Today's Fresh Blogs...

• FISA "Reform": Stop the Rush to Amend

  Published: August 1, 2007, 6:10 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Warrantless Wiretapping, Alberto Gonzales

  completely removing the FISA Court from the process. That is simply unacceptable.   "The FISA Court must continue to play an essential role in authorizing surveillance and overseeing its execution. They are the trusted steward of FISA, and they can and must be a part of any new streamlined approach.  The proposal we put forward

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• Feingold Weighs in on FISA

  Published: August 2, 2007, 12:50 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Nsa, Wiretapping, Russ Feingold

  by DNI McConnell on the FISA issue, and released this statement: "We need to wiretap terrorists, and we should address the problem that has been identified with FISA with respect to foreign-to-foreign communications. But the administration’s overly broad proposal goes far beyond that and would leave critical decisions related to

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• Put the brakes on FISA

  Published: August 3, 2007, 2:21 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Warrantless Surveillance, Nsa, Alberto Gonzales

  Congress should vote on a FISA bill before they've even been able to decide the very basic issue of whether or not the Attorney General of the United States has been lying to them about some of the very activities addressed by this bill. It's nuts. Forget that they're prepared to let charges of contempt of Congress float in the ether,

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• Senate Gives in on Wiretapping. 16 Dems Go Along.

  Published: August 4, 2007, 2:00 am

  Tags: Fisa, Wiretapping, Spying

  The Senate has surrendered to Mister Bush on domestic spying, yielding ignominiously to the White House’s demands that the unitary executive be given more authority when it seeks to wiretap suspected terrorists without warrants. The vote was 60-28. If passed by the House, the bill would be law for six months. Meanwhile, Congress would use

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• There is something fundamentally wrong here.

  Published: August 4, 2007, 11:56 am

  Tags: Fisa, Alberto Gonzales, Domestic Spying, Wiretapping, Surveillance, Separation Of Powers

  of a major capitulation on FISA. There's no doubt that there are a lot of political (read: electoral) implications to this vote. We all know that. We've been through this fear mongering routine before, where the public is rattled by vague pronouncements about unspecified threats (or about whatever's going on in Michael Chertoff's "gut," as the

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• Stop Being Characters in Their Story

  Published: August 4, 2007, 10:24 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Congress

  officials saying that FISA -- FISA that's been bent and twisted at every whim of the administration -- is still not beaten down so much as top be as worthless as they want. If you should pony up our rights -- our rights -- as the price of buying the favor of a man at 26% in the polls, what do you think you're going to get for that price?

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• Did Bush Derangement Syndrome Blog Postings Cause FISA Leaker To Reveal Himself?

  Published: August 6, 2007, 9:26 am

  Tags: Surveillance, Fisa Leak Case, Blogs

  leaker to the press of the FISA (Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act) program details was written up in the August 13 Newsweek article, Looking For a Leaker: The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided

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• Cowards

  Published: August 7, 2007, 4:40 pm

  Tags: Fisa

  While all of this was talked about last week and through the weekend, here's another reminder of those Democrats too cowardly to stand up to the unitary executive. In the House: Jason Altmire (4th Pennsylvania) John Barrow (12th Georgia) Melissa Bean  (8th Illinois) Dan Boren  (2nd Oklahoma) Leonard Boswell (3rd Iowa) Allen Boyd

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• Cowards, Part II

  Published: August 7, 2007, 6:04 pm

  Tags: Fisa

  GG: There is this gap in FISA, which everyone, even Russ Feingold, says needs to be filled, which is that if there is a foreign-to-foreign conversation which happens to be routed through the U.S., it requires a warrant -- so why not just say "OK, we fixed this gap and here's our bill and if you veto it, and there's a terrorist attack, then

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• Darcy Burner Takes on the FISA Dems

  Published: August 8, 2007, 9:55 pm

  Tags: Wa 08, Darcy Burner, Fisa, Warrantless Wiretapping

  recent Dem capitulation on FISA. Here she is via HorsesAss: "When Republicans like Dave Reichert give George Bush everything he wants, that’s bad enough. But too many people in my own party aren’t listening either. The warrantless wiretapping bill won’t make us safer, but it will strip us of the rights so many of our

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• Senate To Follow House In Seeking Quick FISA Fix

  Published: August 14, 2007, 9:03 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Domestic Spying, Harry Reid, Senate

  to the recently passed FISA bill: We are going to have some fights on our hands; we know that. We are going to be asking for the FISA law that was just modernized last week, and which the President signed before he left for Maine, to be made permanent. Right now there is a sunset on it, and we think that's inappropriate. While the White

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• Domestic spying cases on tap today

  Published: August 15, 2007, 1:07 pm

  Tags: Fisa, Warrantless Wiretapping, Domestic Spying, Nsa

  The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today hears two key cases on the NSA's (previously) illegal warrantless domestic surveillance programs. How's it looking? Here's case one: In 2003, Room 641A of a large telecommunications building in downtown San Francisco was filled with powerful data-mining equipment for a "special job" by the National

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• The New York Times, Cliffs Notes edition

  Published: August 17, 2007, 10:37 pm

  Tags: New York Times, Fisa, Domestic Spying, Nsa, Wiretapping

  Waldo Jaquith teaches you How to Read The New York Times: "Black is white"; no, it’s black. I love this: The White House maintained Monday that the surveillance measure signed into law by President Bush over the weekend did not give the government any sweeping new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants. [...] The new

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• My Hands Remain Unwringed

  Published: August 20, 2007, 4:06 pm

  Tags: Civil Liberties, The Arbitrary Executive, Fisa

  the need to update FISA and hammered out a deal. The administration reneged, and then the Democrats simply gave them what they wanted, and what they wanted was essentially a blank check. I don't think any "hand-wringing" is required to reject this legislation because 1)once these powers are given it's almost politically impossible to

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• Reversing Watergate

  Published: August 22, 2007, 8:11 pm

  Tags: Watergate, Foia, Fisa, Fec, Campaign Finance, War Powers Act, Dick Cheney

  say about... oh, let's say, FISA? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in the 1970s after certain activities had been revealed by the Watergate affair

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