Letters to the Editor

• Thanks for detailing it, Arne

  [Read the article: Your Harry Reid-led Senate in action]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I still think of FISA as FISA (that is, as it existed pre-Protect America Act). In my postscript, I was referencing the FISA law in force throughout most of the warrantless link analysis (including of calling party identities as defined under "electronic surveillance" in FISA) that was done for/by the government since before and/or after 9/11/2001 - which would thus have been the collecting and analyzing/disseminating of information covered by (pre-PAA) FISA. Such calling party identity information included in those link analysis sweeps therefore required pre-collection probable cause FISA court orders (which, however, were apparently never obtained, meaning that those responsible were in violation of the FISA law for years, until at least early 2007).

  [I think I must've heard right about Reid's plans to table the SJC amendment, after reviewing Reid's comments from yesterday in Glenn's post, wherein he'd already brought up "tabling" to avoid extended debate tomorrow that might interview with travel plans to Switzerland (Pat Leahy prefers jet-setting to the Constitution too, apparently - no problem for him that his amendment will be summarily killed tomorrow without a filibuster or even 60 votes). So that seems to be Reid's game plan. I guess this is what Chris Dodd meant last December when he indicated that he knew Reid had options to shut him down, but hadn't deployed them (until now...).]

  Permalink Wednesday, January 23, 2008 07:19 PM