FISA Violated

Joe
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No comment on the issue of whether or not the NSA targeted a member of Congress?

Carter, Clinton welcome The Once to ARTICULATE LIAR FAILURES alumni club, hope to see him Woodrow Wilson Weekend at Notre Damascus.

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http://twitter.com/HULAgate

Obama voted FOR the bailout bills, and FOR the FISA flip-flop.

So it must be Bush’s fault that President Skippy inherited these messes.

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http://twitter.com/HULAgate

When, when I ask will the pirates and other unclaimed terrorists begin to appreciate the appeasement and whining and kowtowing of the Jihad Joke Kleins and Brick Obongos and Reno Nippalitos of the ACORN World Orifice?

1-2-3-4,
Let’s All Smoke
And Lose A War.

Goooooooooooooooooo Team Vichy!

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http://twitter.com/HULAgate

Joe-The bad news is NSA apparently has been overstepping the law?
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No. The bad news is there is very weak oversight. Once the deed is done the harm is done. There is no recourse.
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I’m just supposed to trust Eric Holder. Why? Because he called NSA for their improper behavior? What did he do send a strongly worded letter? And if I do trust Holder and he proves worthy of that trust is he going to be AG until I die preventing a less trust worthy AG and administration from allowing the abuses to continue?
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Sorry Joe. There are no consequences for the abuse and that is the problem. No one will be fired or indicted. The past administration and the Obama administration will insure that never happens and you in the media and the democratic congress will be of great assistance in that effort.

Time-AOL-Jazeera runs 24/7 gratis Obama ad, seeks free contribs from non-union writers that aren’t they’re union writers.

……………….

http://ow.ly/30iC

Ahhh. The honeymoon is over. Joe discusses FISA and we can all suddenly see that any areas of broad agreement are abruptly unimportant.
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is infuriating that the government can’t seem to abide by them.
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It is not infuriating Joe. It is utterly unsurprising, unremarkable and entirely expected. If you give boys toys, they’re going to play with them. If you aren’t willing to keep an eye on them, they will do something stupid. If the only incentive the NSA faces is the fear of missing something important and there’s no coutervailing incentive to protect the rights of the innocent, then abuses are as predictable as spring thunderstorms.
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I know you’ve painted yourself in a corner already so your not in a position to come out and admit that GG the EFF and the ACLU have been right on this issue all along but that doesn’t change the fact that they have indeed been right all along.

“The bad news is there is very weak oversight.”

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But enough about Rezko, and Blago, and Wright, and FISA, and PayPal Gaza…

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http://twitter.com/HULAgate

Obama voted FOR the FISA flip-flop before he voted sorta kinda maybe how’s the new puppy pirates what pirates hey look at al the French food Michelle have you seen my Newports kids get the dog off the carpet will someone please keep the MIL out of the kitchen what’s that wet stain on the marine One tires for Pete’s sake of course we never vet our staff or contributors this is Amnesia not America and as I’ve sworn twice before at least I’m POTUS and we stopped Bush’s third term say hello to Hugo and Fidel for me Vlad look I don’t do math and my mob could care less hope and change hope and change praise Allah dollars almighty hope and change…

http://twitter.com/HULAgate

= MARC RICH ACCOMPLISHED =

Guess nobody is following this clown on twitter so he is back to phuck up the thread. Peace.

“1. There is a real need to monitor conversations terrorists may be having with their associates in the US.”
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Duh. That’s not the issue Joe and you know it. That’s like saying there’s a real need for a police force to combat crime. No one would disagree.

While I have some hope that Mr. Obama might attempt to restore the Constitution as the basis of the US government, I don’t think that he’ll really succeed. Power is just too tempting for most of us to refuse, regardless of our inclinations and self-images. The deliberate, systematic and thorough way that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush set about removing any remaining checks on Executive power went so far that I don’t think they can ever be restored, even partially. The hyperventilating by the right-wing punditry would be amusing in a horrible way, if it wasn’t entirely predictable, when they finally seem to have realized that the powers they desperately wanted to use against their enemies now might be turned against them. Alas, all we former Republicans can say to them now is “If you’re not guilty of anything, then you have nothing to worry about, right?”

Those of us who supported FISA reform last year did so for two reasons:
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Let me suggest a few other reasons:
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1. You didn’t understand the law, as originally enacted.
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2. You didn’t understand the “reforms”.
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3. You refused to believe that abuses were entirely predictable.
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4. You refused to admit that abuses had already been revealed even before the “reform” legislation was being pushed.
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5. You refused to admit (or draw any conclusions from the fact) that Bush administration officials — and Bush himself! — had been openly lying about the NSA’s surveillance programs.
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6. You were afraid of being labelled a DFH.

It’s really a shame. At rick of overgeneralizing it seem that those on the left who care about government overreach and protecting our Freedom have been doing so out of priciple and because they beleive its right. Those on the right OTOH only care about it when it when their team is in the field.
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I’m very fond of linking to this:
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itgic/1097/ijge/gj-7.htm
Because it harkens back to a simpler time, when the Republicans were right on the issue of privacy and were fighting against a Democrat’s overreach.
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That’s also why I was so amused when spob linked to Powerline accusing ‘the left’ of remaining silent about Obama’s abuse of power and between SG and I we were quickly able to gather names of 10-20 prominent left-leaning commentators willing to call the Obama administration out.
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Needless to say, those who’s notion of bipartisanship involves taking the worst of the Dem’s and Repub’s postions and blending them into a flavorless mush, find such actual concern over an issue disorienting to say the least.

rick=risk

Joe, me lad – wha’ be Mr Holder doin’ t’ hold th’ scallywags accountable?
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I might be a wee bit more understandin’ were there t’ be some real, actual, consequences fer’ violatin’ th’ privacy o’ American Citizens by th’ NSA.
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An’ real, actual changes t’ th’ law t’ prevent oversteppin’ in th’ future!

I don’t know, Joe, you make a valid point, but so does the NSA. I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who’s right.

Paul Dirks
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I believe Joe did admit he was wrong in this sentence.
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Those who opposed the program believed–correctly–that, despite the safeguards, the potential for government violations was substantial.

One other point I think its important to make is that the various things that we like to think of as our civil rights, the things that our founders saw necessary to include in a Bill of Rights, weren’t put in there just to formalize what’s obvious. They were put in there because the temptation to violate them even with majority support is so strong. If the temptation to codify religious tenets into law weren’t common, there’d be no need for the first amendment. If the temptation to coerce confessions out of suspects weren’t strong, there’d be no need for a fifth amendment. If the temptation to spy on political enemies weren’t strong, there’s be no need for a fourth amendment.
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In each case, not only is the temptation strong but for many such activities securing public approval is relatively easy. You just have to yell BOO!! loud enough…..

Unlike many of my fellow commenters I came to the swamp after the FISA debate, so I don’t know all of the nuances of the different opinions, but the one thing I do know is that every piece of legislation the government creates for one specific purpose they adapt for unintended uses. No matter how much I might trust Eric Holder or President Obama, I’m pretty sure there are folks sitting in jail right this moment because of the rico statute that have nothing to do with organized crime.

Mr. Klein, you consider yourself an experienced sophisticated observer of politics and you’re surprised the government overstepped its bounds? BTW, read Glenn Greenwald’s ‘How would a Patriot Act?’. The safeguards were in place before last year, they just needed to be enforced.
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Hulagate et. al will understand FISA when Rush Limbaugh or Glen Beck get ‘spitzered’.

Spencer Ackerman’s top three posts are on FISA including one a piece with statments from DiFi and Feingold respectively
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http://attackerman.firedoglake.com/

Joe: But how did the original FISA law not meet the requirements of (1)? The fact that the Bush administration couldn’t be bothered to go through the FISA court does not, by itself, mean the law needed amending.
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And is that mock surprise that the NSA is “overstepping its bounds” (ie breaking the law)? Or you really thought a spy agency would voluntarily restrain itself? I mean talk about naivety.

“Those who opposed the program believed–correctly–that, despite the safeguards, the potential for government violations was substantial.”
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I’m calling B**** F***king S***! This is fundamental BS! The safeguards are pretty much nonexistant. That’s the problem.

Joe Klein:
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Those of us who supported FISA reform last year did so for two reasons:
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You mean to say “Those of us centrist Democrats who supported FISA restructuring“, don’t you? You don’t think that Dick Cheney supported the legislation for the same reasons you did, right?
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Let’s face it: all the rightists and all of the centrists were the ones who supported this –the left did not, because we correctly predicted the outcome (as usual). The centrists like you who were the most on board with this weren’t really into it for policy’s sake (like the rightists), but (be honest, Joe) for political reasons.

The Tone-Deaf Democrats
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By JOE KLEIN Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2007
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The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets. The basic principle is this: if a suspicious pattern of calls from a terrorist suspect to a U.S. citizen is found, a FISA court warrant is necessary to monitor those communications. But to safeguard against civil-liberty abuses, all records of clearly nontargeted Americans who receive emails or phone calls from foreign suspects would be, in effect, erased. Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — House Republicans believe would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. (Democrats dispute this interpretation.) In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

In the lethal shorthand of an unchecked executive operating well beyond the Constitutional framework recognized as being fully adequate during the Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear stand-off with the Soviets, when “a suspicious pattern of calls from a terrorist suspect to a U.S. citizen is found” by the surveillance apparatus of the state before they’ve obtained permission to search that citizen’s personal communications, that means that a huge bureaucracy is monitoring the communications of all Americans without warrants or probable cause being established –even by a secret, unaccountable court.
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In the lethal shorthand of centrist political punditry, “Limbaugh salivating” and the beliefs of House Republicans come well before the interests of American citizens.
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1. There is a real need to monitor conversations terrorists may be having with their associates in the US
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There may be, which is why a FISA court was established over thirty years ago, precisely to allow such surveillance activity to take place within a Constitutionally sound framework, i.e. the most minimal adjudication of Fourth Amendment probable cause before spying on Americans suspected of communicating with foreign terror suspects.
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That need was already met. Everyone knows and admits this, except the House Republicans desperately trying to score political points, and centrists like you, who were cowering in political terror of Limbaugh as recently as a year-and-a-half ago.
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Andrew Sullivan, for example, fully conceded he was wrong about trusting the former administration’s good intentions, and for supporting the Iraq War; can’t you finally admit your mistake, Joe Klein?
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2. There is a real need to set legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor those conversations
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…Which there already were, obviously. The previous FISA court was established precisely for that end. There wasn’t a need to set legal limits on what the NSA was doing, because it was probably illegal. If the government was monitoring conversations outside of the knowledge and consent of the thirty-year-old FISA court framework, that means that FISA statutes were being violated. There was already a legal limit –you were in favor of ignoring that limit in favor of a new one that made whatever the NSA came up with completely legal after the fact. This contention of yours is awfully dishonest –it’s grotesque, actually.
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to make sure that every domestic target is approved by the FISA court,
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As opposed to before last year’s bill…when every “domestic target”, i.e. American, had to be approved by the FISA court prior to spying on their communications? Or are you deliberately muddying the waters in terms of the difference between US citizens and whatever is meant by “domestic targets”?
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This argument of yours is so disingenuous, Joe Klein. How disappointing…
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Again, can’t you just admit that you were wrong about this (admittedly poorly understood by you) subject, and move on?
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to make sure that any innocents swept up in the data-mining process are protected and their names expunged from any list of suspects
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How do you know exactly what the “data-mining process” was, Joe Klein?
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You seem to be in way over your head, especially because technological terms with which you aren’t terribly comfortable have been thrown into the debate.
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In theory, having a super computer with x-ray and night-vision capability scour every American’s home day and night for bomb-making paraphernalia would be identical in Fourth Amendment terms to your “data-mining” of US citizens’ communications.
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What if the state used such a super computer to flag records of these theoretical video sweeps of American homes that had shown evidence of suspicious bomb-making substances (like bleach or fertilizer), and then promised to “throw out” any “innocents” from “any list of suspects”?
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Would that be substantially different from a security bureaucracy headed by people like Donald Rumsfeld being legally able to peruse all Americans’ communications at will, then to decide –after searching and listening some more– that folks are “innocent” (at least as of that day’s dragnet), and then flagging those communications records as “to be expunged” at some later date?
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It isn’t substantially different, Joe Klein, and you know this.
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Andrew Sullivan, someone with whom I have great disagreement, realized too late that he trusted those in authority when he should have been skeptical of their claims. Why can’t you just do the same thing?
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Honestly, it looks to outsiders like you’re afraid of losing access to NSA sources if you don’t get in line, Joe Klein. Are you certain that you’re willing to let that sort of credibility hit to your reputation to propagate?
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Nobody buys these arguments anymore, Joe Klein, except Beltway conservative “intelligentsia” like David Brooks, and the geniuses who make up the editorial staff at the Washington Post.
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The bad news is that the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law…
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No, the bad news is that the people who have been right about everything for the past eight years were once again correct in their predictions, and were again proven in hindsight to have been the people you should have been listening to, Joe Klein.
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I still believe that the government must have all the legal tools at its disposal to track and stop those who mean to do us harm.
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No, you mean that you still believe that the Congress should legalize whatever Executive spying schemes can get past the abysmal bullsh*t detection of political pundits like you.
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The FISA revisions codified those tools.
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They did not. They retroactively legalized a perpetually abusable authority in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
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It is infuriating that the government can’t seem to abide by them.
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No, it’s infuriating that you don’t seem to understand why the founders of our great nation, and the authors of the Constitution didn’t assume that the state could be expected to be angels.
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Isn’t it time that you came out and said that you don’t expect a government of men to be relied upon to be angelic in the exercise of vast power? Isn’t it finally time to reconsider your position? Isn’t it time to admit that you weren’t correct in your predictions, and that this sort of regime is wrong for America?
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Thanks for reading this, and considering it, Joe Klein.

We ought not be surprised that government, any government, abuses powers it routinely swears it will use with care. That’s their SOP. What is surprising is, after reading about the excesses, the current administration is falling into the same pattern : tough talk during the campaign and fancy dancin’ once in office. Don’t hold your breath: neither Eric Holder nor President Obama are going to butt heads with the NSA and their fellow travellers.

neither Eric Holder nor President Obama are going to butt heads with the NSA and their fellow travellers.
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I oftem wonder how much Obama actually feels boxed in. After all, a Commander in Chief whose commands are ignored would be in a pretty dicey situation. Is he buying cooperation or is he genuinely OK with more-better secrecy and cover-ups?

“The bad news is that the NSA apparently has been overstepping the law…”
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You’ve got balls of brass to type that line, Mr. Klein. Are you actually f*cking serious?

Respectfully, Joe, I have to agree with Stuart, sqr1, and others.
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You supported the law out of political correctness.
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You had an emotional attachment to being considered “centrist,” not “liberal.” As the right went off the rails, you went with them, supporting (or failing to oppose) wildly amoral and ineffective programs.
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You were ill-informed at the time, which you eventually admitted, and you trusted untrustworthy sources.
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I appreciate your addressing the issue and conceding your error. There’s a lesson to be learned from this; have you learned it very well? (That’s The Cyrkle, doing Paul Simon’s “Red Rubber Ball.” I’m not sure the worst is over now, though, unfortunately…)

Joe: but if the illegal activity continues, those responsible should be fired and indicted.
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Why only if illegal activities continue? If they were done, they were done. Is there a “grace period” for illegal activities that I’m not aware of?

A reminder from January that was largely ignored by the Village
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/28781200#28781200

Just stop writing about FISA, Joe. You’re great on AfPak, Health Care, Bush Legacy, N. Korea, Iran, and Obama in general.
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On FISA, you’ve lost all credibility.

Joe
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This is totally off topic but I thought you might want to read this about Rahm Emanuel getting tough with Netanyahu.
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http://israelpolicyforum.ngphost.com/blog/emanuel-says-obama-insists-implementing-two-state-solution-no-ifs-ands-or-buts
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Money quote
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“Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory,”
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I can’t attest to whether or not that was really said but if it was count me as being encouraged.

FISA FISA FISA, will this be the down-fall of Obama? When Obama has a listen-in on some flaming liberals conversation about the secret liason’s with his prostitute who will fullfil his every preverted fantasy? Tsk tsk I say. Shame on you Mr Obama!
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AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
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And, the liberal dream world comes crashing down.

Is it PREvert or PERvert? I always get them mixed up, hmmm.

It’s “pervert”, as in:
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Conservatives who (as recently as last year) linked limiting the Federal government’s power to spy on Americans with weakness or even terrorist sympathies now pervert their own cause by holding ridiculous tax-day protests against the same supposedly dangerous, omnipotent Big Government. Which is it, conservative activists: is Big Government bad because it taxes us, or is it our only sure defense against the overwhelming terrorist hordes?

A prevert is younger.

Paul Dirks @ #8: I think it is more complicated than that. Given the isssues currently faced by the Obama admin a fight over FISA seems like a luxury. I am in general agreement with GG on this subject. But I also worked at the upper reaches of govt (UK and Canada) and found out that the last thing a PM wants is to butt heads with the security establishment. The intelligence wallahs are competitive; they leak selectively and are up to all kinds of tricks. No PM I worked under wanted to get into that minefield. In the large scheme of things: unemployment, jobs, homes and banks, FISA elicits a muted response even from those who should know better: “Well, if the Congressman (insert your own selection) is engaging in lawful and innocent activities why should he care if the NSA is listening in? Insidious? Yes.

Bitterpill8 @39: I’ve been loathe to second-guess Obama relative to his political skills and judgment about how far he could push the beltway establishment order (he’s done pretty well so far). Two things though: 1) he campaigned on turning back Bush Administration lawlessness which makes FISA (at least) a naked, broken campaign promise and 2) when it comes to illegal activity by government officials, past or present, he has a legal as well as moral obligation to enforce the rule of law. It doesn’t really matter that our masters think they should be above any accountability for their actions.

When Obama has a listen-in on some flaming liberals conversation about the secret liason’s with his prostitute who will fullfil his every preverted fantasy?
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Says the man who slunk off to Bermuda last fall to sleep with pool boys.

The intelligence wallahs are competitive; they leak selectively to journalists like Joe Klein –who then write the kind of punditry that is preferred– and are up to all kinds of tricks.
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It’s not just that the state security apparatus perverts the proper role of the state, it’s that, by seeking to perpetuate its own interests, the bureaucracy suppresses and distorts the very information that citizens in a democracy require in order for republican government not to descend into rank oligarchy dressed up as benevolent technocracy.
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“Leaking selectively” means that an access-dependent, careerist news industry is part of the problem, which is why Joe Klein comes into criticism.
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a fight over FISA seems like a luxury….In the large scheme of things: unemployment, jobs, homes and banks…
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The “big picture” argument, in which commitment to change we can believe in is pitted against a “pragmatic” politics supposedly dedicated to first solving the crises at hand, isn’t really accurate in its assessments.
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If the Congress and Administration can’t stand up to the security bureaucrats over which they have nominal control, what does that portend for how they will approach the task of securing the interests of ordinary Americans against the voracious appetites of wealthy, institutional corporate actors with respect to things like “jobs, homes and banks”?
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The NSA management rank and file don’t have access to almost unlimited advertising budgets, do they?
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We’re not recommending against prudence or for recklessness (in either politics or policy), but if we can’t count on the basic enforcement of Constitutional mandates because of potential dirty tricks, how will “concentrating” on supposedly high priority items like, say energy reform render these politicians immune from such influences? The “big picture” argument fails to take into account the weakness advertised by such capitulation to the opponents of good policy in precisely these priority areas that require at least the image of principled strength and resolve.
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And practical political considerations aside, if these security bureaucrats can get journalists like Joe Klein to write whatever they’re told to write, and our elected representatives live in fear of this phenomenon, how far is our democracy from becoming like Pakistan’s? Isn’t the prevention of even more corruption of our Republic than Bushism brought about something worth fighting for?

The pro-FISA argument has been dependent upon the Jack Bauer worldview: legal questions about intelligence work just get in the way of catching terrorists! Those bureaucrats and lawmakers sitting at their desks put America at risk. Anybody who is concerned about rights or morality just doesn’t get it, and the intelligence agents should be given a free hand, because, dammit, they just love their country *so* much.
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Who could have predicted that the agencies might be able to sidestep the safeguards that they themselves set into place?
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And Joe, before you get all congratulatory about the idea that “…the illegal activities have been exposed, and quickly…”, you need to read the bit about the DOJ investigation having been going on for years. There’s a habit of people viewing each reported abuse as being isolated and independent from the previous and the next one, instead of wondering what the systemic problems are.

Joe Klein:
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the importance of this issue depends on how you see the government–as benign or malignant. There are some who see the government as perpetually benign and many others who see it as perpetually malignant.
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Sigh…that is transparently, patently false. It’s rather shameful to witness a person of capable of subtlety and complexity like yourself descend into such reductive piffle.
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It’s not whether one views government as a whole as bad or good that is the determiner here, it’s whether one is in favor of strong regulation and independent oversight, not only in the case of government vs market, but even in the case of government vs government.
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It’s not that we see the government as inherently corrupt and useless, it’s that we’re in favor of regulation. FISA oversight prevents the unregulated executive from over-reaching in pursuit of its narrow interests, much like the Federal Reserve and Congress should have acted as a proper check on the excesses of the banking sector.
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I’m in neither camp.
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That’s not the point, Joe Klein. You are in a camp. It just happens to be the camp that tries to split the difference politically between yourselves and wherever the Republicans are at the moment. It also happens to be the camp that thought that a (pardon the pun) stainless Clinton presidency would have been the best of all worlds. It wasn’t…either of those things.
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I simply don’t see a concentrated, purposeful effort to spy on innocent American citizens
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Then you are deliberately concealing something from your otherwise able mind, Joe Klein.
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Look, I hate to keep returning to analogies (because they are tedious and imperfect), but let us.
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Suppose that the NSA was able to magically peer through the contents of every unopened envelope and package in the US the second that the mail hit a Post Office box or Federal Express bin. The interest in preventing another anthrax attack via mail would be compelling, wouldn’t it? The government, merely by scrupulously checking every unopened envelope, could separate mail into “likely to contain anthrax”, which would be set aside awaiting a secret court order to open (and disarm or quarantine), and “unlikely”, which would be allowed to go on its way unimpeded and unopened.
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This theoretical regime would be the equivalent of how passengers subject themselves to invasive searches by TSA equipment and personnel, and would essentially treat the entire national mail and delivery system as if it were taking place in a gigantic airport terminal. The only difference would be that, unlike air travelers who know when they are being searched and suspected, senders and recipients would be completely in the dark about how much suspicion their government held them in, because it would be completely secret.
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In what possible world would this regime be Constitutional under the Fourth Amendment? In what possible country would citizenry tolerate all of their mail and packages being subject to constant scrutiny by the state…besides those whose names start with the words “Soviet Socialist Republic of”?
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Yes, the possibility of another anthrax mail attack might be reduced, if we could get the enormous levers of the bureaucracy moving toward that particular mail piece (out of so many billions) in time for interdiction (a questionable enterprise at best).
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But how could you possibly think that this was an American thing to do?
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A communications dragnet, digital or otherwise, is precisely a “concentrated, purposeful effort to spy on innocent American citizens” so that suspect communication can be separated from the phone calls and emails of innocent people. It’s just like having all packages inspected for contraband, or all mail opened and read for “suspicious clues”, or all homes searched for dangerous weapons by white-gloved professionals who leave no trace. All communications are treated as suspect until the innocent are removed from the list.
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The very definition of “unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause” is contained in such a practice, Joe Klein. You are not allowing yourself to see the obvious. Somehow technology has entered into the equation, and you believe something about technology that makes its use substantially different than “search and seizure”, even though the outcome is the same. I’ve seen this phenomenon before. As a technology professional, it’s not that uncommon for those in my profession to witness from those exposed to digital technology relatively later in life than others.
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Make no mistake: a “concentrated, purposeful effort to spy on innocent American citizens” is exactly what a digital examination by a government agency of every communication Americans send or receive constitutes, whether the agents in charge decide appropriately to redact names, addresses and conversations of the innocent later, or not.
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The question is not “Do you think government is always bad?“, it’s “Do you think more regulation at this time is probably good?“.
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It seems like you’re making a crass political argument, Joe Klein. It seems as if you’re badly translating “liberals like government, conservatives hate government, people like me want government to do what’s necessary“, so that the uninformed who lean liberal can line themselves up with “it’s probably OK to trust Obama“. This sort of argument –especially when Obama has made a point of treating the voting public like adults– is ugly and beneath you, Joe Klein.
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Thanks for reading and considering this.

My god, your “clarification” makes you look more obtuse than ever. I’m with whomever said you need to STFU about this particular subject. You understand practically nothing about the program (if you could think straight about it, you’d realize that your sources can’t be trusted), nothing about what necessary and proper checks against possible abuse of power entail and nothing about the people who object to the programs as it has been corrupted since George Bush got a hold of it.
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Your “benign or malignant” false dichotomy is absurd on its face since most of the people who object to the current lawless program had few problems with FISA before it was systematically violated by the Bush Administration. Failure to adhere to FISA is the whole f*cking point. What a train wreck.

Somehow technology has entered into the equation, and you believe something about technology that makes its use substantially different than “search and seizure”, even though the outcome is the same.
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An argument I’ve made repeatedly. To many lay-people, the fact that somebody is using *technology* to solve a problem is the equivalent of waving a magic wand. Worried about oversight? No problem, there will be *technological* safeguards in place to prevent misuse. Worried about civil rights? No problem, ’cause we’ll use technology to only catch the bad guys.
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On more thing about that silly dichotomy, do you think self-proclaimed “conservatives” thought government was “benign” last year and is “malignant” now? Well, perhaps, because they’re insane but that should tell you something about what a stupid presumption about motive you’re fooling yourself with.

Sheperdwong and SZ: Can’t argue with your response and comments. I recall the late Robin Cook, Foreign Minister in the Blair Cabinet spending hours with us agonising about what to do as he saw the rush to war. He fought hard, failed and resigned. His speech on his resignation enthralled the House of Commons. It was a scathing critique about the way Bush and Blair fudged the evidence, etc, etc. He proved to be right. In the end he could not stop the tide.

My impression is that Pres Obama is in a tough place and he has given way to the very artful argument about turning the page, moving forward, etc. Scoundrels inside the system at the high level are less likely that see the inside of a prison.

Wait – I don’t see my local police department as benign or malignant. Therefore they shouldn’t need warrants to go into my house. THAT MAKES COMPLETE SENSE!

[...] FISA Violated TIME | Posted by Joe Klein Those of us who supported FISA reform last year did so for two reasons: 1. There is a real need to monitor conversations terrorists may be having with their associates in the US and 2. There is a real need to set legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor those conversations, to make sure that every domestic target is approved by the FISA court, and to make sure that any innocents swept up in the data-mining process are protected and their names expunged from any list of suspects. Those who opposed the program believed–correctly–that, despite the safeguards, the potential for government violations was substantial. [...]

most of these cases involve inadvertent screwups.
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If you got the various agencies involved to speak candidly, I think you’d find that they regard the inadvertent screwups to be the public leaks, not the illegal actions.