-- Northwestwoods

"@ shooter242

Your lapel pin is crooked."

The lapel pin is straight.

The symmetry of a swastika means the orientation can't be wrong by much. Just a FYI.

Cheers,

The print media have a near monopoly on acceptable, decent, accurate, knowledgeable reporting as compared with most TV stars. Take any major story listen to five versions of it on the TV and then read the same story in leading newspapers. King is no exception and we should be thankful that he admits his ignorance up front. Most don't.

Research on the history of FISA and particularly the issue of amnesty for the telecoms would take a lot of work and require sources to reveal classified information; although under the automatic declassification system supposedly in use today information about the telecoms should have been declassified or exempt from declassification by now.

When I entered government service as an attorney in 1963 it was widely believed (I avoid the word "known") that AT&T (then the only phone company in America), the USPS which was then the only carrier of handwritten communications and Western Union which carried all the telegrams were providing recordings and/or transcripts of intercepted communications of American to American conversations and writings to the US government (I never knew at the time which agency) on request. It was believed they acted out of patriotism. Who knows? Maybe they were paid. King should have found out that FISA and particularly the amnesty issue has a long history dating at least back to the late 1930's. No time for research means don't do the interview. There is no middle option.

No lawyer could have ever passed a bar exam and also thought that if the government requests information of an American which it is illegal to supply, the American should just hand it over. The named organizations had lawyers. John King should have known that even without sources. He could have taken what lawyers call "judicial notice" (facts for which no evidence is necessary because they are well known).

King has been in Washington long enough to know that senior officials (even more than lower ranking officials) promote a party line and that they receive instructions on high profile issues from the White House. Again no sources are needed to know the truth of that assertion.

He gave propaganda a platform. Enough said. He can be grouped with other journalists who don't deserve the distinction of membership in the Fourth Estate. Surely we can also take judicial notice that our democracy depends on the excellence of our journalists.

Since the New York Times always ignores the letters I submit to them protesting the incompetent crap in so many of their articles, I thought I'd post this here, with thanks to Glenn for his tireless efforts to report the truth about FISA and related matters.

Eric Lichtblau's New York Times article today, "In Wiretap Law's Stead, Uncertainty" (Feb. 27), is well reported in some ways, but fails to report basic facts and context that would enable readers to grasp the sheer absurdity of claims by Bush "administration officials" that they and phone companies are now mired in "uncertainty" about how to conduct legal wiretapping. The title falsely implies that the main "wiretap law" (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA) has expired. It has not. FISA remains in effect, as it has been for the last thirty years. Even into the third paragraph of Lichtblau's article (the point in many newspaper articles when many readers start to drop off), it just refers vaguely to "the expiration of the surveillance law," and in the fifth paragraph gives only slightly more detail, referring to "the expiration of the six-month law, the Protect America Act," without explaining that it was merely an amendment to FISA enacted just last summer, which everyone knew was temporary -- by its own terms!

So how can government or phone company officials be confused? They are now right back under the same FISA rules that were in force for 29 years, from 1978 to the summer of 2007! Yet the article's title reports uncritically, as if it were an established fact, that there is indeed "uncertainty"!

Equally ludicrous are claims by President Bush that companies might not cooperate. They have no choice about it, as long as the government acts within the law! Of course, given Bush's admitted violations of FISA from 2001 to 2005, it's not surprising if companies raise legal questions now and then. Such questions always arise about how any law applies to new facts. Even if Bush gets all the amendments to FISA he wants, new questions will arise about how far those new provisions go.

Lichtblau does quote (but only in the ninth paragraph) a letter by former intelligence officials (including Richard Clarke and Rand Beers, both John Kerry advisors in 2004) that says it all: Bush's claims "have distorted rather than enhanced" the facts.

But why wasn't the article's title something like this? "With Lapse of Recent Amendments on Wiretapping, Administration Claims Confusion, Former Officials Charge It With Distortion." We all know why: The New York Times enjoys just parroting Bush regime propaganda. The sad thing is, most other newspaper are even worse, so I still guiltily buy the damn thing most days!

The author is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego.

As regards to the last update in which Senator Obama is quoted, he (Obama) states his qualifications as a Constitutional scholar, which I appreciate. However, I am left to wonder how it is that this man, so learned concerning the Constitution, sees no reason to impeach Bush, as he has stated?

So with Obama, I guess we will just have to hope.

As soon as I heard the interview (on C-SPAN radio) I emailed CNN to complain. We don't have cable so most of my experience with TV news is C-SPAN's rebroadcast of the Sunday morning shows. I've gotten used to these pundits and journalists asking terrible questions but this Sunday King achieved a new level of embarrassing ignorance. King should take a break from CNN to read Greenwald, listen to a few months of Diane Rehm's Friday shows, and hopefully better understand the issues he is paid a huge sum to report on. Depressing is an understatement.