At one point (about 18min;13 sec in) David Rifkin is talking about how unfortunate it is that we will have this debate again in six months and then he talks about getting this program up and running says this:

“the fact that we don’t know what the regime will be governing the intercepts makes it more difficult for the intelligence community to operate.”

What does this mean, exactly? Why does knowing that the Bush administration will no longer be in power make it more difficult for the intelligence community to operate our surveillance programs?

If the intelligence community is operating as it is supposed to, within the law, why does the prospect of a new regime complicate what it is doing?

Maybe I’m making too much out of this, but it just jumped out at me.

As far as I’m concerned, the question has been definitively answered; the Democrats are an aggregation of opportunists and ciphers that will never constitute a repository of anyone’s hopes or political aspirations.

- David Smith

Superb comment. I share your perfectly expressed sentiments.

- Glenn Greenwald

Glenn,

Would you consider Russ Feingold a opportunist and cipher who will never constitute a repository of anyone’s hopes and dreams?

While I share David’s view of “Emanuel and the creepy Democratic Leadership Council” I wonder just how a comment like this applies to Feingold, who has been saying all the right things on NSA; or Durbin, who was particularly eloquent on the Military Commissions Act.

In other words, how do we denounce what is wrong with so many in the Democratic Party without smearing and alienating those who’ve managed to achieve a modicum of power and are trying to do the right things?

Russ Feingold quoted you in his Senate testimony at one point. Is he going to do that again if you dismiss him as an “opportunist” who you don’t respect because he’s a member of the Democratic Party?

I share David’s anger, but we need to channel that anger constructively, and that means separating the wheat from the chaff – making a distinction between the opportunists, and those who are genuinely (although ineffectively) attempting to stand up for the checks and balances in the Constitution.

The overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress voted the right way on this issue. Rove will smear the party for that, saying that’s in fact what they stand for. (Soft on terrorism.)

And at the same time, David and you are saying the party stands for nothing, only the retention of power.

Is that fair to Russ Feingold and all the others who dared to stand up to Rove’s smears?

Why isn’t there a way to condemn those who sacrificed principles for political expediency without smearing those who didn’t?

When the NSA scandal was first revealed, the conventional wisdom in Washington immediately solidified -- among Washington pundits and Democrats alike -- that Democrats had better not dare challenge Bush's illegal eavesdropping or else they would doom themselves to electoral defeat.

But what was that “conventional wisdom” based upon? Certainly not the polls. I know Rove has his own “math” but what about all those Washington pundits, couldn’t they read the polls? Or did they just reflexively believe what Rove was telling them?

Why does “conventional wisdom” so often represent GOP talking points?

2006 polls:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27poll.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=d6f80d348c3ed000&ex=1296018000

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/01/11/poll.wiretaps/index.html

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/americans-oppose-warrantless.html

Today over at Drudge, he has a large photo of the National Security Agency’s emblem – an eagle with an American flag in the middle of its chest, with the big headline: NO WARRANT NEEDED.

The eagle in that photo is something to be frightened of, it is not a symbol of something that is going to protect us. It is a symbol of what our country has become – and what, for now – it has excepted: a National Surveillance State.

To underscore the new fear we should have of our government, there are links to articles about going after a whistleblower who exposed government criminality. Scott Horton over at Harpers, points out others in the administration guilty of such leaks but adds:

Don’t expect any investigations or prosecutions to emerge in these cases. A police state uses its secrecy laws as a tool for the persecution or repression of political adversaries, not as a means of preserving secrets or implementing serious policy surrounding national security, and that is exactly what is going on here.

He adds:

The fact that even after these disclosures, the National Surveillance State has continued to feed and grow is alarming evidence of the decay of basic institutions. Today, our civil liberties state is withering away and the National Surveillance State surges without control.

He is absolutely right. This isn’t only about the capitulation of the Democrats in Congress, although it is that too; it is a failure of all our basic institutions.

I don’t like that term “National Surveillance State” – it sounds ominous and foreign, like something out of novel or movie, not something that’s actually happening here. Now.

NO WARRANT NEEDED, that bold headline, is presented as a victory for the President and his party, not what it really is, an obituary of liberties this country once held dear.

According to Jack Balkin, Bush still isn’t satisfied. He wants Congress to come back in September and add to the “We trust Alberto Gonzalez completely” FISA reform bill an additional new fix:

The “if the President does it, it’s not illegal” clause giving the administration legal immunity for previously breaking the law.

I’m sure the Democrats will be well prepared to fight this by rolling over, playing dead, and asking Bush if there’s anything else he needs to fight the terrorists.

Oversight is a bitch.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/bush-to-democratic-congress-your.html