He left out the part about voting for Dodd's proposal, and then skipping town on the actual FISA bill vote.

ZERO mention of any awareness of (or intention to do anything ABOUT) the looming "compromise". Which is, of course, the issue which prompted this recycled bit of blather posing as a response.

As always, one of the most secure forms of electronic conversation in a scenario where automation is skimming all traffic looking for something relevant, as opposed to a targeted tap on a unique conversation, is a handwritten fax. Machines still have a devil of a time decoding that. Put it in a foreign language it's even harder.

No.

Cheers,

Do you notice anything glaringly obvious?

That' the exact text of the letter that was sent out in January.

Clearly the Obama campaign favors recycling.

http://phd9.blogspot.com/2008/01/full-text-from-obama-campaign-retelecom.html

Interestingly, my efforts to alert the Privacy and Civil Liberties mailing list at the Obama campaign site resulted in this exchange with a random Obama supporter telling me to kindly STFU...

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/henrymu/gG5SbW/commentary#comments

i called hoyer's office a little while ago and got right through. i wonder if people are calling him.

N/T

In fact, I've never heard anyone in the telecom amnesty debate ever deny that the telecoms broke the law. How could anyone deny that?

That's the basis for your statement that someone is guilty of a crime?

I used to think of you as reasonably smart, but wrong-headed. Then I changed my mind and decided that you were willfully obtuse, combing Greenwald's posts for any possible point of contention and attempting to exploit it rhetorically whether doing so made sense or not.

But now I'm not so sure. In order to post the above, you would have to misread literally everything Greenwald has written about telecom immunity and FISA. As I'm sure you've noticed, Greenwald (no doubt due to his litigious background) has a habit of repeating his points more than once in each posting. So it's especially difficult to miss his point.

To view Greenwald's reference to telecoms' failure to deny their own wrongdoing as "the basis" for accusing them of crimes is to have missed the point of (or not read) literally dozens of lengthy, cogent Greenwald essays on precisely what those crimes are. And I know you're "reading" them (or, at least, skimming them for "gotchas"), because you never fail to comment on them.

So what's up, shooter? I'm disappointed at this new trend of yours: complete incomprehension. Are you feigning stupidity, or is it for real?

An "Emergency Meeting" of the powerful House Rules Committee was called today for 4:25 p.m. EDT - as announced some time between 2:15 p.m. EDT and 4:30 p.m. EDT - to start the ball rolling - not on FISA, but on the continuation of our occupation of Iraq [torture? what torture?] for the fiscal year (supposedly) "ending September 30, 2008":

Wednesday, June 18, 2008, 4:45 P.M.

H. Res. 1281

Waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to the consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules

The Committee granted, by a non-record vote, a rule waiving a requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII with respect to consideration of certain resolutions reported from the Committee on Rules.

The rule provides that the requirement of clause 6(a) of rule XIII for a two-thirds vote to consider a report from the Committee on Rules on the same day it is presented to the House is waived with respect to any rule reported on the legislative day of June 19, 2008, providing for consideration or disposition of a measure making supplemental appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008.

http://www.rules.house.gov/SpecialRules_details.aspx?NewsID=3969

Thus, tomorrow, the Rules Committee can call another "emergency meeting" to adopt a rule for governing floor debate on the Iraq funding bill - which can then be passed by a simple majority of the House the same day, in order to shove the funding vote through without the need for two-thirds approval that would otherwise be required to suspend the rules (because the Rules Committee rule vote will be held the same day as the floor vote on the measure at issue).

Note, in particular, with regard to FISA, that such a Rules "waiver" was not deemed - by the House leadership, which controls the Rules Committee - necessary to ensure simple majority passage of the House version of the Protect America Act last August. Instead, the House leadership enforced a two-thirds vote for passage of the House PAA, by not adopting such a Rules waiver. [Or, in the alternative, by not scheduling the Rules Committee rule vote a day in advance to avoid the necessity for a two-thirds majority, which it did do for the Cheney version of the PAA that it then passed on a Saturday, because the House version of PAA had "failed" to pass (with a two-thirds majority).]

So now we read this carefully-planted PR in the government-mouthpiece media - anonymously reminding the peons that resistance is futile; the game is up; our orders have come down from on high:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. phone companies would be shielded from potentially billions of dollars in lawsuits under an anti-terror spy measure that appears headed toward approval, congressional sources said on Wednesday.

.

House of Representatives Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, a lead negotiator on the bill, said, "We're very close to having an agreement," and a House vote could come as early as Friday.

Democratic and Republican aides and a lobbyist familiar with negotiations said the House would likely approve the measure overwhelmingly. Despite opposition from its top two Democrats, the Senate would then likely give it final approval, clearing the way for President George W. Bush to sign it into law.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080618/pl_nm/usa_surveillance_dc

In order for a House vote - on a FISA-excused conspiracy to silence the Judicial Branch with regard to our Fourth Amendment rights - to come "as early as Friday" the House Rules Committee will either have to vote tomorrow for a FISA bill rule, or again, a Rules "waiver" will have to be adopted tomorrow by the committee in order to allow both adoption of a FISA bill rule from the committee on Friday and a simple majority vote by the House on a FISA sellout the same day.

The Rules Committee has nothing on its agenda at the moment with regard to FISA. Louise Slaughter of New York is its Chairwoman.

http://rules.house.gov/

Note to Reuters: The behavior of the "top two democrats" in the Senate is not dispositive of FISA's passage in that body. Unless, that is, every single Senator decides to pretend that they are merely a Representative of the House, and silently, willingly takes their marching orders from the likes of the autocrat Jay Rockefeller, instead of from the United States Constitution (which cannot "support" itself).