A Swampland commenter writes:

The bill requires court review ONLY if there is reason to suspect that a targetted person will be calling the US, or if after a targetted person has called the US and is expected to call here again.

So Joe writes:

That means, essentially, that every foreign target is subject to review by the FISA court. QED.

I have a dent on my forehead, now, from banging my skull against the desk.

Good to see you over here. There's a lot more interesting discussion here... even our trolls are (marginally) more creative than at Swampland.

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right..."

Maybe those of you that don't like Art (bebop-o, GoodCelery! and [my personal favourite] clownsense) James's writing are free to go start your own blogs, and ban Art there. I'm not trying to be a dick, you guys, but this is Glenn Greenwald's place, and if he wanted to ban bebop, he'd-a asked him nicely back when this was a blogspot blog. He didn't. And it is my own feeling that 'bop is as much an integral part of this place as Glenn himself.

You are, of course, welcome to your opinions - obviously. I don't think I'm better than you because I like his writings. However, I wish you'd take other commenters' opinions to heart - those of us who love 'bop really love him, and he does not strike me as someone who will hang around as much if he feels he is a bother. What if the commenters you all say you do like and appreciate (e.g. not onesy-twosy commenters like me and all you complainers, but the heart-and-soul folks like WT, Holly McLachlan, Pedinska et al.) also take their leave if 'bop does?

That, my friends, would really suck.

Ordinarily, I find Wikipedia vandalism tiresome and childish; tonight it makes me laugh.

Guess I'm just tired of our "journalists," and feeling childish...

Stengel also authored several books including Joe Klein: the Bearded Years and You're A Fucking Moron: What I Think of Readers. In 1993 he collaborated with Adolf Hitler, Jr. on Hitler's bestselling autobiography, Liberal Fascism. He later served as co-producer of the 1996 documentary Pantload. In 1998, he taught a course at Sequoia Trucking School called "Politics and the Press." In 1999, Stengel became a senior advisor and chief speechwriter for Ross Perot, who ran for the Nazi Party nomination for the 2000 presidential election. Stengel later returned to print journalism and served in several positions at Juggs, including as nation and culture editor, and managing editor for Juggs.com. In 2004, Stengel became president and chief executive officer of the National Prostitution Center, a museum and education center in Philadelphia. In 2006, he returned to Juggs magazine as managing editor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stengel

Klein has been bashed for presenting an opinion deemed wrong. Glenn... is only able to present a countering opinion

What I find interesting is how neatly this argument dovetails with the arguments of evolution and global climate change deniers. The presence of even one person holding a contrary opinion ipso facto elevates that opinion to a status equal to that of any number of scientists competent in their field.

In the present teapot-tempest, even the presence of an opinion that has since been disavowed by Klein rises to that level. Remarkable.

Klein silenced him by a movement of the hand. "We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn-by degrees, Greenwald. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation-anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because Rick Stengel does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature."

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

You could replace him with an LGF-scraping web robot and no-one would ever notice.

My current theory is that it's a fairly advanced chain-yanking bot. The algorithm seems to involve maintaining just enough of a pseudocoherent argument to engage one or more of us in debate, and then, just when the disputant has fully exposed all of the bot's assertions as meaningless, to vanish like the ball in Lucy's hands.

It's a fiendishly clever bot. 90% of the time it seems to work every time.

"no way Europe/US would venture back into colonization, the people of our countries wouldn't tolerate it"

I'm not exactly sure why you seem to think Iraq is such a dramatic break with previous US "adventures" abroad (start with, say, Panama, continue through Grenada and Vietnam, the Philippines, Hawai'i and Puerto Rico, etc.) so I guess I would like to ask you to clarify your point...

I take it you were less naive, and that therefore you weren't shocked

I guess I would say that I was disappointed, but I can't say I was "shocked," no. This country has a long bloody history, either cheered on by, or passively acquiesced to, by the American people.

I don't know if naiveté is the issue. There is a fairly pervasive societal mythos in American culture that does not even admit these facts.

If you find that you are being worsted, you can make a diversion — that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute, and afforded an argument against your opponent... The diversion is mere impudence if it completely abandons the point in dispute, and raises, for instance, some such objection as “Yes, and you also said just now,” and so on. For then the argument becomes to some extent personal; of the kind which will be treated of in the last section. Strictly speaking, it is half-way between the argumentum ad personam, which will there be discussed, and the argumentum ad hominem.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy/chapter3.html