NSA Hearings last week
Several thoughts, in no particular order:
See Them Run, See Them Hide Dept: Turnout was light because Feingold frightens the hell out of his fellow Dems. They know the program is legal, and had no basis to suggest otherwise since the beginning. But it was a PR dream come true - since the program is classified they could attack the President repeatedly in the press knowing the administration could do little to defend itself. Feingold brought the fun to a complete stop by moving the issue from partisan hackery to action - with the exception of Pat "leaky" Leahy, they don't want to be seen in the same room with him.
A typical disconnected blog post on the hearings from Christy Hardin Smith at firedoglake:
"I’m just feeling a bit disgusted at the lack of participation by Senators on both sides of the aisle on this, who have decided to put short-term political considerations above concerns for the long-term welfare of our Constitutional Republic."
Actually, they put both their long and short-term political goals ahead of Russ Feingold's short-term political goals - it's a not a subtle difference.
What Russ taught us today dept: If your arguments are really thin, supplement them with quotes from extremist lefties like Glenn Greenwald. Glenn should sell a few more of his Bush-bashing books when they come out as a result. I suggest that it's not enough payment, though. I don't know what Greenwald's reputation as a "litigator" was before, but supporting a lunatic-fringe idea like bypassing the judicial branch in favor of having guilt assigned by legislative decree can't have helped much.
By the way, why "litigator" and not "attorney" or "lawyer"? Kinda reminds me of a Major I knew in the Air Force who responded poorly to the label "pilot" - "I'm an aviator", he would retort to those that dared to suggest he belonged to the same club as those that merely flew airplanes.
A Short Bus Full of Questions Dept: While I noticed that AJ Strata had posted a long review of the House Judicial Committee' questions from the Republicans, I noted that he didn't do one for the Dems' questions. I haven't searched, but the usual places I go didn't do one either. So I took a longer look at them myself, and figured out why. Here's a few examples - most of the questions seem fall into the same mold as the following:
Other than the President, what individuals at the White House are briefed on the program, and how often are they briefed?
Classified information is passed out on a need-to-know basis. When I worked with classified stuff in the military, the list of those people with a need-to-know was treated as sensitive as well. Why? Well, If I wanted classified info, but knew I would never get access to the storage area on my own, the next best thing would be to get a list of who can, so that I could exploit one or two of them to get it for me. And besides, the question has no bearing on whether the program is legal.
Does anyone independent of the NSA check persons in the US whose phone calls or emails are searched or seized to make sure that they are not being targeted based on their political opinions?
The way this is phrased makes it a "yes" or "no" type of question. Go ahead and try it - answer both ways to the core portion of the question and see what you could do with this in a political ad. It's a sick parody of Perry Mason - "Answer yes or no, Mr. Jones - after you murdered your wife, did you eat lunch?" Oh, and the question has nothing to do with the overall legality of the program.
When was the last time you supplied any Member of the House Judiciary Committee or any Committee of the Congress a copy of such minimization procedures?
Don't these people have google? And what does this have to do with the legality of the program?
Once the NSA decides to monitor the communications of a person in the United States, do they also target and monitor the communications of any person in the United States who communicates with the original target? If so, does someone first determine whether the second target is knowingly conspiring with a foreign terrorist?
More framing from the Perry Mason Wanna-bes.
How many hours and dollars have been spent searching or seizing the phone calls or emails of people in the US, and how much of this has been spent on people who have never been charged with any crime?
More fishing for soundbites to place in attack ads, and asking for classified material (budgets for classified programs are also classified. If you have to ask why, you most likely lack the ability to understand the answer.). A two-fer!
To be fair, there are some relevant questions in the document, but far too many are like the above.
Can't We take Them At Face Value For A Change? Dept: Lots of hay was made over the differing conclusions made in two articles about the former FISA judges who testified wednesday (here and here). Lots of blogs jumped in with their interpretations of the judges' comments to support one article or another as being right (examples here and here). Since the judges were clear that they weren't going to comment on the legality of the program, why can't we just point out that both articles were wrong, and avoid over-parsing the testimony to look for something that was clearly out of context in regard to the legality issue?
We All Have Our Reasons Dept: Although most of the left's support for the Feingold Censure Resolution is undoubtedly driven by BDS, I've discovered that some on the left may have different reasons. From Jane Hamsher:
"With with the help of the DNC field organizers and the campaign of leading Democrat Russ Feingold, 65 people to show up and pushed back against the ads that the fearful, desperate GOP has been running in Wisconsin upbraiding the handsome, manly and brave Feingold for wanting to censure the admitted criminal actions of George W. Bush."
John Dean is Irrelevant Dept: What possible contribution could John Dean make to the debate on the NSA? It appears to me that his only contribution is to bolster the left's smear tactic of comparing Bush to Nixon. But this is nothing new - after all, the comparisons of the Iraq war to Viet Nam started before the war did.
