Thank you for reminding us of that raid concerning the leaker of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The confluence of that, the pseudo-acceptance by the administration some months ago that it must adhere to FISA procedures, and the secret FISA Court ruling that supposedly precipitated this new amendment makes me strongly believe that this has never been about foreign-to-foreign communications (the straw man that causes everyone to say "big deal"), but instead about the original warrantless program to intercept a wide swath of communications that may or may not involve people outside the US.

Unless I can be convinced otherwise, the "foreign-to-foreign communications gap" was a canard whipped up to refresh the previous debate on more favorable terms, with the objective being the same as before: to legitimize and legalize the Terrorist Surveillance Program that had been in existence since 2001. And it has worked like magic.

(Also, in my previous post, I referred to the "current, as-yet unamended" FISA. I now realize that the amendment has been signed into law.)

LWM:

Those things are not tin-foil-hat conspiracies, but very real possibilities when you have such a convergence of technological capability, political manipulation, and ever-expanding government power. Such possibilities are the entire reason we are supposed to have a checked and balanced government with guaranteed individual liberties.

They waited around, as always, with no aim and no strategy and no principle and no belief and allowed the President to dictate their behavior and control the debate.

No - I disagree on this point.

Their aim is to please their contributors, donors, corporatists and lobbyists.

Their strategy is to try to wait out the remainder of the term and try to blame Republicans.

Their principle is to win at all costs.

Their belief is that their self interest trumps party which trumps constituents, which trumps the Constitution.

If anything, the Democrats now seem more terrified of Bush and far more willing to capitulate to his demands to his demands then before their 2006 so called win. It also seems like they would do anything to keep Joe Klein from writing a column titled:"Why the Democrats are so soft on national security and hate America so much".

Glenn points to the recent election in Montana as proof that the Dems don't have to worry about looking weak for defending the constitution. I'll float another more removed precedent: the Vietnam War. When the Dems started shifting to the left re: Vietnam and taking an anti-war stance they were called weak, commies, in bed w/ the enemy etc. What was the price they paid? 30 years of control over the legislative branch.

Have the cowardly congress pass laws that will make all of the administrations previous lawbreaking legal.

It is the same with the illegal alien problem, just have congress make all the illegals legal. Simple, and most perverted.

Our country is now officially dead and there is no more constitutional protections because we have a perverted congress and a perverted administrative branch as well as a perverted judicial branch.

I for one will be totally surprised if this country can last another 3 years.

Good bye Uncle Sam, hello prison camps for anyone that dissents.

We were in a worse fix, arguably, with the Alien and Sedition Acts. We got through that, and we can get through this. Jefferson's letter during that crisis is often quoted, and still true:

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake." --Jefferson's letter to John Tate of Carolina 1798

I see the Democrat vote not as a capitulation to Bush, but as a shrewd calculation. (And I think that's a good thing. The Republicans have been outpoliticking them for years, and the Democrats have finally learned to play a shrewder game to counter their Machiavellian tactics.) I think they are simply trying to run out the clock of the Bush administration. So give Bush the surveillance expansion. It's only for 6 months. This buys Democrats 6 months. If there is a domestic terrorist attack within that time period (please, no), Republicans (and Joe Klein) won't be able to pin the blame on weak Democrats. The attack will have happened on the neocon watch, with neocon policies. I really do think that the overarching goal of the Democratic Party at this point has to be to win elections (even if, like sausagemaking, it's not pretty), particularly the presidential race in 2008, so that there isn't the permanent one-party military-industrial rule. When the Democrats are truly in power - which right now they are not - then we can hold their feet to the fire and hope for a wholly reimagined foreign policy that does not rely overly and inappropriately on curtailment of domestic civil liberties.

Unrelated thought: much to my own surprise, I am becoming a great admirer of Eisenhower, who warned in his farewell address about the threat of an unchecked military-industrial complex (google his speech - so worth reading). What a prescient, visionary figure - truly an underrated president. He deserves renewed study and appreciation.

I knew if I sent everyone an email with this title you'd just delete it. But the following companies and investment opportunities are now HOT! HOT! HOT!, due to new legislation just passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Bush.

Best of all, when call your broker to buy their stock, you'll get a personalized thank you from your investment choice by email before you get off the phone!

DARPA – projects at least since 1996
Project Genoa – folded into TIA in 2002, begun in 1996-7.
Cognitive Edge (from IBM, british)
IBM (business partner in many of these companies)
IRAHS (Singapore intelligence)
BrightPlanet (deep search company)
BMT Syntek Technologies (Project Genoa) (british military contractor) 1997
Saffron Technologies (ExtremeIntelligence, also Project Genoa 00-02)
TP Systems, Inc. (Poindexter) 1990
Digital Commerce Corp. (business to government services)
SAIC Presearch, Inc. (naval intelligence and data mining)
Narus, Inc. (data mining – the infamous STA 6400)
Factiva (BrightPlanet partner)
Lockheed Martin (business partner, advanced intelligence, Genoa?)
Boeing (comprehensive defense strategies, integration. Genoa?)
BASIS Technology (data-mining Asian, European and Middle Eastern sources)
Convera (business databases, intelligent search, linguistic tools)
ASP Solutions, Inc.
Phoenix Global Intelligence Systems, Inc. (real-time terrorist information)
Klinx (business face of BrightPlanet deep web technology)
BAE Systems (Analytic Triangulation)
MITRE (data mining tools deployed to Iraq)
CISCO (strategic partnership with Narus)