Twit v. Twit v. Twit

Perhaps I mean “Tweet.” In any case, representatives from the Obama and McCain campaign have agreed to participate in a little experiment in micro-politics over the weekend, taking part in a “Twitter Debate,” focusing on tech policy, as a preamble to this year’s Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York. If you want to play [...]

Obama on FISA

Obama’s full statement on the FISA legislation after the jump. The headline: not perfect, but improved, and he’ll “work in the Senate” to remove what he does call “retroactive immunity.” Nut graphs: “After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect [...]

McClellan Speaks!

A lot of the nets are carrying Scott McClellan’s testimony today live — it starts in a few minutes — but if you’re away from a television and yet blessed with bandwidth, C-SPAN is carrying it on “The Tres,” or C-SPAN 3. Also streaming on their website (can’t get a direct link, sorry). Initial thoughts: [...]

Cute Conference Call Tricks

Late yesterday afternoon, Obama spokesman Bill Burton sent this email to McCain press chief Jill Hazelbaker — BCC’ing the Obama campaign’s entire press mailing list: from Bill Burton to Jill Hazelbaker date Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 5:24 PM subject quick question about your conference call Jill – hope you’re well. We’d like to add [...]

In the Arena

On FISA

A few final thoughts on the FISA compromise, which–it will come as no surprise to regular Swampland readers–I favor: 1. It was necessary to update the FISA law to make legal the new technologies that enable intelligence agencies to suss out suspicious patterns of phone calls, emails etc between known terrorists and persons in the [...]