Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 83 Editor's Choice: 1
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The "gap" in intelligence gathering
[Read the article: The Leader isn't protecting us and keeping us safe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everyone, up to and including Feingold and Dodd, have been clear that there is a hole in our intelligence gathering capability that ought to be fixed. Every moderately serious article on the FISA controversy spells out what this hole is. And all the spellings out leave me as confused as ever.
The story goes that the FISA court, always eager to please and provide the intelligence community with pretty much everything it asks for, balked all of a sudden. They said that if the foreign-to-foreign conversation you're listening to passes through optic cable physically in the USA, you have to get a warrant to listen in.
Pardon me, but huh?
If NSA were listening to a particular foreign-to-foreign conversation, which has always been a legal and warrant-free activity, why would they even bother mentioning it to the FISA court? Obviously, they wouldn't; and the FISA court would therefore never have issued the ruling. (Correct me if I'm wrong: hasn't Congress asked to see the ruling in question, and been denied?)
So what has to be happening is this: The Bushies have a tap on a domestic cable, sweeping up every single conversation, domestic or foreign. They went to the FISA court asking for blanket permission to do this, provided that they cross their heart and hope to die promise that once they've sucked it all in, they'll spit back out the ones that are domestic on one end. The FISA court said no, you can't listen to everybody, promise to unlisten to nearly everybody, and call it legal. You've got to take this to Congress.
So plugging the "hole" really has to mean, does it not, putting a stamp of approval on "listen to absolutely everything, but promise (without oversight) to forget everything you heard except for the foreign to foreign stuff"?
What am I missing here? What else could the "hole" be, for which the plug would be less all-encompassing? And if this huge invasion of privacy is what plugging the hole entails, why are even our Constitutional heroes professing themselves eager to plug it? Is it just that the terms are so vague that nobody is willing to think through just what it is that they're authorizing?
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Bearded bears
[Read the article: The fun and excitement of civilization wars (fought from afar)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Derbig, one doesn't beard a bear in his lair, one beards a lion. As in, tugs on his mane.
The closer analogy for the neocon's behavior on the world stage is the fellow who sits down stark naked, with his family jewels resting on a fire ant hill, and proceeds to poke the hill with a long sharp stick.
All the while insisting to the clad onlookers veering quietly out of his arena that he is not only the wisest man in history, but the bravest, since every one of these emmet sumsabitches is the size of a Ryder truck.
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Moral hazard
[Read the article: Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In and of itself, there's nothing here that should levy on Spitzer any penalty more severe than heartfelt embarrassment and remorse for betraying his family, and extreme humiliation for having his hypocrisy exposed.
But to let get off scot free before the law would ignore the sacred principle of moral hazard. Just as we shouldn't let the homeowners who have been victimized by unscrupulous lenders and brokers keep the homes on which they can no longer afford the mortgages, because that might encourage future buyers to commit the sin of allowing themselves to be similarly victimized -- we should see to it that Spitzer gets more than a slap on the wrist. Not for engaging with prostitutes, but for crossing state lines to do it, and thereby opening himself up to the tender mercies of a Department of Justice he knew full well had become no more than the enforcement arm of the Republican Party.
Because if we're lax this time, future Democrats may feel encouraged to do things, say running for office in red states like Alabama, that might expose them to similar dangers. And then, whatever would become of our smoothly running republic?
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What are the sunset terms?
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Happily, the pdf posted of the House bill is text searchable. I went looking for, and failed to find (basically just scanning the table of contents and searching for "years") any sunset provision. Could someone, more skilled than I am, tell us whether it has one, and what the term of the sunset is?