The allegations about the NSA in February 2001 have the same weight right now as Mark Klein's allegations about the Narus 6400 in San Francisco, from what that quote above says. I suppose they are still technically allegations, but they are more than just Joe Nacchio's say so.

Fair enough - I wonder how much Mark Klein knows. Presumably, we'll find out soon enough, since immunity only applies to post-9/11 conduct.

Kitt, please realize that mentioning saltpeter wearing off and Shooter in the same post puts you in the running for the "Hurl Check," formerly known as the "Ewww Award."

Naturally, those of us with myopia or lacking a handy magnifying glass would never be able to tell the difference, but in many parts of the country the dinner hour is upon us....

....and he's gonna throw crap at you.

Question of the Day

Can we fight al Qaeda, which is in Pakistan, better by fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan? (Scratch chin.)

--Josh Marshall

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

I hope Josh is being ironic but Juan Cole pretty much answered the question yesterday after Obama made his speech. How'd the Soviets do in Afghanistan? Why should Pakistan be any different. Obama needs to cool his jets a tad.

I'm glad to see you ignore my comment where I try to teach you about the history of Supreme Court rulings. I guess when someone proves you unequivocally wrong, you just pretend they didn't say anything.

Actually what I said was "For that matter neither did the Supreme Court in 1928, when it declared wiretaps needed no warrants from anyone." And then you confirmed the ruling. I didn't say it was current law, that was YOUR assumption. My point was that at least one Supreme Court disagreed with warranted wiretaps as the framer's intent.

I'm still looking for the provision that authorizes program warrants (thereby skipping around the established precedence of "warrants apply to individuals"), but once I find it I'm sure it will fit neatly in with these next few bits.

I'm guessing this all a surmise by others, as is the insistence that the minimizations will be thwarted to effectively listen to Americans.

2) Parts of FISA (50 USC 1822) define foreign intelligence gathering to include the search of a person's physical property.

That's nice and all, but is it part of the bill Turley and I were talking about? No.

" formerly known as the "Ewww Award."

-- Cocktailhag

Sorry. I meant it metaphorically, not physically. I hope the judges will keep that in mind so that I'll be out of the running for the "Ewww Award".

That's nice and all, but is it part of the bill Turley and I were talking about? No.

-- shooter242

That's Jonathon Turley and the answer in his case is yes. The answer in your case is who the f knows.

My point was that at least one Supreme Court disagreed with warranted wiretaps as the framer's intent.

And other Supreme Courts said the exact opposite, including conversation in the list of things protected by the Fourth Amendment. How selective of you to ignore those later rulings in favor of the one specific ruling you like.

I'm guessing this all a surmise by others, as is the insistence that the minimizations will be thwarted to effectively listen to Americans.

I'm not sure about that. After all the hubbub over program/blanket/basket warrants in the PAA, and in the various failed attempts later to amend FISA, I'm sure they wrote some clever lawyerese.

That's nice and all, but is it part of the bill Turley and I were talking about? No.

No, but it is the first point (Section 705 of the FAA; the bill you and Turley are talking about) that, when combined with the second point, enables warrantless physical searches.

Feed the chimp......

....and he's gonna throw crap at you.

But I believe this qualifies.

Twinkies never die. I had a wrecked car that had a Twinkie in the glove compartment for four years.

I was cleaning the car it out to barter for a beer? It was junk sales. The unwrapped Twinkie looked perfect. A bug won't even nibble the old Twinkie. They may go with a cocktail?

A Mennonite Lady in her eighties was here just yesterday. I called her a beautiful hag because a leathered face.She wears black crocks. Good barn and garden shoes. I was embarrassed. Her hands were rougher than mine. We talked about goofy history: Anabaptist, Quakers, Brethren, Menno Simon, etc., immigration, flights from European tyrants of the past, and cruel persecution.

The wrinkled face, and the remark about Hag, was not derogatory. She knew I loved her large family.

The wrinkles were not the kind Bush or Condi etc., have....(evil wrinkles) There is a grand difference. Wise vs, Fools. A big difference....

The great grandchildren wear straw hat, and only may stand three feet tall. I've made Shaker oval boxes with lids with swivel handles (Easter Gifts) for a couple of their children when they were about 12-years old. I remember the young teens sweeping the homes, and their fathers wood shops with a straw broom.

One Mennonite Lady still has the Shaker style oval box. Now, she has three beautiful children of her own. We getting aged....(senile. I forgot what I was gonna say)

Twinkies are not food, but a sugar-laced chemical reaction. In some places, Twinkie surplus from the affluent countries are used by the third world to make adobe like dwellings; also fights malaria, mosquitoes will not enter a twinkie-home.

How to put this delicately?

The disagreeable truth is that both of pestilential conjoined twins in the political tub are fouling up the bathwater. They are oozing, dripping, dribbling, exhaling, or ejaculating toxic secretions from every pore and orifice.

Oh, there may be a clean fingernail here, a healthy pinky toe there, an undecayed tooth-- but this bicameral monster is terminally diseased, and highly contagious.

The problem isn't the bathwater. Even if Obama proves to be the Scrubbing Bubbles Fizz-Its Toilet Tablet he's made out to be, minimally cleaner water will not precipitate a cascade of reform; this two-headed abomination is not going to become sound and wholesome.

The duopoly must die.

This is a hard sell in the best of times, but all the more so during the presidential campaign rutting season, when the hysteria abiding in our corporate-media driven public discourse is amped up by the incipient panic driving lesser-evilism.

This view is not exactly compatible with even sound, focused pragmatism. But FWIW, this view doesn't keep me from supporting Glenn, Accountability Now, Strange Bedfellows, etc. I admire and appreciate their extraordinary diligence and purpose.

I also respect the necessity of those who can stomach it working within the system, and essentially rationing relatively limited funds according to dispassionate cost/benefit analyses.

But... all that said, I also ask Glenn and his colleagues to try to keep their collective Third Eye open at least a slit. Thus, I again echo LT Bohica's plea that Cindy Sheehan be given at least nominal support. I understand that all of the grown-ups already know that even if Sheehan gets on the ballot, that when push comes to shove she'll just be ground up by the Pelosi woodchipper.

It bothers me, though, that an intelligent, honest, passionate, committed, humanitarian populist/progressive is either ignored, patronized, condescended to, or cooly hung out to dry while dissenters exclusively pursue the strategy of rewarding better germs and attacking virulent ones.

I expect that the prevailing view among democratophiliacs will persevere, and the moderate, progressive wonks will stick to the plan of throwing out the fouled bathwater, believing that at least one of the conjoined twins is essentially curable, once a few unsightly excrescencies are trimmed away, malignant tumors removed, and substantial improvements are made to diet and exercise.

Still, I hope that worthy public figures who reject the duopoly as beyond reform can be accommodated, encouraged, and supported on principle despite the risk, such as it is, of seeming Unserious or Irresponsible.

Apropos of this point, I recall being unpleasantly surprised many months ago when Scott Ritter, who's about as Serious and Responsible as it gets, snidely criticized and dismissed Cindy Sheehan as a hopeless amateur who was fucking up a "real" anti-war campaign. He made some valid enough points about a need for organization, focus, etc.

But for all that, his Inner Jarhead really showed through. He sounded like a grizzled field commander pissed off at some ditsy dame wandering around the battlefield and royally Fucking Up the mission. He argued for a Sheehan, Code Pink-free paramilitary antiwar movement, with clearly-delineated chains of command, talking points, etc.; I haven't heard anything more of the idea.

I believe that the Founders were correct to warn against party and faction, although We the People ran-- or were led-- in exactly the opposite direction. Now the evils of partisanship have metastasized into the Party of Cain and the Party of Judas-- the above-described bloated conjoined babies in the bathwater.

Supporting Cindy, Cynthia McKinney, and even the notorious Nader-- at least rhetorically, given the limited financial resources-- reinforces the goal of returning to a constitutional republican democracy. IMO, the duopoly isn't going to get us there. Only in the narrow view is this expansion "counterproductive". A little therapeutic folly is in order, and can't hurt.