"Under FISA you it would require the AG & the Intelligence community to have good reason to believe I was a terrorist and get a warrant in 7 days."

If you listened to the interview with the ACLU attorney, he said the bill/law requires only that the targets serve a foreign intelligence purpose, there is nothing limiting them to only terrorist threats. This is for any communications that are foreign to domestic.

But more importantly...it's Yablonowitz. YABLONOWITZ! YABLONOWITZ!

"What the democrat party did was gift Bush, Cheney, Rove and all their henchmen near total power to spy on EVERYONE, foreign OR domestic."

___________

Could you specify for me exactly which clauses in HR 6304 clearly confer such power? I'm no fan of this mendacious POS, and have long been a tireless on-the-record defender of constitutional privacy. But, maybe you can help me out here.

for your leadership on this issue. it is indeed maddening. but it will be a great day when we restore the Constitution and remove the miscreants who passed this bill from power.

Are you sniffing glue here? Huffing some Bush road apples?

You argued yourself into a deep whole a few threads ago and then supposedly read the FISA sellout and changed your mind. And what, it changed it back by itself?

You should know the total potential of giving little Georgie Bush and living heart donor Dick Cheney infinite power.

You feel that you can trust them? You obviously either didn't pay any attention to the COINTELPRO mess or are too young to have heard of it.

What the democrat party did was gift Bush, Cheney, Rove and all their henchmen near total power to spy on EVERYONE, foreign OR domestic. Who'd going to catch them? All the AG has to do is say that it's all good...

I wish that you could be better informed and somehow realize the mess you are making.

You appear to not be able to learn. For that I'm sorry. Truly sorry.

Yes, there are reasons to be very angry about what Obama and the democrat congress did for Bush. If you can't, or won't see it then I feel sorry for you.

What more can be said. To constantly argue the wrong side with illogic makes no sense.

Am I a 'leftie? I'm not sure anymore. I'm not an 'Obama democrat' and I'm not a 'Bush league republican'. Maybe I'm an idealist? I'm certainly not a 'far' anything... Remember I'm a parody of a lunatic... ;-)

Pinky

So your only allowed to blog in Glenn's page if you are FAR leftie totally agree with him. Isn't that a little un American?

Since Senator Obama has a degree in Law from Harvard and is Constitutuional expert. I'm sure he has just as much if not more expertise on FISA than even Glenn.

Glenn still has not addressed the exclusivity clause.

-- bernbart

"First off, bernbart, you don't understand the bill...oops, I mean "law" at all. You should always argue from a position of knowledge or simply yield the floor for your own self-respect."

I do understand the bill. What makes you think I do not understand the law. I have discussed this with more than one attorney this week. I'm not yielding to anyone. I can tell most of you don't understand the law at all.

Glenn did provide the best LEFT discussion on FISA. A discussion you will not get anywhere else. However do any of you ever disagree with him? Or do you just follow blindly.

Lederman writes -

Moreover, even where the information is not foreign intelligence information, the law permits "the retention and dissemination of information that is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed and that is to be retained or disseminated for law enforcement purposes."

________

Where in HR 6304 does it say that? I cannot find that statement in the full text of the bill.

First off, bernbart, you don't understand the bill...oops, I mean "law" at all. You should always argue from a position of knowledge or simply yield the floor for your own self-respect.

Secondly, I keep thinking how inspired and moved I felt when I saw Obama in person in my hometown. He even spoke about the abuse of wiretapping and how he agrees with us in Montana that civil liberties are important.

And he spoke about how now is such an important time because of the great stakes that we're up against. He invoked Martin Luther King Jr (a victim of illegal monitoring himself) by referring to his "fierce urgency of now."

And then with the nomination officially wrapped up, public financing thrown by the wayside, gun control opposed, faith based initiatives condoned and proposed to be expanded...Obama joins the majority of congress(and their single digit approval rating) and President Bush and Vice President Cheney (with their low 30% approval rating)and the current status quo trajectory of our failing political establishment and yields hold a sledgehammer to the 4th amendment.

But through this I've learned that the law, the constitution and the basic freedom they are supposed to provide are far more fundamental and important than those who wish to serve it.

It has changed how I view candidates and what I value in a public official. It is amazing to me now that of all the congressional candidates in the Democratic primary race, only Obama voted for FISA. Dodd, Biden, Clinton, Kucinich...all stood up for the rule of law. Obama turned his back.

This will not be forgotten.

Wow.

The only good thing about this vote, as far as I can tell, is that it gives us a quick go-to list for which Democratic Congresspersons need to be removed from office.

Let's get crackin!

p.s. Bernbart?... You're outclassed. You're relying on factually inaccurate positions. It's hard to win an argument that way.

FWIW, I very much second LT Bohica's emotion regarding considering support for Cindy Sheehan.

I admire her. I support her. I've wondered, even worried, if she has decent, experienced campaign strategists-- those very same pragmatists that generally induce anaphylactic shock in yours truly-- to be the yin to her yang of heartfelt, passionate, humane politics.

There is an iconic Tom Godwin science-fiction short story entitled "The Cold Equations". It's chilling, poignant, and heartbreaking. And in the remote chance that someone who hasn't read it will abruptly break away and search for a copy: Spoiler Alert!

The plot is very straightforward: a starship pilot is on an emergency mission to a planetary outpost where colonists have fallen ill. The fuel supply is determined by exact calculations of the ship's mass and flight path.

Then he discovers a stowaway; a teenage girl who hoped to visit her brother, a colonist. Short story shorter: her hundred pounds or so of mass will critically deplete fuel and alter the flight path. The ship just won't make it. And there's a colony full of sick people needing medical supplies.

There's not a happy ending.

Yes, very melodramatic indeed. But-- unless Glenn has specifically responded while I'm chuntering away here-- I get that "cold equations" dread regarding Cindy's campaign. Not because I am convinced she can't or won't win, but because I know that she has to win friends and influence political organizations unimpressed by her natural and straightforward intelligence, integrity, and passion. By her rightness.

The audacity-- to borrow a slightly soiled and shopworn term-- of an obvious non-bullshitter and true progressive maverick running for Congress is so compelling that I have to root for her. Her personal and political qualities are the antithesis of the principle-free para-corporate technocrats who have colluded and conspired to undermine the rule of law.

And I think if her campaign is successfully reaching out and building local support, she might just do it. I'm hoping that that's going forward in her district; it's hard to tell from this coast.

In any case, it's obvious that providing financial help to Cindy, and supporting her candidacy on principle might precipitate a quantum leap in her campaign. But the Cold Equations probably dictate that her candidacy is not cost-effective, especially given a restricted budget. Still, if we're not all tapped out on "cutting slack", I think Cindy deserves some because of her opponent. We may not have a woman president, but we could have a woman Saint George.

Call me a sentimental old fluff, but I feel that we all deserve the spectacle of Cindy Sheehan knocking off our home-grown Lucrezia Borgia. A few bucks and some buzz might be a wiser foolish investment that the cold equations predict.