The White House isn't merely asking for foreign-to-foreign intercepts via US-based telecommunications hubs and switches.

The White House is also demanding the ability, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTS, to intercept communications between people in the USA who have NO CONNECTION TO TERRORISM and people outside the USA who also have NO CONNECTION TO TERRORISM. (Somehow, doing so is an essential part of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program".)

Friday's demand from the White House:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070803-12.html

For Immediate Release
August 3, 2007

Fact Sheet on FISA Modernization

[...] Some have suggested that a court order should be necessary before our intelligence professionals are able to gather any information about a foreign target who happens to contact someone in the United States frequently. This is unacceptable.

- - White House "Fact Sheet"

As Marty Lederman said, such intercepts wouldn't be a FISA problem now if the foreign party and/or the U.S. party had some connection to terrorism and/or foreign intelligence. In that case, the FISA court would issue a warrant before or after the intercept. So the only logical explanation is that the White House is demanding the ability to use the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" in cases where NEITHER PARTY is connected to terrorism.

And instead of amending FISA to authorize warrants, the White House is going farther and demanding to do this without warrants.

The Senate Dems and House Dems are apparently ready to give in to this demand, but they want some kind of internal auditing to see how this power is used, and the White House negotiators (Addington and Cheney?) are rejecting the idea of internal auditing.

That $60 trillion figure includes future entitlement obligations (i.e. Social Security) which almost certainly will be repudiated. The government is much more likely to reject claims on the fictional Social Security "trust fund" than the $9 trillion in market-traded securities: another illustration of the value of formal property rights. If those future retirees held bonds instead of Social Security cards, they'd be paid.

I expect that you're correct about currency devaluation as the most likely strategy for reducing the real debt. There are serious underlying problems facing the dollar, the euro, and the yen, though I'm not quite ready to denominate my assets in rupees or yuan. Real assets are increasingly attractive.

I also expect that the major liberal states are only about 20 years away from losing most of their ability to collect taxes, which should make the shakeout that much more violent. There's a reason that you libertarians and market fundamentalists, who are more attuned to this trend than most, are so heavily invested in gold.

-- saintlucid

Have you laid in enough ammo and supplies to fight off the hungry mobs intent on stealing food from your survivalist compound? Are you scrawny or portly? Could you feed a family of six for a week if stewed into a thin gruel?

A thin gruel? Yummy! Please L.W.M., may I have some more?

To me, debates about what is or isn't "journalism" or "reporting" miss the real point. The ultimate question we are actually asking when we question whether someone is one of these is whether he or she is contributing constructively to an understanding of the government, the sciences, or the society at large.

Nowadays, "real journalism" has become a sort of code for those in the traditional media, the elite in-group whose very existence depends on the ability to exclude others, particularly unwashed bloggers. This has harmed our essential understanding of, and need for, journalism and the role of the media in our society, and has resulted in these same "real journalists" and "reporters" often abdicating the very responsibilities from which they derive their traditional credibility.

With a few exceptions - such as Dana Priest and Charlie Savage - the intrepid reporters of yesteryear are the best of the bloggers today. I keep a window of Google News and often the NYT and Post open on my computer at all times, and constantly read "original reporting." Hardly any of it is ever as helpful, contextual, and meaningful as a source of understanding of the world around me as my favorite blogs, including Glenn's.

And it's not just about the gratification of reading thoughts similar to one's own. The actual substance of these blogs goes so much deeper, and as I said, is so much more full of context and meaningful perspective, that I feel that I am objectively getting more information from them than from milquetoast, standard reporting. Again, I except those few truly investigative journalists, who are actually able to peel back the curtain from time to time to show us something useful we did not already know and could not otherwise learn. What's often striking about such journalists, however, is that the passion and dedication that allows them to shine such a potent light almost invariably also results in their having a definitive point of view on the subject, and a desire to right the wrong they have exposed. Everything else is just playing patty-cake to power.

It's sad and already a cliche, but true - most "news" stories today are simply amalgamations of quotes from officials that any shlub could overhear, receive from a spokesperson, or see on television. Often times, the only thing I see separating journalists from bloggers is the former's superior access to quotable figures, which is itself merely a function of the arbitrary cache we place on these representatives of more formalized institutions. (Think of the fact that Glenn, by invoking Salon, can surely now get interviews and responses from people he couldn't before he joined Salon.) Nevertheless, the fool's errand of objectivity results in the vast majority of traditional media stories having absolutely no velocity or significance beyond a instilling in the reader a distant feeling of powerlessness over a series of shallow arguments about events with no discernible significance to our daily lives.

No wonder so few people give a damn.

Portrait of the geezer with a tin plate and a BIG spoon

A thin gruel? Yummy! Please L.W.M., may I have some more?

-- William Timberman

I have no better method of prognostication than the next guy but I have never voted for a Republican in my life and that has to count for something. We are in very dire straits thanks to the "fiscally conservative" Republicans and right wing morons like Saint Putrid. But if he thinks after the crash comes he's getting out of here alive, or even with the silk shirt on his narrow little back, he's deluding himself, as usual. Nevermind the socialists on social security, he should worry about the newly minted socialists in the military who may have other plans for him. But like I said, anyone who thinks he knows what's going to happen probably thinks doctors kill more people than they save.