New Law

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

Uh huh. For some reason, those assurances don't make me feel better.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns....

...Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

But of course we know the administration would never overstep its bounds. Well, actually we don't, and that's why a group of attorneys met with Bushco last week to clarify the parameters of the new law. They weren't happy with what they heard.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

Gee, I'm shocked to hear that. Not only did Bush rush through a big expansion of his surveillance power, he has no intention of abiding by the new rules if they get in his way. And let's not forget that DNI Mike McConnell and incompetent liar Alberto Gonzales get to decide who will be targeted when Bush unleashes his shiny new superpowers.

"We did not cover ourselves in glory," said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

No shit. Thanks ever so to the 14 Democratic senators and 41 Democratic representatives who voted for this turkey. You suck.

Cross-posted at Birmingham Blues.

Questions And More Questions

Jose Padilla. Good grief, where in America can you find twelve people dumber than Bush, with the memory of Gonzales and the soul of Cheney? Miami, as in Florida. Well that answers that question.

Can printing more money be far behind? It didn't take long for elation turned to panic, did it?

Why is everybody so surprised that Robert Mueller kept accurate notes? Every medical professional (even me) in the country knew that Ashcroft was definitely not "lucid". This story is old news and even worse, it's about a subject that most Americans like to ignore. Until it happens to them, by which time it is way too late.

From my place.

Progress

There have been times when the United States influenced other nations toward democracy and the rule of law.

Now, not so much.

Laugh. Cry. Repeat.

(Hat tip: Scott Lemieux.)

Sunday Science And Fiction

Roswell, the story that never dies. Well, somebody who was actually working at Roswell died last year and his sworn affidavit has been released to the public. If even half of it is true, I have one question. Why haven't the aliens ever come back? Didn't they like us? Did they think we were a waste of time and valuable resources? Well, that was more than one question and here is another. Why would the Air Force have crash test dummies in weather balloons that were supposed to be looking for evidence of Russian nuclear tests ...in New Mexico?

Has Google gone too far? According to Duncan at TechCrunch they have, or at least one of their advertising team has. While I may use Google almost exclusively for searches and iGoogle and the Reader for my news and other interests, I will drop them in a heartbeat if they start to obviously take sides with obviously corrupt big business. There are enough alternatives out there for everything that they provide, including the Blogger platform. I'm always willing to learn something new.

Anybody with any sense would have known that if there was a fly in the iPhone ointment, it would be AT&T;'s fault, not Apple's. I wonder how long it will be before that deal isn't exclusive?

Robert A. Heinlein would have been 100 on July 7th, but he was no George Burns. Heinlein was my favorite author growing up, mainly because he was prolific and some of his books had female leads. As a kid I never wondered about the symbolism behind the stories, I just read them and was transported to different worlds besides the one I was stuck on. I'm sorry to hear that he was such a conservative, but then people do like to read more into fiction books than the author actually meant. I notice he didn't bring up Job: A Comedy of Justice.

Keeping it light for the folks at IIRTZ, crossposted at Debsweb.

Gonzo's Hospital Raid: Some Context

The big question about the dramatic incident Comey testified to the other day is this: if the NSA surveillance program had already been going on for two years, why was it suddenly an issue in March of 2004?

An e-mailer to TPM Muckraker provides a likely answer:

October 3, 2003...the Senate confirms Jack L. Goldsmith as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. In June, with Goldsmith’s nomination before the senate, John Yoo had left his job as the deputy at OLC....

Fast forward to December 11, 2003, when Comey is confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. He immediately assumes a more aggessive posture than his predecessor, Larry Thompson....

Thompson had not been authorized access to the details of the NSA program. But, reports the NYTimes, “Comey was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence material that grew out of it” (1/1/06). He set Goldsmith to the task of sorting through the program’s dubious legality....

Suddenly, the March 11 date comes into clearer focus. For the first time, trained and qualified attorneys within the Justice Department had conducted a careful review of the program. Comey took the evidence he had gathered to Ashcroft....By the end of that meeting, Ashcroft and Comey had “agreed on a course of action,” to wit, that they “would not certify the program as to its legality.”

....For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected.

When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.

The White House (i.e., Dick Cheney and David Addington) did everything they could to shield their dirty little program from scrutiny, not just from Congress but from their own Department of Justice. That fact, and the fact that once it did come under review nobody with a modicum of integrity was willing to approve it, tells us just how dirty it was.

Comey's testimony ended with both Specter and Leahy discussing a closed-door hearing with Comey on the specifics of the program. Finally, five years after the NSA program began, three years after Comey was willing to give up his job to stop it, we may finally get some answers on what exactly they were up to.

More Gonzales Skullduggery Revealed in Comey Testimony

I know it seems like there have been dozens of revelations about the current administration, each of which should have been the tipping point, the event that precipitates the ultimate downfall, but the picture that emerges from the testimony of former Deputy Attorney General James Comey -- the number two man at the Justice Department -- to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday is of the kind of skullduggery that would make Nixon blush.

Essentially, Gonzalez (when he was White House Council) and Andrew Card tried an end-around when then-A.G. John Ashcroft and the DOJ refused to reauthorize the NSA spying, first by confronting Ashcroft in the intensive care unit of the hospital where he was very ill, then by trying to pressure and/or intimidate Comey, who refused to meet with Card without the Solictor General as a witness. It gets very Hollywood very quickly. This Washington Post editorial sums up the narrative quite well, and concludes:

Now, it emerges, they were willing to override Justice if need be. That Mr. Gonzales is now in charge of the department he tried to steamroll may be most disturbing of all.

The transcript of the session has its light moments, such as this one as Chuck Shumer finishes introducing Comey:

I especially appreciate Mr. Comey's coming to testify here without the formality of a subpoena. In order to secure Mr. Comey's presence, I would have moved for consideration of a subpoena by the committee, but I'm glad that wasn't necessary because of your cooperation.

As far as I'm concerned, when the Justice Department lost Jim Comey, it lost a towering figure. And I don't say that because he stands 6'8" tall. When Jim left the department, we lost a public servant of the first order, a man of unimpeachable integrity, honestly, character and independence.

And now I'd like to administer the oath of office. Would you please rise?

I'm sorry. I wish we were administering the oath of office.

(LAUGHTER)

I think it's pretty clear everyone wishes it was someone of Comey's character and not Alberto Gonzales' that was in charge of the Justice department now. It's that divide between those in the administration (including, surprisingly, Ashcroft) that still held some regard for the rule of law, and the ones who don't, that's laid bare here. The sum and the details of the testimony are disturbing, shocking, chilling -- you name it. It's the cloak-and-dagger stuff that usually gets dismissed as liberal tin-hat conspiracy-mongering, except that it's there in black and white this time.

The President Makes the Decision

So everybody already knows that Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the illegal electronic surveillance program. I think we can all say 'obstruction of justice', but I'm pretty sure Congress (this Congress, with this president) can't.

I was struck by this key exchange, reported in the Washington Post:

"It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales.

"The president of the United States makes the decision," Gonzales replied. [emphasis added]

d'Fuh?

I'm pretty sure Specter wasn't asking who Bush is (we already know he's the Decider); Specter was asking why the Decider Decided the Way he Decided. Gonzales' response will go down in history as one of the all-time classic non-responsive answers.

Just for perspective, let's try this out in some everyday-type situations:

Officer: Why didn't you stop at that stop sign?
Driver: The driver makes the decision.

Mom: Why didn't you do your homework?
Kid: The kid makes the decision.

Really, that's the level we've sunk to with this administration.

The scariest part is that Gonzales (and Bush and the whole lot of them) probably think this is an answer--that the provenance of the decision makes it unquestionable. It's the executive infallibility doctrine in action; under the influence of people like Addington and Cheney, they're so ideologically committed to executive supremacy that it doesn't even occur to them that simply asserting it might not be sufficient.

And the sad thing is, they're probably right; despite some sharp questioning by Specter and Dianne Feinstein nothing more is going to come of this latest outrage than came of the hundreds before it.

[Cross-posted at Property of a Lady]

[That's all, folks]

Stonewalls Du Jour

Mark Kleiman has the scoop on the Office of Professional Responsibility being denied clearance to investigate NSA wiretapping:

Since the program in question was an NSA program, presumably the decision on access would have been made within the NSA. So in effect the NSA has decided that the public interest would not be served by having the means by which its program was approved reviewed by an independent set of investigators.

Meanwhile, the Carpetbagger alerts us to a WSJ story (behind the subscriber wall) about Congress juggling new Iraq reconstruction funds, at the request of the White House, in order to get around an Inspector General who has actually been doing his job.

I know it's all wacky and out of the mainstream and unhinged and moonbatty to describe this administration as a 'criminal conspiracy'...but, damn.

[That's all, folks]

Gonzales: Getting Warrants is Hard

Via Brett Marston, I read Abu Gonzales' Georgetown speech rationalizing the NSA wiretapping program. As Brett says, it's pretty thin stuff on the whole...but one argument in particular struck me as weirdly self-contradictory:

There’s a serious misconception about these emergency authorizations. People should know that we do not approve emergency authorizations without knowing that we will receive court approval within 72 hours. FISA requires the Attorney General to determine IN ADVANCE that a FISA application for that particular intercept will be fully supported and will be approved by the court before an emergency authorization may be granted. That review process can take precious time.

Thus, to initiate surveillance under a FISA emergency authorization, it is not enough to rely on the best judgment of our intelligence officers alone. Those intelligence officers would have to get the sign-off of lawyers at the NSA that all provisions of FISA have been satisfied, then lawyers in the Department of Justice would have to be similarly satisfied, and finally as Attorney General, I would have to be satisfied that the search meets the requirements of FISA. And we would have to be prepared to follow up with a full FISA application within the 72 hours.

A typical FISA application involves a substantial process in its own right: The work of several lawyers; the preparation of a legal brief and supporting declarations; the approval of a Cabinet-level officer; a certification from the National Security Adviser, the Director of the FBI, or another designated Senate-confirmed officer; and, finally, of course, the approval of an Article III judge.

So let me see if I follow this: they have so much respect for the FISA court process that they feel compelled to comply with it in excruciating detail, dotting every last i and crossing every last t before doing the emergency wiretapping for which they need to get retroactive approval; so rather than sully the process with a less-than-perfect application they'll just show their immense respect for it by blowing it off completely.

I must be missing something here.

What's missing, of course, is the part Abu Gonzales doesn't mention: that the FISA court had already rejected or modified a fair number of their wiretap requests. The whole nonsensical rationalization is just so many words. It isn't about speed or flexibility; it's about avoiding review altogether. It's about the supreme power of the monarch executive.

[That's all, folks]

NSA Wiretapping: A Question for Bush Supporters

There's something I've been wondering about, and if I have any Republican readers I'm hoping you can give me an answer on this.

In the month or so since the existence of this program was revealed, we've had half a dozen or so different rationales for it.

It's too time-consuming to get warrants from the FISA court...except it isn't.

They kept Congress informed...except they didn't.

Nobody in Congress objected...except they did.

Congress authorized it when they passed the AUMF...except they didn't.

The wiretapping provided us with essential information that helped us capture terrorists...except it didn't.

It was a large-scale high-tech data-mining operation, making it impossible to get warrants for every wiretap...except it wasn't.

And finally, the administration avoided the FISA court because it required a higher standard ("probable cause") than they wanted to apply ("reasonable basis to believe")...except they refused to support amending FISA to change the standard.

So here's the question: exactly how many times does the administration's story have to change (on this, or any other issue) before you think maybe they're trying to hide something? 20? 30? 100? Infinity googleplex plus one?

Really...I'd like to know.

[That's all, folks]

Domestic Spying by the DoD: Update

A month or so ago, I wrote about an MSNBC story saying CIFA, a secret Defense Department agency theoretically dedicated to protecting troops and bases, had spied on peaceful protestors. This week there's another story about it in Newsweek. I don't see a lot of new information in it (it seems to be mainly confirming the earlier revelation), but there are two bits worth highlighting. First:

A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained.

In other words, they admit they were going beyond what was permissible.

There's also this:

But the organization also gleaned data from "open source Internet monitoring." In other words, they surfed the Web.

That may have been how the Pentagon came to be so interested in a small gathering outside Halliburton. On June 23, 2004, a few days before the Halliburton protest, an ad for the event appeared on houston.indymedia.org, a Web site for lefty Texas activists....

Four months later, on Oct. 25, the TALON team reported another possible threat to national security. The source: a Miami antiwar Web page. "Website advertises protest planned at local military recruitment facility," the internal report warns.

Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring, and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to buy "identity masking" software that would allow the agency to create phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences Corp.

The earlier article was all about spying on protestors; it didn't have anything about spying on the internet. Both efforts have the potential to suppress speech, but the latter could be much more far-reaching in its effects. The part about concealing their identities is particularly creepy, and bound to incite paranoia in the blogosphere.

Which means we'll be back to the perennial question: are we too paranoid, or not paranoid enough?

[That's all, folks]

FBI: NSA Wiretapping Ineffective

Via Kevin Drum, there's a New York Times article in which FBI sources say the NSA wiretapping led to a lot of dead ends:

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. The spy agency was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of phone and Internet traffic. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy....

More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

Kevin downplays the story, partly because it sounds to him like bureaucratic infighting (probably true), and partly because "the effectiveness of the program just isn't a big issue".

He's right, up to a point: if the program was illegal, it was illegal no matter how effective or ineffective it was. Legality isn't the only issue, though, as far as public opinion is concerned. A lot of people (not Kevin Drum, and not I, but a sizable percentage of the public) are perfectly willing to give him a pass on illegality as long as what he's doing actually works. In the context of public opinion, if the NSA program isn't really contributing anything, that makes an enormous difference.

More importantly, the article suggests that it wasn't just ineffective but counter-productive. Ezra Klein makes the essential point here:

It's well possible that the massive, mostly useless resource expenditure required by the data mining has left Americans materially less safe, needlessly chewing up federal time, money, and personnel while darker threats lurked safely within the deluge.

And if that's the case--if it made Americans less safe rather than more safe--then this is a huge issue.

[That's all, folks]

Powell, NSA, and the FISA Court

Once again, Colin Powell takes a dive for the Bush administration, saying there was nothing wrong with the NSA wiretapping program:

"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Mr. Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."

But Mr. Powell added that "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way."

"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.

Or does he? It's unclear to me. He says he sees nothing wrong with it, but at the same time he dismisses the only justification the White House has advanced for bypassing the FISA court: that it would have been too difficult to go through the normal process. Is this good soldier Powell, sticking up for his former boss? Or devious bureaucratic warrior Powell, sticking in the shiv while appearing to defend him? Or is he just hedging his bets, as Powell is wont to do (he made a point of saying he 'had not been told' about the program)?

In any case, it looks like he was wrong about it being easy to get the warrants. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the FISA court wasn't all that accommodating after all:

The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004 -- the most recent years for which public records are available.

The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection in the court's history.

Predictable wingnut talking point: the judicial activists on the FISA court were meddling in the War on Terra. And the P-I story obliges by talking about 'unprecedented second-guessing' in the opening paragraph.

Out here in the reality-based community, though, this is pretty damning stuff. What it says is that they were going after warrants for which they had no legal justification:

To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities that "may" involve a violation of criminal law.

Faced with that standard, Bamford said, the Bush administration had difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people within the United States who were communicating with targeted al-Qaida suspects inside the United States.

In other words, Powell is full of shit: they almost certainly had no probable cause sufficient to get warrants for the wiretapping they decided to do without seeking court authorization. Which would mean that the wiretapping was not just illegal because they didn't follow the right process; it was inherently illegal, outside the bounds of what would have been allowed if they had taken it to the court. And it means they knew that (because the FISA court had shown them what they could and could not get approved).

Update: Steve Benen, guest-posting at Political Animal, also notices Powell's contradictory comments.

Update #2: So does Shakespeare's Sister, who has an awesomely hilarious graphic.

[That's all, folks]

Why Do the Courts Hate America?

Kevin Drum notes that the Bush administration is getting spanked hard by the judiciary.

First, it seems the FISA court judge who resigned isn't the only one unhappy with the illegal wiretapping. Now the chief judge is calling a meeting of the court to discuss the issue, and it looks like they'll make the administration do some 'splainin:

The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court.

Of course, the administration has a perfectly good justification for bypassing the court:

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up." [emphasis added]

And then there's the case of Jose Padilla. After arguing for years that Padilla was an enemy combatant in order to justify handling his case in a military court, when faced with possible Supreme Court review of the case they suddenly decided to drop those charges and filed new, lesser charges in a civilian court. The 4th Circuit said no, and they said it in a particularly scathing opinion:

They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror — an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant.

And these impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today. While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be.

Kevin notes that the author is Michael Luttig, a favorite judge of the wingnuts. Not any more. I guess some of those judges take all that 'rule of law' crap seriously.

[That's all, folks]

More NSA Wiretapping

I'm having a very hard time pulling together all of the threads of this thing. It's too big, too far-reaching, and there's just too much to read. Here's my attempt to compile the sources I think are essential:

• The program: The absence of any solid information is generating all kinds of speculation about what the program actually entails. John at AmericaBlog suggests that the NSA was spying on journalists communicating with sources suspected of al Qaeda connections. This theory is plausible, and would explain why they couldn't have gone to the FISA court, and why they are so desperate to keep the details secret, but I don't see any solid evidence for it. The more popular view now is that it's some sort of datamining operation (see Kevin Drum, Ezra Klein, and Josh Marshall for details); this is supported by details such as the wording of Gonzales' statements and the Rockefeller letter.
• Legality: Kevin Drum gives a capsule summary of the legal status (short version: 4th Amendment violation probably, FISA violation certainly, unlimited executive power justification not so much). Think Progress eviscerates a 'Carter & Clinton did it too' defense advanced by Drudge. Glenn Greenwald eviscerates the administration's own justifications. Kevin Drum addresses the expansive definition of 'wartime' being used to justify unlimited Executive power. And in case anyone is in doubt about the legality, the resignation of a FISA court judge is a pretty solid indicator.
• The I-Word: Where there is a president blithely committing criminal acts, and vowing to continue doing so, there is talk of impeachment. Opinion is divided on whethr it's a good idea to pursue this; Nick Beaudrot says no, and Amanda reluctantly agrees; Shakespeare's Sister, among others, disagrees. Short of impeachment, Conyers' censure resolution is gaining wide support, while Matt Yglesias argues that Congress needs to repeal the use of force resolution. (Matt also nails the bizarre stupidity of the wingnut response with this line: "Meanwhile, the same conservatives who think all this is no big deal seem to regard the EPA as an intolerable sign of creeping totalitarianism."
• The Times: Here's Digby and Shakespeare's Sister on the news that the White House tried to dissuade the Times from publishing, Shakespeare's Sister on the Times' criminal complicity, and Glenn Greenwald on the larger implications of it all. Key quote from Glenn:

  But if they don’t -- if the media does not radically and rapidly change the way it operates and how it sees its function as a result of this scandal -- it is not hyperbole to say that many of the most basic and long-standing principles of our republic will be undermined, perhaps irrevocably. The Administration is now alternatively rubbing the media’s face in this scandal and threatening them with criminal investigations and imprisonment if they don’t fall into line. The moment of truth for the media has arrived, and one cannot exactly be confident in the prospect that they will rise to this challenge.

If you have any other sources that are particularly helpful in understanding this thing, please post them in comments.

[That's all, folks]

NSA Wiretapping Roundup

This has generated a whole lot of required reading. Here's some of it:

• Hilzoy, guest-posting at Political Animal, brings up the I word
• Digby, on presidential infallibility
• ReddHedd posts on it here and here
• Mark Kleiman notes how quickly the official story changes
• Larry Johnson, on how Bolton might be involved

[That's all, folks]

Domestic Spying by the DoD

Sometimes I envy those of you too young to have lived through the last time. You can experience it all--the corruption, the mendacity, the body counts, the secrecy, the contempt for constitutional protections, for the rule of law--as fresh and new. You aren't plagued by the uneasy feeling that you're stuck in a recurring bad dream where you know the outcome but can do nothing to change it.

Kevin Drum directs us to an MSNBC story about a Department of Defense database tracking domestic incidents, including some 42 anti-war protests:

The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One "incident" included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

In theory, there are very strict guidelines governing Department of Defense collection of information on U.S. citizens. This information-gathering was justified as protecting the security of Defense facilities--obviously a bogus justification, as it included protests 'far from any military installation'.

Enhanced domestic spying capability is, not surprisingly, another consequence of the Global War On Terra; the stated rationale is to prevent terrorism:

Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and "maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense." Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.

And CIFA is no small effort:

CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community....Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.

Just to be clear, I don't think we're where we were in 1970. Neither does the guy who leaked the COINTELPRO story, who is quoted in the article. The fact of DoD spying on some anti-war protests does not mean there is a widespread coordinated effort to use the military against domestic critics of the administration (as was the case under Nixon).

The point here is that we're (once again) headed in that direction, that we are led by people with a similar contempt for dissent who are at least as ruthless and every bit as willing to use the mechanisms of government for partisan ends. The point is that it could easily all happen again...only this time with a more compliant press and no congressional oversight.

[That's all, folks]