Correction: I was wrong to write last week that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would require a court approval of individual foreign surveillance targets. The bill does not even approach saying that. A certain dishonest Republican believe(s) it can be interpreted that way, but sane people don't. To read about the disputed section of the bill, go to The Huffington to read what the bill's author has to say.

Don't underastimate the importance of that.

If the administration had had its way, none of the current discussion would even be taking place. The whole reason the administration got in trouble in the first place was becuase they were unwilling to go to Congress and explain what they wanted from the Patriot act and the FISA rewrite.

They bypassed the debate and went ahead and broke the existing statutes. The fact that they've since managed to get the statutes rewritten in their favor is unfortunate but at least it happened in the light of day where we can actually have a debate on merits.

I can already see the steam rising from the wingnutosphere over that phrase.....

But, on a more serious note, its clear that you favor taking direct action in order to improve outcomes and I happen to think that the telecom immunity issue is a vital one because of its reflection on lawlessness in government in general.

So my next quetion is qute simple. What would you like us, your readers, to do to help?

Funny how the article Mr Hoekstra has now posted makes it easier to deconstruct what happened. All the lies he told Joe are now reprinted in one convenient package. Do we think he's trying to draw fire or simply reinforce the lies among the faithful?

My understanding was that if the original "reasonable suspicion" wasn't supported by legally acquired information then the FISA warrants themselves weren't valid. I seem to remember reading that a judge somewhere had torn someone a new asshole over that issue.

But rather than address that problem by rewriting FISA at the time, they ignored the law and went ahead for years bypassing the court altogether. Only now that there are people who actually qualify for jail time over this have they taken the trouble to rewrite the law and try to get immunity for the crimes already committed.

That Time/Warner was protecting its own skin but my searching has suggested otherwise.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/nsag-m15.shtml

This, of course makes the magazine's behavior even more inexplicable.

Lets ask a simple question that's been obscured lately.

What's wrong with getting a warrant???!!!

As has been documented in the past, the FISA court has been little more than a rubber stamp up until all this broke, and every move madse since has made eavesdropping even easier.

The only reason we're even having this debate is because the administration chose to break existing law and asked the telecoms to help them do so. In the meantime the number of actual terrorists caught or foiled as a result of this lawbreaking is just about exactly zero.

As we used to say when Bart was around - tell it to the judge!

would make it to a front page

I'm pretty sure I saw it pointed out on one of the first Swampland comment threads. Even if one is unwilling to delve into the details of the FISA bill, the simple mistatement of the Presidential oath certainly indicates the level of effort that went into the article in the first place. The original article was slapped together without notes and all the effort since has been trying to apply duct tape to keep it from falling apart.

The fact that his first post after the 11/24 "correction" included a link back to the correction rather than to the article it was trying to reference, also indicates a lack of concentration that I would find disturbing if I were an employer.

Did I also mention that I've seen Joe edit a sentence out of a post that basically accused war opponents of wanting the enemy to win. The offending line disappeared from the post even though it had already been quoted and referenced in the comment thread.

I guess my point is that the fact-free column that started this all is simply another example of sloppy lazy thinking that permeates much of Joe's work.

The lessons of the Dixie Chicks and The MoveOn Petreaus ad make clear. As soon as someone tells you that you are over the top and out of line, you've begun to make your point.

From the MSNBC link.....

(And I say this at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive to the many people who think the "corporate media" exists to push a political agenda-- if that's true, I'm either too stupid or too low on the food chain to be able to actually demonstrate it.)

I'll just reiterate that I think Joe Klein actually beleives what he writes. But the decision to lie in his defense was made "up the food chain"

If I were a stockholder in Time/Warner I'd be cringing in disbelief at the current fiasco. The other day I suggested the current situation was a winner for the corporation but that was before the condescending e-mail replies followed by the seriously dishonest non-correction took place.

I can clearly see now, that these folks insist on holding down the fort against the blogger hordes truth AND stockholders be damned.