Don't Believe the Lies: Court did NOT Absolve Bush

The overarching lie used to falsely justify all of George Bush's domestic crimes, war crimes and treason is that of unlimited presidential authority.

Never mind Article One Congressional powers, never mind Separation of Powers, never mind Constitutional limits on the executive, for eight years it's been "because I'm the president and I said so!"

Thus he justified: breaking treaties, ignoring bin Laden and allowing 9/11, launching an illegal invasion, wiretapping and spying on innocent citizens, torture, rendition, detention and every other way he could imagine to shred the Constitution and shit diarrhea all over the remnants.

Now Smirky/Darth's slimy apologists are claiming a FISA Court decision has endorsed Bush's "if the president does it it's not illegal" theory.

Bullshit, as Steve Benen explains.

There's been some talk today that the FISA court has endorsed the notion that the president has the authority to engage in warrantless wiretaps. That's not what happened today, and the details matter.

SNIP

The decision has nothing to do with the president's inherent authority, and everything to do with Congress' ability to shape surveillance law, giving the White House far more authority than it was previously allowed.

Put another way, the case was about the legality of the Protect America Act. It cleared the court's examination. But as A.L. explained, this doesn't lend "credence" to the administration's legal arguments at all.

Quite the contrary. From the moment the NSA program was first disclosed in December of 2005, the issue has always been whether the president has the "inherent authority" to disregard a statute like FISA that purports to place restrictions on his ability to conduct surveillance of Americans. The Bush administration claimed it had such powers, despite overwhelming legal authority to the contrary. When Congress passed the Protect America Act, it statutorily authorized the President's subsequent surveillance activities, assuming he stays within the rather wide confines of that law. The court here has merely upheld Congress's prerogative to pass such a law.

There's nothing here that lends any credence whatsoever to claims of law-breaking authority made by the Bush administration over the last few years.

Several far-right blogs insisted today that Bush has been "vindicated" and was "right all along." That's simply not what happened.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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Who Hates Liberals More Than Republicans? Democratic Candidates

Everybody's got a theory to explain national Democrats' inexplicable and infuriating insistence on caving to republicans and abandoning Democratic values to campaign as "centrists": they've got battered-dem syndrome, they're just republicans at heart, they've been bought off or blackmailed, they're spineless cowards, they've got a Secret Plan to Win the Election, they're just pussies.

None of those theories explain why Democrats indulge in the most self-destructive tactic of all: losing elections by running away from their base.

Digby explains why Democratic candidates hate Liberals.

And that raises an important question: if these rich, pampered celebrities are spokesmen for the Everyman, then who are the elites? Well, they're us, the liberal base of the Democratic party. And that's what this "run to the center" is really all about --- putting as much distance between the politicians and us as they can. It's not about being "serious" on national security or crime or family values. It's not even about appealing to swing voters. It's about repudiating liberalism. You can have a right wing zealot on the team who is so out to lunch that he writes books recommending you beat your children like he beats his dog. But associations with anything remotely culturally liberal or politically progressive are considered poisonous if you care to be taken seriously by the likes of Target shopper Brian "Everyman"Williams or the policeman's daughter Maureen "Everywoman" Dowd.

Repudiating liberalism is a symbolic gesture required of Democrats by the political establishment to prove that they are not elitists. And it goes beyond mere posturing on gay marriage or abortion. The national security challenge is always not to appear to be "an appeaser." The way you prove that is by refusing to appease the Democratic base. The economic challenge is to walk very carefully on taxes because it "costs jobs" for the hard working man and the struggling businessman alike who are in this thing together against the liberal elites. The cultural challenge is to not appear to be too friendly to blacks or too unfriendly to socially conservative religion in order to prove that that you are not beholden to the "extremists." The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.)

Read the whole thing.

Glenn Greenwald explains why holding Democratic candidate's feet to the fire is the only way to reverse Democratic losses.

One of the primary reasons that blogs emerged over the last seven years was as a reaction to, an attempt to battle against, exactly this narrative which the media propagated and Democratic institutions embraced -- that it is the duty of every Democrat to repudiate and attack their own base; that the truly pernicious elements are on the "Far Left", whose values must be rejected, while the Far Right is entitled to profound respect and accommodation; that "Strength" in National Security is determined by agreement with GOP policies, which is where "the Center" is found; that Seriousness is demonstrated by contempt for the liberal masses; that every Democrat must apologize for any statement over which Republicans feign offense.

Plenty of Beltway institutions already existed for the purpose of cheering on any and all Democrats no matter what they do. If that's all that blogs are supposed to do, then there is no need for them.

From the beginning, blogs have been devoted to opposing Democratic complicity and capitulation -- to protesting the lack of Democratic responsiveness to their supporters -- every bit as much as opposing GOP corruption and media malfeasance. That role is at least as important as the others.

A presidential election is a unique time when Americans are engaged in a discussion over our collective political values (at least more engaged than any other time). Why would anyone watch the Obama campaign use this opportunity to perpetuate and reinforce this narrative, and watch Obama embrace polices that are the precise antithesis of the values he espoused in the past, and not criticize or object to that? Criticisms of that sort aren't unhealthy or counter-productive. They're the opposite. Of course one ought to object if a political candidate -- even Barack Obama -- is advocating policies that trample on one's core political values or promulgating toxic narratives. That's particularly true since his doing so isn't necessary to win; it's actually more likely to have the opposite effect.

Meanwhile, you can still join the rapidly growing group to pressure Obama on FISA.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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Feingold Gets Week's Reprieve for the Constitution

Take heart, American patriots: the battle to save the Fourth Amendment is not yet lost.

Objections by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) will push back an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until after lawmakers return in July, Democratic leaders said Thursday. Feingold is strongly opposed to language that would likely give telephone companies that participated in warrantless surveillance retroactive immunity from lawsuits.

For Barack Obama and everybody else who thinks this FISA abomination is no big deal (Yarmuth and Chandler, you putzes), Patrick Radden Keefe at Slate has a slap in the face:

Here, then, is the bitter joke of the new legislation:
From 2001 to 2007, the NSA engaged in a secret program that was a straightforward violation of America's wiretapping laws. Since the program was revealed, the administration has succeeded in preventing the judiciary from making a definitive declaration that the wiretapping was a crime. Suits against the government get dismissed on state-secrets grounds, because while the program may have been illegal, it was also so highly classified that its legality can never be litigated in open court. And now suits against the telecoms will by dismissed en masse as well. Meanwhile, the new law moves the goal posts, taking illegal things the administration was doing and making them legal.

Whatever Hoyer and Pelosi—and even Obama—say, this amounts to a retroactive blessing of the illegal program, and historically it means that the country will probably be deprived of any rigorous assessment of what precisely the administration did between 2001 and 2007. No judge will have an opportunity to call the president's willful violation of a federal statute a crime, and no landmark ruling by the courts can serve as a warning for future generations about government excesses in dangerous times.

What's more, because the proposal so completely plays into the Bush conception of executive power, it renders meaningless any of its own provisions. After all, if the main lesson of the wiretapping scandal is that we need more surveillance power for the government, what is to stop President Bush—or President Obama or President McCain—from one day choosing to set this new law aside, too? "How will we be judged?" Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., asked in a stirring speech deploring the legislation yesterday. "The technical argument obscures the defining question: the rule of law, or the rule of men?"

Read the whole thing, but if that's not enough, Glenn Greenwald has more:

In American Prospect, Julian Sanchez exposes the myth being peddled by Nancy Pelosi and others that the FISA bill doesn't legalize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans:

The award for the most bald-faced lie on the House floor Friday, however, goes to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who insisted that the bill "does not allow warrantless surveillance of Americans." She is wrong. It does.

The broader spying powers given to the executive branch by the compromise bill require intelligence agencies to "target" foreigners. But if those foreign "targets" happen to call or e-mail Americans, those communications are fair game. And since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is only permitted to review the broad targeting procedures government eavesdroppers use to determine that a target is abroad, and not the substantive basis for authorizing surveillance of any target, anyone is a potential target.

The bill, in other words, allows the government to conduct "vacuum cleaner" surveillance -- sweeping up international traffic willy-nilly -- then filter it for anything that looks interesting. Indeed, many believe that licensing such surveillance is precisely the point of this legislation. If so, "warrantless surveillance of Americans" could well become routine, whether or not they are the formal "targets" of eavesdropping.

Whatever else is true, if Democrats and Barack Obama vote this bill into law, they will be (a) legalizing warrantless spying on Americans and (b) embracing the core premise of Bush radicalism: that as long as the President says something is legal (as he told telecoms that warrantless spying was legal), then it ought to be treated as such.

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Blue Dogs Plotting to Hand Another Victory to Bush

(Short refresher: "telecom amnesty" means that companies that illegally spied on innocent Americans' phone calls, emails and text messages will be immune from liability in civil lawsuits. That, in turn, means that we spied-on citizens have no way to find out exactly what the companies did and who in the White House unConstitutionally ordered them to break the law, starting in February 2001 - seven months BEFORE 9-11.)

Well, now we know why DINO Ben Chandler chose this week to announce that he is endorsing and giving his super delegate vote to Barack Obama: to distract us from his Blue Dog buddies in the House of Representatives working behind the scenes to give Smirky/Darth the telecom amnesty real Democrats denied them in February.

Yes, Ben voted to reject amnesty in the re-authorization of the patriot act, and I was one of the many who wrote to thank him. But remember how surprised we all were that House dems suddenly discovered the "testicular fortitude" required to defy Smirky/Darth, after more than a year of fellating the White House on command?

As Glenn Greenwald reports, it appears we horrible cynics were correct - it was a trick.

Are House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and a small handful of "Blue Dog" Democrats working in secret to reverse one of the only worthwhile acts of Congressional Democrats since they were given control of Congress in 2006: namely, the refusal to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and bequeath lawbreaking telecoms with amnesty? It certainly appears that way.

Numerous reports -- both public and otherwise -- suggest that Hoyer is negotiating with Jay Rockefeller to write a new FISA bill that would be agreeable to the White House and the Senate. Their strategy is to craft a bill that they can pretend is something short of amnesty for telecoms but which, in every meaningful respect, ensures an end to the telecom lawsuits. It goes without saying that no "compromise" will be acceptable to Rockefeller or the White House unless there is a guaranteed end to those lawsuits, i.e., unless the bill grants amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms.

Did you really think that Smirky-Darth were just going to loll around the White House for the next 8 months waiting for the Democrats to finally gather the courage to impeach them? They're going to be working non-stop, every day, now right through January 20, deleting emails, shredding documents, disappearing witnesses, muzzling the press, and throwing up legal roadblocks to the Righteous Justice rolling toward them.

No, I don't know that Ben Chandler is among the Blue Dogs plotting to hand amnesty to Bush, Cheney and all their sub-demons, but his record hardly gives reassurance.

Thank and congratulate him for endorsing Obama, but add a plea for his continued courage in resisted telecom amnesty in any FISA reauthorization.

As What Constitution? writes in Greenwald's comments:

Blanket and retroactive immunity for felonious and unconstitutional invasions of privacy is an affront to the Constitution of the United States, an attack upon the Rule of Law (without which this country cannot function as a democracy), and really really stupid.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

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Blast From The Recent Past: Olbermann Calls Il Doofus A Fascist

I missed this when it came out in February, after that "spontaneous" Republican walkout from the House. It's a good enough comment to do a redux now, many weeks later. This was posted on YouTube on Valentine's Day by CSPANJUNKIEdotORG.

Just how long the media moguls are going to let Keith Olbermann do this sort of thing on MSNBC is a question to ponder. In many places, he would not merely be suspended or fired. He would go to a concentration camp, or perhaps just disappear. The Pinochet regime in Chile had a trick, I've read, where they would just fly a plane off the coast, with a suspected dissident on board, then just eject the person over open water. Like, we'll let the sharks do the rest.

Well, on with the show, this is it. -- MJ:

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Bushco Rolled Out A Parade Of Liars To Squelch Lichtblau, Risen & NYT

(Cross Posted From Emptywheel)

A fairly significant article just posted at Slate by Eric Lichtblau on the jaded history of the publication, and withholding of publication for well over a year, of his and Jim Risen's seminal story on the criminal warrantless wiretapping by the Bush Administration. Some of it we knew, some of it we guessed and some of it is first impression. As a whole however, it is stunning to digest.

For 13 long months, we'd held off on publicizing one of the Bush administration's biggest secrets. Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush's top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn't let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.
...
As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.
...
The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.
...
That shared skepticism would prove essential in the Times' decision to run the story about Bush's NSA wiretapping program. On that December afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush's advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.

All these assertions, as my partner Jim Risen and I would learn in our reporting, turned out to be largely untrue.

Go read the entire article, it and you deserve nothing less. Here is a real tell tale quote that ought to have given the NYT boys all they need to know about the inherent dishonesty of the Bushies:

Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored.

Well, the financial damage would be exactly zero if it were really a legal and necessary program. The Bushies knew it was illegal and immoral from the outset, or they would not have been carping this BS. Kind of a culpable comment and mindset from the outset eh?

There was one great little aside that

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House passes immunity-free FISA bill

The vote was pretty much party-line at 213-197; all Republicans voted no, joined by 11 aisle-crossing Democrats. Here’s some highlights:

“I believe that the nation is deeply concerned about what has gone on for the last seven years, and I want to restore some of the trust in the intelligence community,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes said. ..

“Congress is not fully informed, and it would be reckless to grant retroactive immunity without knowing the scope of programs out there,” Congresswoman Jane Harman said.

The telco immunity issue will be booted to a trial court judge.

The bill also would initiate a yearlong bipartisan panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to investigate the administration's so-called warrantless wiretapping program.

All sounds pretty good.

Unfortunately, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller has already made noises he doesn’t like everything in the House bill, and it’s believed that part of what he doesn’t like is that’s its missing telco immunity.

Some real progressives need to slap him upside the head and tell him to either get on the train or become a Republican in fact.

OK, I have the 11 aisle-crossers.

Dennis Kucinich and Jim McDermott (I assume a “conscience” vote on a bill they thought not strong enough on civil liberties), Dan Boren (Blue Dog), Michael Capuano, Christopher Carney, Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/lite), Bob Filner, Maurice Hinchey, Tim Holden, Nick Lampson, Heath Shuler (not much more than a Republican) and Peter Welch.

Capuano, Carney, Filner, Hinchey, Holden and Welch may also be conscience voters. Filner represents the Mexican border portion of California and the rest are all northeastern.


Also, I’d like to have someone with a legal background weigh in on how likely a judge is to grant immunity or not, should this bill be the final baby, and we get to that point.

There's more: "House passes immunity-free FISA bill" >>

McCaskill lets me down yet again

Claire McCaskill just can't get it right. She continues to disappoint spectacularly. I don't think she's even trying to represent her constituents any longer. She knows we all pretty much hate her by this point, and she is pinning her hopes for a political future on Obama being elected and appointing her head of the GAO or something. But as far as I can tell, she has pretty much written off having a career in the Senate. That's what it looks like, anyway, her performance has been so lame.

I am really pissed off at her over FISA. For me, it's all about the Constitution, and I put a pretty steep premium on the Fourth Amendment. So when I get a weak-kneed, pathetic response like this, I crank up the livid a couple of notches, and go right to full-tilt, write-a-check-to-the-ACLU outraged.

Dear [Blue Girl]

Thank you for contacting me regarding efforts to revise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA. I appreciate hearing from you, and I welcome the opportunity to respond.

On February 12, 2008, after months of debate, the Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 (S.2248) by a vote of 68-29. I voted in favor of this effort to modernize the 30-year-old FISA in order to allow us to effectively monitor terrorist communications overseas.

As the FISA Amendments Act was debated on the Senate floor, I voted in favor of three amendments introduced by Senator Feingold (D-WI), all of which sought to add further safeguards against Executive Branch surveillance on innocent Americans. Unfortunately, these amendments failed to garner enough votes to pass. However, the Senate-passed FISA Amendments Act does include several measures to improve our national security without violating the constitutionally protected privacy rights and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. For example, it would require the government to obtain a warrant whenever the target of surveillance is a U.S. citizen as well as bolster the authority of the FISA courts to oversee the eavesdropping activities of the National Security Agency.

As you may know, I joined 18 other Democrats in voting against Senator Dodd’s (D-CT) amendment to remove provisions granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies (telecoms) that cooperated with the Bush Administration’s wiretapping program. Please keep in mind that this is a limited immunity that applies solely to the telecoms, not the government. I just don’t think we should punish these companies for their good-faith reliance on government assurances that they were assisting in a legal effort to combat terrorism. If the government violated our surveillance laws by eavesdropping without the necessary warrants, then it is the Administration – not the telecoms – that needs to be held accountable. That’s why I supported Senator Specter’s (R-PA) amendment, which would have substituted the federal government in place of telecoms as the defendant in lawsuits, allowing existing legal actions to move forward in an appropriate manner. While this measure was rejected, the underlying legislation would still allow citizens to sue the government for past violations and telecoms for future violations of the new law. As your United States Senator, I remain determined to get to the bottom of any government misconduct. (emphasis added)

Currently, the Senate-passed FISA legislation needs to be reconciled with the House-passed version. I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind as Congress continues to debate this important issue.

Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future regarding other matters of interest or concern to you.
All best,
Senator Claire McCaskill

Claire, you ignorant slut. The telecoms have fully staffed legal departments , and I presume that all of those attorneys on staff took at least one course in Constitutional Law when they were in law school, and presumably the Fourth Amendment was addressed.

Those attorneys knew that the government was asking them to abrogate the Constitution, and gave the go-ahead anyway. Hell, they probably insisted on indemnity contracts to make the government the payer in any future awards because they knew damn good and well what they were signing off on.

And now, this crazy woman wants to immunize them, and in so doing, immunize this criminal president. That's what her "solution" amounts to - let the telecoms (who donate a significant amount of money to McCaskill) skate away with no consequence, and the American taxpayers foot the bill for damage awards, and Bush skates away scott free?

What the fuck, over?

Get this through your bleached-blond head, Claire. You have been had. Immunity isn't about protecting the telecoms. It's about protecting Bush. He would never, in a million years, fight this hard if his ass wasn't the one in jeopardy, and you ought to know it.

If you want to get to the bottom of it, you oppose immunity for these companies - who started spying on us before September 11, by the way - and you let the civil courts sort it out. The discovery process of a civil trial is the best chance we have of determining the real, bedrock truth about just how far these criminal bastards have gone.

By insisting on immunity, McCaskill is aiding and abetting the criminal Bush.

Hold her accountable for that.

Not one dime, not one moment of my time.

There's more: "McCaskill lets me down yet again" >>

It is really pretty simple...

[This entry is a tag-teamed effort by Blue Girl and Pale Rider, crossposted from Blue Girl, Red State]

...but it clean evades the dipshit-in-chief.

If we are in such peril, and need the FISA overhall so fucking bad , like the shrieking chimp on my teevee right now is insisting, then take the telecom immunity out of the bill and it will pass overwhelmingly.

Present the telecom immunity as a separate bill and let it stand or fall on it's own merits or lack thereof.

But it isn't about protecting Americans, it is about giving the craven fascist fuckers who didn't even hesitate to spy on you and me, by listening to our calls and reading our emails, a petticoat to hide behind.

UPDATE - 10:00 a.m., by Blue Girl

It just gets better...GOP lawmakers are pissed off that the telecoms aren't showering them with donations as they fight the mean old Democrats who want to wreck their businesses over that "god damned piece of paper."

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER

Great minds! I was just bringing this over to post here:

Roll Call reports that congressional conservatives are “grumbling” and “griping” that their efforts to protect telecoms haven’t yielded more contributions from the industry:

With the House Democrats’ refusal to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies — stalling the rewrite of the warrantless wiretapping program — GOP leadership aides are grumbling that their party isn’t getting more political money from the telecommunications industry. […]

In a reflection of the sensitivity of the subject matter, and an apparent recognition that they would undermine their own messaging by appearing to be motivated by fundraising concerns, Republicans on and off Capitol Hill declined to comment on the record. […]

“There’s no question that from time to time staff, and maybe some Members, say to fellow travelers: ‘Are you giving us some air cover? Are you helping us help you?’”

COVER? That's what we're calling extortion money now? Cover??? And that's ALL this is about--ramping up the donations to support a collapsing party that is on the wrong side of the issue. They are using the fear of terrorist attack to try to ram through legislation on behalf on an industry that is EXPECTED to shell out campaign money to the Republicans--it's a shakedown and a scheme, and that's all it ever was from the start. Someone in the NRCC sat down and said, how do we get telecom companies to pay out? What do we give them? Immunity! Holy fucking shit. And it gets leaked on Roll Call??? How could anyone be so stupid as to reveal what this is actuall all about? These bastards are now caught, and expect the rats to flee from THAT sinking ship.

These shameful fucking crooks can't get out of town fast enough with that roll of bills in their pants, can they?

In case anyone hasn't figured it out, the GOP is facing a wave of retirements from the House, a corrupt fundraising apparatus that is mired in corruption, and a losing brand that is tied to a hundred years of war in Iraq, more fiscal disaster, and a nominee in John McCain who gets less and less appealing by the nanosecond.

There's more: "It is really pretty simple..." >>

Don’t Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity

[Cross Posted from Emptywheel]

The issues surrounding the FISA legislation are still roiling in Congress, thanks to the sudden appearance of a spine and principle by the Democrats in the House of Representatives (and correspondingly, with no thanks to the spineless and craven counterparts in the Senate, especially Jello Jay Rockefeller, the SSCI, and Harry Reid for bringing the horrid Intel committee bill to the floor instead of the far superior Judiciary bill). The most contentious issue has been, and continues to be, the proposed retroactive immunity for telco companies. Since the ugly head of the issue was first raised last summer with the railroaded passage of the Protect America Act, I have been arguing vehemently that the telcos are not in any grave danger financially from the civil suits currently pending. If their conduct is as has been described to date, they are already protected from liability for the actions that have been described, both by existing statutory immunity and by a right to indemnification from the government. The full court press for immunity by the Administration is entirely about cover for the lawless Bush Administration, and not about the impending financial demise of the telcos.

This post will go back over some of the basis for my argument that has been laid out previously, both here at Emptywheel and, earlier, at The Next Hurrah. I will also try to relate a few basics on what the general concept of indemnification is, and how it relates to contracts, in this case the agreements between the telcos and the Bush Administration. I have been making this argument for quite some time now, since last August, and have yet to have anybody put a significant dent in it; but it is no good if it cannot hold up to scrutiny. In that regard, I have posited my theory to several other lawyers expert in the field of governmental/Fourth Amendment litigation, including some extremely knowledgeable on the very civil suits at issue here, and all have agreed with the validity of my premise.

[Keep Reading...]



The Argument: The Bush Administration, with the help of telco providers (telelphone, cellphone, internet and other communication providers) engaged in massive wiretapping and datamining efforts, ostensibly to protect the United States from attack by terrorists. The legality of much of these programs has been questioned in many fora, but the germane ones for the immunity demand by the Administration are the civil suits that have been filed against both

There's more: "Don’t Cry For The Telcos - Bush & Cheney Are The Only Ones That Are Dying For Immunity" >>

Silvestre Reyes Sends A Letter To President Bush Regarding FISA

I am posting this letter from Chairman Silvestre Reyes to President Bush on the front page to make sure everybody has a chance to read it. I think you will agree that the President's scare tactics notwithstanding the Administration has sufficient tools to identify and track down terrorists. If there is an attack on the US during the next 10 days we should put the blame for not sniffing it out where it belongs--squarely on the shoulders of President Bush.

President George W. Bush

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The Preamble to our Constitution states that one of our highest duties as public officials is to "provide for the common defence." As an elected Member of Congress, a senior Member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I work everyday to ensure that our defense and intelligence capabilities remain strong in the face of serious threats to our national security.

Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration's warrantless surveillance program.

Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) has authority to conduct surveillance in at least three different ways, all of which provide strong capability to monitor the communications of possible terrorists.

First, NSA can use its authority under Executive Order 12333 to conduct surveillance abroad of any known or suspected terrorist. There is no requirement for a warrant. There is no requirement for probable cause. Most of NSA's collection occurs under this authority.

Second, NSA can use its authority under the Protect America Act, enacted last August, to conduct surveillance here in the U.S of any foreign target. This authority does not "expire" on Saturday, as you have stated. Under the PAA, orders authorizing surveillance may last for one year – until at least August 2008. These orders may cover every terrorist group without limitation. If a new member of the group is identified, or if a new phone number or email address is identified, the NSA may add it to the existing orders, and surveillance can begin immediately. We will not "go dark."

Third, in the remote possibility that a new terrorist organization emerges that we have never previously identified, the NSA could use existing authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to monitor those communications. Since its establishment nearly 30 years ago, the FISA Court has approved nearly every application for a warrant from the Department of Justice. In an emergency, NSA or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may begin surveillance immediately, and a FISA Court order does not have to be obtained for three days. The former head of FISA operations for the Department of Justice has testified publicly that emergency authorization may be granted in a matter of minutes.

As you know, the 1978 FISA law, which has been modernized and updated numerous times since 9/11, was instrumental in disrupting the terrorist plot in Germany last summer. Those who say that FISA is outdated do not understand the strength of this important tool.

If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don't have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations – including al Qaeda -- that have gained strength since 9/11. We do not have nearly enough linguists to translate the reams of information we currently collect. We do not have enough intelligence officers who can penetrate the hardest targets, such as al Qaeda. We have surged so many intelligence resources into Iraq that we have taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a result, you have allowed al Qaeda to reconstitute itself on your watch.

You have also suggested that Congress must grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. As someone who has been briefed on our most sensitive intelligence programs, I can see no argument why the future security of our country depends on whether past actions of telecommunications companies are immunized.

The issue of telecom liability should be carefully considered based on a full review of the documents that your Administration withheld from Congress for eight months. However, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to say that we will be vulnerable unless we grant immunity for actions that happened years ago.

Congress has not been sitting on its hands. Last November, the House passed responsible legislation to authorize the NSA to conduct surveillance of foreign terrorists and to provide clarity and legal protection to our private sector partners who assist in that surveillance.

The proper course is now to conference the House bill with the Senate bill that was passed on Tuesday. There are significant differences between these two bills and a conference, in regular order, is the appropriate mechanism to resolve the differences between these two bills. I urge you, Mr. President, to put partisanship aside and allow Republicans in Congress to arrive at a compromise that will protect America and protect our Constitution.

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

Sincerely,

Silvestre Reyes
Member of Congress
Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

I am not sure, but I think the House Democrats have had enough of being afraid. Too bad we couldn't convince Claire McCaskill and her ilk in the Senate that they only thing the President has left is fear itself.

There's more: "Silvestre Reyes Sends A Letter To President Bush Regarding FISA" >>

RIP freedom from snooping, RIP (partially?) Democratic conscience — telco immunity passes

Sixteen Democrats, more than a dirty dozen, were in the 67-31 majority to vote down the Senate’s Dodd-Feingold amendment and so give telecommunications companies retroactive immunity from spying on Americans — spying that went on BEFORE 9/11, remember. (Independent Joe Lieberman, I-Neocon, also was in the majority; Obama was on the right side and Clinton failed to show to vote.

Alternatives, such as Sen. Arlen Specter’s amendment to have the government stand in the lawsuit box in place of the telcos, also failed, as did Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Betty Crocker) bill to stipulate FISA is the sole mechanism for wiretapping, and an amendment to increase oversight of wiretapping of American citizens.

Yes, I know the House passed a version of FISA renewal without immunity, but given the margin in the Senate, you know what’s going to ultimately happen to that.

IMO, the only way of salvaging an impression would be if someone like Chris Dodd follows through on his idea of doing an old-fashioned actual filibuster, since he doesn’t have 40 votes to block cloture.

If nearly one-third of Senate Dems, including a “bright new face” like Jim Webb, can vote in favor of immunity ...

Update: There is hope for now. Dodd has indeed promised to filibuster if a House-Senate conference doesn’t strip telco immunity.

Of course, per the “faint hope” of “The Lord of the Rings,” whether any other Democratic Senators will step to the microphone for a real filibuster, as opposed to six-plus years of GOP fake filibusters, remains to be seen.

That said, per the Senate of the 1950s and 1960s, for historical value alone, it would be fun to see a real filibuster.

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At the End of the Day - February 4, 2007

[Hey all - Blue Girl here, standing in for the inimitable Apollo 13 who is under the weather with the gawd-awful bug I had a couple of weeks ago. Besides that, everyone was great about keeping the lights on while I was off-line due to the second major hardware catastrophe in six months...so covering the End of the Day is the least I could do. Send Apollo good thoughts and I'll turn the reins back over as soon as the master is on the mend.]

CREW is calling for the Attorney General to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the millions of missing emails that the White House failed to archive, in violation of the Presidential Records Act.

Why did Israel bomb Syria last September? Seymour Hersch probes that puzzler as only he can in the latest issue of the New Yorker. One of the conclusions he makes early on? The M$M proved to be useful idiots in promoting an improbably, if not impossible, meme.

Lo, and Behold! Another Bush administration in need of a criminal defense attorney! According to the Washington Post, HUD secretary Alfonso Jackson (he of the partisan litmus test for awarding contracts) tried to strongarm the housing authority of Philadelphia into giving a piece of publicly owned property to a crony.

Bush submitted his final budget today, and true top form, he is planning to spend $3.1 Trillion dollars, while steadfastly adhering to his theory of economics that, apparently, hinges on the premise that as taxes rates approach zero, receipts will approach infinity. In the Bush budget, military spending will be higher than at any point since World War II, while effectively freezing or eliminating 151 domestic programs. Democrats reacted angrily, and even some Republicans were unable to suspend disbelief and get on board. “They’ve obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better,” said Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. The picture becomes even more surreal when we stop to think about the deficit spending that is financing aWol's excellent Iraqi misadventure.

Palestinian suicide bombers struck in Dimona, Israel today, killing one woman at an open-air mall. It was the first suicide attack in Israel in over a year. The attackers came from Gaza, and served to point up that Palestinian Authority President Mahmood Abbas, on whom the Bush administration is relying heavily to lead the Palestinian peace process, has little if any control over the Gaza Strip, which remains under Hamas control.

The United States military is blaming faulty communications between U.S. forces and Iraqi militia allies for a helicopter strike in which at least nine Iraqi civilians were killed.

Tomorrow the Senate is set to take up FISA and telecom immunity while they think we are distracted by Super Tuesday. Make your calls in the morning and remind your senators that you are watching and paying attention, and passing the buck to the taxpayers for damages won't cut it, either. No immunity. No how, no way. And if our Senators don't stand up for the Fourth Amendment, right now, when they come asking for our support for their reelection campaigns, they shall be met with the mantra "not one dime and not one moment of our time."

Wikileaks has posted a real mind-blower. Here is the link to the 2005 Rules of Engagement for Iraq. Paul Keil said it best: "At the very least, if the Bush Administration expires and we are still at war only in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can count ourselves lucky." (Cross border incursions, including into Iraq and Syria? Laos, anyone?)

But hey, you've still got Turkey throwing the chessboard in the air and attacking Kurdish terrorists in Iraq, with brutality and extreme prejudice. As a good friend said, this is exactly what we don't need right now. Says a whole helluva lot about Iraqi sovereignty, doesn't it?

Attention California Voters: If you are a "Decline to State" voter, you have to take a unique and unusual step in order for your vote to count! It is not enough to ask for and cast a Democratic ballot! There is a place on the ballot that you must mark "Democratic" in order for your vote to count. And the scan machines do not return your ballot for correction!

At the risk of starting a firestorm (I have not officially endorsed any primary candidate, although I have made up my mind who I will cast my secret ballot for tomorrow) I found an interesting post by Stanley Fish at the New York Times Blogs in which he peeks behind the curtain into the dark, dark psyches of the hard-core Hillary Haters - the ones who make Sully look silly and trifling by comparison.

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Monday's FISA Showdown

TPM is reporting that the FISA bill and its amendments are scheduled for votes on Monday. Apparently the Senators have agreed to up or down votes on all of the amendments including the Dodd/Feingold amendment stripping telecom immunity from the FISA update and the Specter/Whitehouse alternative that would substitute the telecoms with the US Government. Either way Americans would get a chance to discover just how widespread the administration's abuse of our Constitutional right to be safe from warrantless searches extends. Of course, pure immunity would deny us any chance to find out just how badly the Constitution has been abused.

Why Monday? How about the fact that Tuesday is "Super Tuesday" and Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Old "Straight Talk Express" John McCain will be campaigning all across America. The Senate votes are going to be tight. Supporters of the various amendments are going to need every vote they can round up. The two to one campaign trail excuse would seem to guarantee a "victory" for our Republican big brothers over American liberty. Thanks a lot, Harry. Thanks a lot.

After the break is Keith Olbermann's special comment on FISA. Give it a look and be afraid. Be very afraid.

If you can pull yourself away from cat blogging or your Super Bowl party preparations you might want to send a message to your Senator. Tell him or her that you value your freedoms and you don't want the administration looking at your personal emails or listening to your private phone calls without first showing that you may have committed a crime.

Special Comment after the break.

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At the end of the day

Clinton, McCain win Florida primary -- CNN: For the Democrats -- Clinton 50%, Obama 33%, Edwards 14%, Kucinich 1%. On the GOP side -- McCain 36%, Mitt 31%, Rudy 15%, Huck 14%, Paul 3%. Exit polls, gender and age breakouts at the link. More Democrats turned out than Repubs. Heh. [See Update II]

Digby rightly criticized MSNBC for behaving "rude, snide and dismissive about more than a million and a half Democratic voters in Florida (more than double the turnout from 2004)... ...If it is inappropriate for Clinton to declare victory it's also damned inappropriate for every gasbag on television to say that all these votes are completely meaningless. They may not add to the delegate count, but they were cast in good faith by American citizens and they should be treated with respect by these jackasses." Amen to that!

Clap harder! -- At Political Animal, Kevin examined "who [clapped] when" during Bush's SOTU and articulated valid points and comparisons between Hillary and Barack.

Disappearing wingnuts on the Hill -- "Two Republican representatives, Kenny Hulshof of Missouri and Ron Lewis of Kentucky, have announced plans to leave Congress, adding their names to a list of more than 24 House Republicans who will not be running for re-election. " Hulshof plans to run for governor of MO. Lewis wants to be with his family. NYT

Russ Feingold (D-WI) explained the privacy issue of FISA in video.

Ezra Klein rocks! -- Challenging a NYT article pronouncement, "Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents," Ezra delivered a colorful chart on "Average Economic Growth by President" based on GDP. Who won? The Kennedy-Johnson Administration followed by Clinton. Go look at the presidential performers. Via Krugman who also had some choice remarks.

The House overwhelmingly approved -- by a vote of 385 to 35 -- a $146 billion economic stimulus program. Sen. Harry Reid "said the bill would be on the [Senate] floor by late Wednesday and was likely to be approved this week." Potential Senate amendments to the bill -- "to give more money to food banks, to increase food stamps temporarily, to increase subsidies for home heating and other energy costs for low-income families, to adopt alternative energy tax credits and to finance infrastructure projects." More at the link.

Sexual assaults -- Alaska is the worst in the nation: "In nearly 1,000 cases studied over two years, the average age of victims was 16, while the average age of those accused was 29. In four out of five cases, the suspects were relatives, friends or acquaintances.... Overall, 89 percent of the victims were female. One out of three cases were reported more than a month after the abuse occurred, leaving evidence hard to collect." Sexual violence is "worst in rural areas."

Pentagon WMD$? -- "The Office of Naval Research will test fire an electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, Va. on Jan. 31, 2008, between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. EST. The gun will be fired at over 10 megajoules of energy – a power level never before achieved by an EMRG." See Spencer Ackerman.

Shock in Iraq -- "Civilians stumbled upon nine headless bodies in a field about 60 miles north of Baghdad on Tuesday. ...The nine, including three women, had been targeted because they were suspected of being part of a local awakening council, or concerned local citizens group, that was working with U.S. troops to fight al Qaida in Iraq, said a police officer involved in the investigation. ...On Jan. 17, a bombing killed 12 people in Diyala, and unidentified and headless bodies are found sporadically in the province." More disgusting news: "In Baghdad, five roadside bombs" injured 31 that included "five U.S. soldiers and seven members of the Iraqi security forces." McClatchy

Wasting tax dollars -- "A federal report released Tuesday says the Army Corps of Engineers charged the government hundreds of millions of dollars for supervising projects in Iraq that have been identified as having failed or fallen behind schedule specifically because oversight was lax or nonexistent." Adding insult to injury, "its rates were on average more than twice as high as those charged by an Air Force office that has also been active in Iraq reconstruction."

Tomorrow at the Daily Howler -- "Defeat of the Rubes." Bob Somerby: "Lower tax rates produce higher revenues! The rubes have been handed this flat-earth nonsense for years–and your hard-charging “press corps” just sits back and watches. Last night, two rubes repeated this blather to Luntz. Tomorrow, we give you full details." Main link.

Success! -- Blue Girl got her computer thanks to all of you who helped. Special recognition to Kevin Drum for his support!

UPDATE I: Check Yellow Dog for the 411 on Ron Lewis of Kentucky.

UPDATE II: Rudy drops out, endorses McCain. And I erred in stating that more Democrats turned out than Repubs. There are more registered Democrats (41%) than Repubs (37%) in FL... but the total number of voters who cast ballots for Democratic candidates came to 1,683,984 vs. 1,920,164 votes for Repub candidates. How dare I forget Independents. That'll teach me.

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For Fear Of Fear

It has been an exciting and fascinating two days, yesterday and today. It has been the best, and worst, of American democracy in action. The thrill of victory; the agony of a weak defeat, snatched from the strong jaws of victory. Yesterday we were giddy with the knowledge that the Democratic Senate Leadership had actually stood up, not just to the Bush/Cheney/Republican cabal of maximum everything in wiretapping and privacy invasion, but in the name or the Constitution and righteousness. Today, reality came crashing back down to earth for those of us in the reality based community.

Yesterday, the Senate led by Harry Reid and the Democrats fought off cloture and a vote on the contemptible Jello Jay Rockefeller crafted SSCI FISA Update Bill that, in addition to other ills, provided immunity to Dick Cheney, George Bush, other Administration malefactors and, as somewhat of an afterthought, participating telcos. That was a good thing. There were already whispers and scuttlebutt of a "brief extension" of the truly contemptible Protect America Act. As I have argued for some time now, there are inherent problems with such a "routine brief extension".

I repeat what I said yesterday on this “brief extension” nonsense. It is nothing but sheer political posturing that brings us down to the level of the Repuglicans AND weakens our case at the same time. Take a stand for the proper principles, and stand behind them as opposed to injecting harmful BS for the sole sake of cornering your opponent; which is a fine and appropriate tactic, if it doesn’t undercut your core principle in the process. Here, it will weaken the core principle and argument in it’s favor and should NOT be considered; especially since it is not necessary “to protect us” in the least, and blindly saying that it is so necessary is ridiculous.

NO EXTENSION! There is no need whatsoever for an extension, because A) The Administration can order any comprehensive program, or programs, they want prior to the lapse of the PAA and that program(s) will stay in effect for one full year “to protect us”; and B) the original FISA law is reinstated. Furthermore, passage of any extension is a wolf in sheep’s clothing because is equitably removes and/or weakens many arguments and defenses that opponents, like us, to the PAA had from it’s original passage in August 2007. At the time of the original passage of the PAA, most congressmembers voted based upon false and misleading facts provided by the Administration, McConnell and Hayden; voted under a false fear that the country was in jeopardy of an imminent major attack (another direct lie), were not aware of the secret memos produced by OLC behind the Administration program that were legally indefensible, etc. If we now vote to extend the PAA, we not only effectively remove and/or undercut all those germane defenses/explanations, we also give credence to the position that there is some merit and legality to the PAA. There is absolutely no need for an extension and passing one weakens our side’s position. THERE MUST BE NO EXTENSION. (lame grammatical errors in original corrected)

Today we didn't get what I had feared, we got worse. Thanks to Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and the usual cast of nefarious Republican characters, Congress has agreed to a fifteen day extension of the horrendous Protect America Act, thus weakening our defenses and objections to the despicable and fraudulent tactics by the adversary that produced it, and they didn't even grab a political advantage in the process. The worst of both worlds, so to speak. Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said that we "have nothing to fear but fear itself". Today, we once again flinched in the face of falsely injected fear of fear.

Cross Posted From Emptywheel

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At the end of the day

Bush's 2008 SOTU -- Full text and his last! Woo hoo! The number of specific words referenced: 23 for "terror", "terrorist", or "terrorists", 11 for "al Qaida", 2 for "Taliban", 16 for "tax", "taxes", or "taxpayers", 9 for "economy" or "economics", and 6 for the "surge". Peruse a series of fact checks on Bush's final SOTU at TP.

FISA Showdown -- In case you missed it, check Pale Rider and Glenn Greenwald and "What's Next" from Paul Kiel. Statement from Hillary at FDL. Previous remarks from John Edwards.

Oh, you liberal! -- Demonstrating how Repubs and our SCLM have denigrated a great political word that makes me proud, the Reuters headline sums it up: "McCain, Romney lob 'liberal' smear in Florida push." Funny thing... what insult sticks to McCain is nonsensical. He's got a secret plan to get OBL? Oh?

More on the Mitt vs. McCain cage match on the eve of the Florida primary.

On the road to the WH, it's all about the delegates: "The possibility of a long-term slog is real for Democrats, given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama appear evenly matched... It is less certain on the Republican side, pending the outcome of the party’s primary [in Florida] on Tuesday."

Torture -- TPM headline: "Negroponte Confirms U.S. Use of Waterboarding."

Intelligence failure -- Via Laura Rozen, Milt Bearden of the Washington Independent wrote: "American intelligence has a serious problem. But it is not that the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine services, Jose Rodriquez, allegedly destroyed, in 2005, the videotapes of the enhanced interrogations of terrorist detainees. No, the real problem is that institutional oversight of the intelligence community has failed. It is dysfunctional, perhaps irreparably so. There is no adult supervision of American intelligence or how the White House chooses to use it. " Read the whole thing.

Fix the Bankruptcy Bill! -- Emptywheel reported "good news" that senators plan to fix the "bad bill." But the "bad news is that we're not going to do anything about it until 2009."

Death In Iraq -- Five U.S. soldiers killed in Mosul when a military convoy was "hit by a roadside bomb.... ...It was a particularly bloody day for the U.S. military in a city that has become a gathering point for the Sunni insurgency, and where Iraq's prime minister vowed to have the 'final' battle with the group al-Qaeda in Iraq." Troop deaths for January -- 36 -- up from December's 23 killed.

Pakistani Taliban -- They have "extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan's frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation." Uh oh. McClatchy

Help Blue Girl get a new computer -- Please. And thank you!

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At the end of the day

John Edwards campaigned in Dublin, GA. "Georgia Senate minority leader Robert Brown of Macon introduced Edwards at the farmer's market where an estimated crowd of at least 400 had gathered... 'Senator Edwards is the best candidate. He can win in November,' Brown said before rally. 'He's also very much in tune with what's going in in places like rural Georgia.'"

Also in GA, Obama visited a church in Macon where he spoke about his faith: "Poverty has no place in a world of plenty, and hate has no place in a world of believers."

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) plans to endorse Obama on Monday, according to the NYT. Steve Benen added more insights.

FISA tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. -- In an interview with McClatchy's Matt Stearn, "Clinton said she would break from the campaign trail to return to Washington Monday" in planning "to vote to block a bill to extend the expansion of electronic eavesdropping powers because it provides immunity for phone companies..." Per a FDL update, Obama will be there, too. Yee haw!

Mitt's up! -- Romney rose in FL polls via Chris Bowers: "Zogby now shows a 30%-30% tie, while yesterday McCain lead 31%-28%. Insider Advantage shows Romney ahead 26%-24%, whereas yesterday it was a 23% to 23% tie. Rasmussen shows Romney extending his lead to 33%--27%, whereas three days earlier Romney only led 27%-23%. In fact, the last four polls conducting Florida tracking show the state moving from McCain 25.5%--23.5% Romney, to Romney 29.3%--27.8% McCain." Looks like a Repub slugfest to the finish.

McCain's running mate -- Lemme imitate SNL's church lady: "Could it be... Condi?" Thus sayeth the Prince of Darkness, "...talk to ordinary people about [Condi] and they say, boy, that's terrific. The politicians don’t like it.” Video at TP.

Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday questioned Huckabee about evidence of Saddam's WMDs. The Huckster replied, "I don’t have any evidence.... ...My point was that, no, we didn’t find them. Did they get into Syria? Did they get into some remote area of Jordan? Did they go some other place? We don’t know. They may not have existed. But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach." Shorter Huckster: "Eeeb, eeeb, eeeb, eeeb!"

Krugman series, Part I: "Why has the Bush economy been so lousy?" See also bmaz's recent post, "Our Collapsing Economy - How We Got Here."

U.S. military death toll reached 3,934. "The AP count is three higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EST."

Iraqi troops arrived in Mosul, "site of recent deadly insurgent attacks, in an effort to suppress militant groups." Iraq's Defense Ministry spokesman Askari said, "They are Iraqi army forces and include troops, mechanized troops and air force. The plan will be similar to the ones implemented in Baghdad and Diyala [province]." LATimes

So now Bush shifts the military's focus to Afghanistan and Pakistan. " 'The sense I get is that at least in military terms they are getting a response from Washington which they weren't getting all along,' said Schaffer, a career foreign service officer who was deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia in the administration of former President Bush."

"The Week Ahead" at SCOTUSblog -- "No oral arguments are scheduled and no non-capital orders are expected to be issued from the Court this week." Reply briefs due Friday by 2 p.m. on Dada v. Mukasey.

On personal note -- It's fundraising time and for a good cause. Blue Girl needs a computer. So if you can throw some bucks her way -- the goal is $750 -- she can get back online sooner than later. Purdy please?

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Obama wins SC primary in a landslide -- CNN: Obama 55%, Clinton 27%, Edwards 18%. Gender and age breakouts at the link.

Congratulations were personally extended to Obama from Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Edwards on campaigning spouses -- "I believe that spouses have the right to speak their minds. In his case, [Bill] happens to be an ex-president. But my wife Elizabeth speaks her mind. And I think they're entitled to do that. It's a democracy. That's the way it works. People can agree or disagree with what they say, but they're not required to go home and sit around and be quiet. That's just the way I view it." The Trail

Track Democratic delegates by candidate here.

Gadfly calls attention to an argument that "the current Bush-Cheney regime has been a co-presidency." Thus, "respected historian Wills argues against a Clinton co-presidency. A definite liberal, Wills isn’t arguing against Hillary Clinton’s policies, just the co-presidency idea. Given the fact that Democratic big brass such as Sen. Ted Kennedy are trying at this very moment to get Bill to pipe down, with limited results, it’s a legitimate concern." Personally, I would be worried if Bill Clinton were batshit crazy like Dick Cheney. And American voters will have the last word.

Dick Sargent wrote about an NBC interview with Obama in which Barack "denied he'd personally accused the Clintons of racism." Obama reiterated, "I don't view [the Clintons] as having gone after me on the basis of race." Yesterday, Steve Hildebrand, a senior adviser for Obama, said, "[The Clintons] look at everything through racial lines, gender lines, geographic lines... ...They are playing the same old-style games." Crikey.

Rudy has a new secret weapon -- Bwahahahahahaha!

Meow! Pffft! Pffft! -- "Sen. John McCain of Arizona accused former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney of having once supported a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq, sparking an angry demand for an apology from Romney, who called the statement dishonest.' " And it got uglier. Campaigning in Florida, McCain: "If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher." Mitt shot back attacking "McCain's economic policy experience" and released an ad on Friday that "uses clips of political pundits on network news shows to argue that the Republican Party's distrust of McCain runs long and deep." Other video samples of McCain vs. Romney ads posted yesterday.

If you're into placing a bet on Election 2008, take heed via Kevin Drum.

Doubts still linger over Florida's voting machines. If it's as bad as the Diebold touch screens in Georgia... Uh oh. And in Ohio, "The ACLU of Ohio has sued the Secretary of State and Cuyahoga County to block the switch to a new voting system in time for the March 4 presidential primary."

For a real Democrat from Orlando, FL -- Alan Grayson! Alan Grayson! Alan Grayson! Additional commentary and an incredible CBS video on whistle-blower Grayson's fight against war-profiteering at Down With Tyranny!

Krugman posted distribution tables from the economic stimulus program of "who gets what from tax plans." He also noted, "it’s only thanks to the Democrats that people likely to spend their rebate are getting anything at all.... this plan will produce some stimulus, while the Bush plan would have done virtually nothing." Data source: Tax Policy Center

Reaching for his FISA-colored crayon -- President Bush threatened to veto “a 30-day extension of an expiring eavesdropping law and instead wants an expanded version to be passed by Friday.” In response, Harry Reid (D-CA) said: "There will be no terrorism intelligence collection gap... But if there is any problem, the blame will clearly and unequivocally fall where it belongs: on President Bush and his allies in Congress." The WH gave the House Intel Committee "access to necessary documents on Thursday – eight months after they were requested," according to chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX). Shorter version: SSDD at the Bush regime.

Pakistan says no -- "Mr. Musharraf rebuffed proposals to expand any American combat presence in Pakistan, either through unilateral covert C.I.A. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces." Furthermore, Musharraf expressed "that any unilateral action by the United States would be regarded as an invasion." Sunday NYT

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At the end of the day

FISA & telecom immunity -- We will live to fight another day. However, Claire McCaskill sold the Bill of Rights for pocket change. Expect some unpleasant repercussions come re-election time.

Democrats unite! -- Hillary: "As soon as we have a nominee, we will be strongly united because the most important thing is to put a Democrat in the White House starting in January 2009." What did Obama say? The better question is what didn't he say? Read Jane Hamsher from last night.

GOP voters don't seem too excited about the elections. For analysis and numbers, Down With Tyranny!

Dennis Kucinich gives up on the WH. "He was regularly shut out of presidential debates - even after he went to the courts to seek airtime in Las Vegas.... ...commentators have given Kucinich credit for giving a greater airing to anti-war sentiment." We still love you, Dennis!

Krugman evaluated the economic stimulus program and it's not pretty. Robert Greenstein at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that "the two most targeted and economically effective measures under consideration — a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary boost in food stamp benefits — were zeroed out, apparently at the insistence of House Republican leaders."

Anti-Abortionists MIA -- Republicans say they're pro-life but they don't show up for the Big March. How convenient.

Hate crimes slimebag -- During the Jena march, a "white man accused of driving past a group of black civil rights activists with two nooses dangling from the back of his pickup truck" was indicted for "conspiring to threaten and intimidate the marchers and with having committed a federal hate crime."

Fighting torture could land 11 activists in the federal pen for as much as six months. The Nation

"Attacks Imperil U.S.-Backed Militias in Iraq" -- "American-backed Sunni militias who have fought Sunni extremists to a standstill in some of Iraq’s bloodiest battlegrounds are being hit with a wave of assassinations and bomb attacks, threatening a fragile linchpin of the military’s strategy to pacify the nation." Intel Dump offered further insights, particularly on the political front: "I think that Crocker and Petraeus have written off the Iraqi government at all levels as too corrupt and ineffective to be a part of the long-term counterinsurgency strategy in that country."

Afghanistan backslides -- The warlords shall rise again! See how invading Iraq diverted our forces from the right war at the wrong time?

Et tu, media? -- The honeymoon must be wearing off. Via Kevin Drum, yesterday Obama got some of the same type of media B.S. that was dumped on Hillary today. With enough time -- and it doesn't take long -- media svengalis could transform Barack into a divisive figure (jpg) like they have Clinton. This is how our morally-bankrupt press corp screws America (h/t Taylor Marsh for the jpg).

Bush legacy scrutiny -- An advocacy group "plans to spend $8.5 million" on advertising Bush's failed presidency. "Framing his legacy helps us in the '08 elections, there is no doubt about that," Woodhouse said. "But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents." Swopa

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