Letters to the Editor
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Time Time Time
is on our side. Glenn notes that delay is good. I want to emphasize that, as strongly as I can. If nothing happens before the March 30 recess, that's great. The more time that passes without any Terra Attacks, the clearer it becomes that this has nothing at all to do with Terra.
They knew they had weak positions when they jammed these bills up against long recesses. They knew that these bills would not stand public scrutiny or lengthy debate. They knew their ability to get the Joe Kleins of the pathetic media world to run their propaganda depended on it all happening quickly, because the lies were so transparently false.
This is not just good for FISA. It's good for defusing the whole fear-mongering program. They know their fear-mongering nonsense is losing its grip; about the only thing keeping it going is that it's good for ratings to have Wolf say "We following this very important story VERY closely" when he is talking about Terra.
And we need to defuse it, because we are going to see a show trial starting sometime in late summer of the three accused 9/11 conspirators. We have to do all we can to close the Daou triangle BEFORE the trial starts.
What I like to point out is that in the last five years, more people have died in American infrastructure failure than have been killed by terrorists. Hell, the I35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis killed more Americans that Islamic Terrorism. We need to get this into perspective before the summer starts.
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Man bites dog.
Or is that, the people bite blue dogs?
Great news on the early start of fundraising. I think it shows that there is a core of people who are passionate about our Constitution and we will not go away.
Glenn, in the mechanism that allows the companies to submit evidence that they obtained certification of legality from the government, is there also a provision for the court to rule on the validity of the certification itself? I keep going back to Judge Walker's statement that no telecom company could possibly believe that the data gathering was legal. Since the DOJ has been so willing to create justification for the most outrageous abuses of the law, that had to be going on here with the brief exception of the Ashcroft hospital incident. Where does responsibility fall if the companies obtained certification from the government but the certification is based on clearly flawed legal opinion?
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Visualizing hope
Why do I, every time hope seems to crack the horizon, picture Kilroy peeking up to see if it is safe?
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Glenn,
Glad to see your optimism, even if it only lasts a day or two. Thanks.
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Excellent Signs
It is in large part due to the clear arguments given by a number of writers on this subject such as Glenn as well as the occasional strong stances by politicians (most memorably Chris Dodd's refusal to play along) that there stands any chance whatsoever to avoid this wrong. That citizens when given the opportunity to do so in an organized manner work to support basic and admirable values is not surprising but certainly not often emphasized enough.
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More creative ways to cave in...
Yes, I am cynical, and have to admit that several paragraphs above the last one in this post, it was already forming in my mind. But long slow "cave ins" are an improvement, especially if the time scale takes us into the election.
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Civil disobedience by the house by defending the
constitution.
At the end of Ron Suskind's book "The One Percent Doctrine" he quotes William Sloan Coffman "I never thought I'd live to see the day that old-fashioned journalism would be a form of civil disobedience>"
I never thought the constitution would be trashed.
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Jim White
Where does responsibility fall if the companies obtained certification from the government but the certification is based on clearly flawed legal opinion?
Unfortunately, FISA, from the beginning, has provided that telecoms would be immune if they had certifications from the AG. That was based on the assumption -- now disproven -- that no AG would ever legally certify such blatant illegality.
But I don't think they have those certifications. If they did, they would have ended all of this by now a long time ago. FISA already allows them to submit that ex parte.
I think what happened here -- speculation only -- is that, at least for some time, Ashcroft (as we know from Comey) refused to certify the President's NSA activities. Yet the program continued. So for at least a certain time period, it seems highly likely that the telecoms broke the law without the immunity certifications from the AG.
It's also quite possible that Ashcroft wasn't read in on all aspects of what they were doing, especially early on, so that the DOJ certifications the telecoms got didn't cover all the really extreme stuff they were doing (the stuff that made everyone at the DOJ threaten to resign if it continued).
So there are probably gaps -- both temporal and perhaps substantive -- in whatever certifications they have. This proposal calls their bluff: "OK, if you really got all the assurances from the DOJ that FISA requires, just show them to the Judge and you win."
They don't have them.
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"and there might even be real political benefit."
Glenn says: "...and there might even be real political benefit."
I hate to sound too cynical but I'd venture it is the ONLY consideration the House Dems took before they acted, and why its taken them so long to act.
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That explains why they will continue to fight
Glenn: So there are probably gaps -- both temporal and perhaps substantive -- in whatever certifications they have. This proposal calls their bluff: "OK, if you really got all the assurances from the DOJ that FISA requires, just show them to the Judge and you win."
From an AP story on the new bill:
The legislation drew swift criticism from congressional Republicans and from Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, who said it fails to fix problems with the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that Congress is trying to update. They also said any bill that does not provide telecom immunity is unacceptable to the Bush administration.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said the bill would impose "cumbersome" requirements on the intelligence agencies to conduct wiretaps. She also said the proposed investigative commission shows "House leaders are more interested in playing politics" than they are in preventing terrorist attacks.
Link: http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_8543144?source=rss
If there are gaps in the legal coverage, then the White House and its lackeys certainly will fight very hard on this one. Maybe what the telecoms were given was indemnification rather than certification. bmaz over at Emptywheel has made a pretty convincing argument that indemnification has been granted and that it explains why the telecom companies are not being as shrill as the White House.