Montana, Colorado, Arizona etc. are characterized by a strong libertarian streak in their populations; Tester is pro-gun and appeals to the "leave me alone" ethos that is popular there (and which I wish we had more of here in the Midwest).

Indiana is a horse of an entirely different color. (So are huge swathes of Michigan and Ohio.) There was a cross-burning in Northern Indiana only some five years ago, and the Klan almost completely ran the state legislature in the 20s. Evan Bayh is about as good as you are going to get, and he voted for the FISA amendments.

You're talking here about a difference between principles and partisanship/bigotry. I'm quite sure Indiana and quite a few other "red" states will be singing a different tune about government surveillance once a no-good Democrat is in the White House.

Not that I'm saying you disagree.

I hope Dems continue to misread 2006 as Glenn clearly is. A switch of a mere 70,000 votes across the nation out of tens of millions cast (less than one-tenth of one percent)would have kept both houses of Congress in Republican hands.

And we likewise hope people like you will continue to misread 2006 as some sort of aberration, and play with the numbers in any way that mollifies your painful sense that the American public is finally coming to reject this authoritarian radicalism.

I have grandparents who used to live in Wisconsin, and they love Russ Feingold. They think he is literally the only principled politician in Washington (perhaps they're right?) They are what I would call very moderate Democrats - by no means "loony" or "leftist."

People respond to principle and resolve. They want to know not only that the person representing them advocates in their interests, but also that this person takes positions based on genuine belief, even when those positions are counter to their own.

I really don't get how this is so hard for so many Democrats to understand.

KRAUTHAMMER: ...It means if a bad guy in Pakistan is speaking to a bad guy in London, and if the speech or the email happens to go through a router in the U.S., through a computer in the U.S., under the old law you'd have to get a warrant, which is absurd.

The Krauthammer claim is indeed completely false. By the most detailed accounts, the FISA Court decision that precipitated amending FISA said that the government would have to get a court order if it sought to tap communications from a person in a foreign country to a person of unknown location, meaning that the latter person could potentially be in the US, kicking in court order requirement.

The newly amended FISA now, textually and unequivocally (in my opinion) allows for warrantless surveillance of a conversation between a person known to be in another country and a person known to be in the US, even a US citizen. This goes far beyond fixing any foreign-to-foreign "gap" that allegedly existed before.

Not only that, but the provisions of the new amendment regarding court review are utterly toothless. In essence, only the service provider whose systems are being harnessed may challenge a given tap, not the persons eavesdropped (who wouldn't know they were being listened to anyway). What this means is that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the tap to be challenged on grounds that it violated the target's 4th Amendment rights, which is where the new provisions are most vulnerable, because the service providers would probably not have standing to raise the target's constitutional rights.

What's worse, the mandatory FISA Court review of this new category of warrantless surveillance is limited to reviewing only whether the government was clearly erroneous in believing that its procedures could reasonably determine that at least one party to each tapped communication was located outside the US. This is a highly deferential, purely statutory standard of review. The Court may not, according to the amendment, review the program for constitutionality when it performs this mandatory review.

What this all means is that, unless service providers feel strongly enough to challenge these orders - or are in some way forced by consumers to do so (fat chance) - there will be no meaningful court review of the warrantless wiretapping, particularly on constitutional grounds. At least with the former FISA, a court was actually able to review the statute for adherence to the 4th Amendment. I have serious reservations whether the new version, as it is written, stands much likelihood of being as comprehensively reviewed by a court.

Of course, perhaps some of these grave concerns might have slowed the blind rush for some Democrats to pass this legislation precisely as handed down by Bush - if they had taken the time to read and digest the proposed law.

Margalis -

Man this guy is just awful. Now he's on about how Europe naturally hates us just because they are jealous of how awesome we are - which of course does not answer the question being posed at all. (Why the standing of the US has dramatically dropped very recently across the entire earth) It's an extended exersize in figuring out what set of talking points is at least vaguely related to the topic at hand. (We've already hit on how liberals were mean to Vietnam vets)

And yes his voice is really fucking annoying. Whiny, sarcastic and contemptuous - perfect voice for silent film.

Also, the only "points" I could glean from his haughty response were (1) the thoughts expressed in Glenn's book are shared by "the left" [booga booga!] and (2) Bush is a "conventional conservative." All hat and no cattle, as they say.

On the other hand, Glenn, you were really on at that forum - just an uninterrupted barrage, and you never seemed to lose your footing. Nicely done.