FISA already allowed wiretaps with the approval of the FISA Court, which grants wiretap applications 99% percent of the time. Furthermore, if it's an emergency, approval can be obtained retroactively (50 USC 1805(f)). FISA did not need to be reformed. What a load of crap.

All questions of amnesty aside, what the hell good does it do to monitor domestic phone lines, or even international calls? Seriously, how could anyone really think they would hear something noteworthy enough to prevent a terrorist attack? Even if perpetrators were stupid enough to talk openly about it (or even in "code") using phone lines, the odds of someone zeroing in on that particular conversation are remote at best. Same with chat or email. There's way too much information to sift through, no matter how big your supercomputers and data-analysis programs are. It's preposterous to think you can "listen" to all the voice and data flowing in and out of America and somehow prevent the next big attack. Which, of course, is all the more reason NOT to grant amnesty. There could not be a more futile strategy to protect the homeland than to eavesdrop on phone calls or snoop through email. But hey, if you want to do it, then do it lawfully. There is a lawful way to do it. But they didn't. So this should go to court and there should be consequences.

Jebus, I can't believe there's even a debate about this.

I like how NBC's Chris Colvin calls Glenn's articles a "brutal takedown." Apparently pointing out that a "journalist" is wrong about a simple matter is a takedown, and brutal at that. As if you have to be overly aggressive to want to expose this kind of crap.

I've seen interviews on Letterman with more substance than that. He's running for president, not touring the country in support of a new book. My god...

I don't think Rep. Vito Fossella knows what he's talking about. He says...

the outdated FISA law, which prevented them from conducting surveillance without first obtaining a warrant.

I'm pretty sure FISA allows up to 72 hours of surveillance without a warrant. You can obtain a warrant retroactively.

What a riot. If you haven't clicked through to read his original post, you should do it. It's only two paragraphs and it puts The Onion to shame. No one could mock the stereotypical right-wing take on "terror" better than that.

In sum: Glenn is a weak-stomached lefty and the US government is ALWAYS right when it comes to interrogating terrorists. They have never -- repeat NEVER -- detained and tortured someone who wasn't a terrorist ready to strike. They all had it coming to them. And if you can't handle that, then you're a communist pussy.

I've been using EverNote at my job for several months now as an easy way to log what I do each day. I love it. It's perfect if you have to submit a time-tracking form for projects. The project tracking system we use is slow, web-based, and requires IE. But I primarily work in Firefox. So throughout the week, I keep EverNote running in my system tray and just add little notes to it as needed. Then on Friday, I open IE, go to the bloated project-mgmt system and fill it out using EverNote to refresh my memory.

It's lightweight and runs fast and stays out of the way. And it's search function is very powerful as the article states. I haven't had the urge to use it for my personal life, but at work I'm addicted to it. Highly recommended for those who need to keep a handy journal at work.

Excuse me...

What people and what territory did Reagan sign away, to a genocidal maniac?

Damn, did you even read past the headline? In case you didn't, I'll enlighten you: The article is about Reagan being accused of Chamberlain-like "appeasement" in the 1980s by the fringe right-wing. Glenn does not accuse Reagan of "appeasement".

Now run along and try to think of some other one-liner you can drop off here in the comments section.

There was a comment made earlier by someone named Shooter that Glenn's last paragraph proved he was a left-wing hater because it contained "hate speech" and "slurs." Can someone tell me what he's talking about? Since when did phrases like "rotted media culture" and "cesspool" become slurs? When I think of slurs and hate speech, I think of white supremacists, Nazis, and the like. Just a hunch, but I'm guessing Salon would not employ someone who used legitimate hate speech and slurs in their writing.

"You can take a position and be a purist and sort of sit around yelling at each [other] across the [political] divide and nothing gets done," Hoyer said." The American people, they want us to get this done. That’s the whole thing to me."

He's got a point you know. The American people were clamoring for Telecom Immunity and greater government eavesdropping powers. Poll after poll overwhelmingly shows this to be true. Heck it's all my friends and family can talk about!!

Says Glenn:

And yesterday, a new study was released documenting that House Democrats who changed their vote this week -- who opposed amnesty back in March but voted for it this week -- received substantial largesse from the telecoms in that interval.

I recommend clicking through to that study. Some comments:

• The average Telco PAC donation to the 94 Dems who changed their vote on FISA was $8,359.
• 11 of those 94 Dems received NO money. Pull them out of the calculation and the average jumps to $9466.
• The TOTAL of all Telco PAC donations amounts to $785,700.
• Thirty (30) of the recipients received donations in excess of $10,000.
• Steny Hoyer received $29,000.