White House Writes Pre-Emptive Signing Statement on Exclusivity
(Thanks to Selise for the YouTube)
Feingold: The DNI envisions a government where, if it were technologically feasible, would listen in on every, every international phone call made by its citizens. And read every, every international email. Now that’s a police state, Mr. President, not the United States of America.
The letter from Mukasey and McConnell to Congressional leaders is basically a laundry list of FISA amendments with the Administration’s opinion on those amendments. Here’s the quick summary.
Amendments that would merit a veto:
- [no number] no communication collected if the govt knows beforehand that it is to or from a person believed to be in the US
- 3913: Significant Purpose test
- 3912: Specific Individual Target test
- 3915: Limits disseminating foreign intelligence information
- 3907: Straight immunity
- 3927: Substitution of govt for defendants
- 3919: FISC review on immunity
Amendments it doesn’t like but that wouldn’t merit a veto:
- 3930: 4-year sunset
- 3920: Court review of compliance with minimization
Amendments it very much likes (surprise! They’re both Bond amendments)
- 3941: Expedited FISA review
- 3938: Add language on WMD
A pre-emptive signing statement on exclusivity
We understand that the amendment relating to the exclusive means provision in S.2248 is undergoing additional revision. As a result, we are withholding comment on this amendment and its text at this time. We note, however, that we support the provision currently contained in S. 2248 and to support its modification, we would have to conclude that the amendment provides for sufficient flexibility to permit the President to protect the Nation adequately in times of national emergency.
My takeaway? If the Administration says it would accept a minimization review, I say we make it a priority; it would vastly improve the bill. I would love to see the “significant purpose” amendment pass, and have it serve as a poison pill. This Administration won’t even commit that their wiretapping really relates to foreign intelligence! Hell, they might as well say that a minor purpose of wiretapping Democrats is foreign intelligence, because Democrats have different foreign policy goals than Republicans. Also, there are a few of Feingold’s important amendments that don’t appear here. If BushCo don’t oppose them, then by all means let’s have more protection and oversight.
Kyle entering the M&M letter into the record.
Hey RevDeb, I fixed it for you!
touché.
Highly classified and sensitive…
Shorter Bond: Got to keep our illegal conduct secret.
Oops, meant Kyl, not Bond.
easily swappable. Who’d know?
I did a new liveblog thread, just to keep things tidy. Chat wherever you so desire.
Feingold on DNI’s police state now at the top of the post.
Sad. So sad that it’s come to this.
Will we EVER get our country back?
McConnell from the telecoms world. Now DNI. Gee, who’d’a thunk things’d turn out this way?
Shocked. I’m shocked!
Hard to know what to say about anything any more. The nightmare of Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here is coming true.
i think that is my favorite clip so far.
Yup. I’ve watched it about 10 times so far. And it goes so nicely at the top of this post.
Mine, too! Thanks for putting it up top EW : )
I particularly like the way he punctuates that sentence with the crisp snap of the turning page. Just perfect.
Oops, meant to also specifically thank you for making the clip selise… Thanks again!
Yeah, you gotta thank selise, because she tried to teach me how to do it and it has taken me all week and I haven;t looked at her instructions yet.
or you could blame my lousy instruction writing skills. very kind of you not to do that (especially as i understand that you are an expert on that kind of thing).
i’ve started using screensteps the last few days (it’s really easy and free – i recommend it) for info and instructions. i’ll make a short tutorial with pictures and screen shots, and post it for people with macs… but first the weekly hearings list and some time on another fun project in the works. should be able to post it in a couple of days – so my advice is to ignore the written instructions and wait for the one with pictures.
Shorter Junya: “Ah only like the one with pictures. Laura Belle, where’s Turdblossom when ah need ‘im? Ah need mah crayons sharpened.”
in my defense i will say that i never claimed to be qualified for the presidency. at least i have some awareness of my limitations. *g*
so, looks like the dems should have held out for a majority vote on exclusivity and made the Rs filibuster (which they’ve been telegraphing they really, really don’t want to do – and may not have) to get their preferred 60 votes required for passage.
We have Frank Luntz to thanks for Americans being vigorously in favor of both ‘liability protection’ and ‘personal responsibility’.
This is heartbreaking irony worthy of Verdi — the populace votes, believing that thereby it controls its destiny, and in the same country, at the same moment, in the center of the populace’s government, using the news about the voting to obscure its movements, a cabal strips away those inalienable rights which The People trust their government to respect.
Precisely.
that’s why I can’t get too wrapped up in election returns.
A really sad day/time for the country.
Hapless Harry up now. Sheldon sitting in the hot seat. Dealing with stuff other than FISA.
I’ve moved onto returns. It was a long day waiting for FISA, I gotta say. Stupid obstructionist Republicans.
Sheldon sitting in the hot seat. Dealing with stuff other than FISA.
Yep. And if the Senate deals with economic stimulus for the rest of the week, then it won’t hand FISA to the House this week.
It would be justice if the House were to sit on it and let it expire.
They probably won’t but it sure would be nice.
Interested to see what those R changes to the amendments are.
Translation: We’re out of here in less than a year. What are you going to do about it?
I would like to thank my senior senator, Chuck Schumer, for vouching as to Mukasey’s character.
Such a guy.
Similar privacy trends across the pond.
Bill Richardson looks muy guapo with a beard.
I think he’s been hanging out with Joe Wilson too much.
But frankly, it looks better on Richardson than on Bill. Perhaps Richardson should have run with the beard?
Better on Richardson than Joe? Yes, Bill should have run with the beard. Looks youthful and DFH at the same time.
I have been totally consumed the last two days with work issues, so am late to this party. I have been reading across several of the progressive blogs and always save this one for last, as it is the best.
Preznit Chimp seems to be willing to give the telecoms every kind of protection available, and Congress will go along. Bush continues to throw out the concept that if they are not protected, that they will never help out in a pinch again, or words to that effect. So, we are ‘buying’ their cooperation to help out in the war on terrorism…
It will last until the next time that we don’t pay the bill, however…
I may be a hopeful, fairy believing innocent, but I’m thinking the number of dems vs. repubs voting today may sway the people interested in keeping their seats in congress.
howdy Loo Hoo. Vote yet? I’m still at office, heading out in a few.
Sure wish I could vote for Edwards.
I did. But neither of my Obama loving daughters have voted yet. The hispanic kids in my class said their parents are voting Hillary.
I just finished reading the Mukasey/McConnell letter. I am hoping that Senators Feingold, Dodd and others will provide a point-by-point written rebuttal of each of the arguments in the letter.
I’m wondering if the Administration thought it had to put this out because they felt that some of the support they had was wavering? I would like to think that, but may just be wishful thinking.
For those looking for a poison pill – take your pick – all of the Feingold amendments are poison pills, as are the Specter and Feinstein compromises.
Personally, I’d like to see the Senate tell Bush/Cheney to go f**k themselves…
Maybe they held off the amendment votes to see whether the people are revolting. Uh, let me rephrase that: whether the R’s days are numbered. Uh, let me re-rephrase that: whether it’s Obama.
As I have said before, I think this is all a song and dance to distract from immunity. Immunity is what Bush/Cheney and our corporate kleptocracy want. The rest of this is atmospherics. Yes, they will try to spike as many of the amendments as they can. The others they will ignore or reject via a signing statement. And they will continue doing what they have been doing. McConnell (Mike) is a serial liar. Mukasey is a Gonzales clone. Nothing they say is to be trusted. Osama could never destroy our democracy but this klatch of totalitarian clowns can and will.
OT – Undersea cable repairs begin in the Gulf.
I have been wondering if the President is right that we still will have our Googl, after the NTSC band auction, if Googl deploys some new GPS-like platform to utilize that spectrum, then does a Yah-who and starts sending scads of searchstrings to an immunized monopoly reincarnate BellCo for profiling communities of interest. In other words, Bush seemed to be saying you lose most of the 4th amendment except the residual parts which are somewhat ample. But the Republican plan to sponsor an 18-year sunset provision for reduced taxes on the wealthy is a legacy the Democrats ought to delete from the proposed legislation; might make a nice post to examine the socioeconomic identity of the predictable outcome of yet another tax break for the rich, usual Republican policy balance the budget on the backs of the poor.
Nice summary John!
Or as I’ve been thinking of it all day today:
Shorter Administration: “The 4th Amendment? Who needs it! The American people are the least private folks in the world, so they’ll never miss it.”
My reading of a couple of sentences of the McConnell-Mukasey
lie festletter.“Liability protection” sounds so much nicer than “immunity”, sort of like calling a “death camp” “a human resources processing center”.
Just result? Bite me.
“who answered their Government’s call” Get it? They’re telecoms and they answered the call. Ha ha ha. Oh, and notice it is “their” Government, not “ours”. Unintentional I am sure but deeply revealing.
“the Government can continue to rely upon the assistance of the private sector” Can you say strawman? I thought you could. If government makes a legitimate request of corporations, it has every reason to expect their assistance. Apparently McConnell and Mukasey have never heard of them but there are these things called court orders and other things called legal departments that are around precisely to deal with these kinds of situations.
“and enforce its laws” Oh the irony! You know one way of enforcing the laws is not to break them yourself nor have telecoms abet you in their breaking. Just saying.
Our country is reading like second rate Kafka.
Let me see if I’ve got this right:
If we don’t
pardonimmunize the telcoms for breaking the law just because the Big Dick asked them to, they may actually like say “no we can’t do that without a court order” next time?And that’s a problem because?
Because then Bush and Cheney couldn’t break the laws in order to enforce them.
Like I said bad Kafka.
I think the real problem is that without retroactive immunity the existing lawsuits trials will move forward into discovery phase, and that will expose evidence of impeachable offenses by the Executive. Obviously Team W and Team Dick are not in a position to agree to any version of that scenario.
Well, actually, Team Dick might like to see Team W get dusted, come to think of it.
These guys have committed so many impeachable offenses out in the open for all to see that I just can’t see them really caring that much about a few more.
I think the real problem is that without retroactive immunity the existing lawsuits trials will move forward into discovery phase, and that will expose evidence of impeachable offenses by the Executive.
I think that is only part of it. The other part probably relates to financial fraud. Telecom carries a vast amount of online financial data and transactions, and if you were involved in fraud or offshore transfers, you’d want to keep telecom information under tight control.
(BushCo hasn’t exactly made FBI fraud investigators a top priority; probably no surprise.)
————–
Loo Hoo @ 35 — good point. For all the hoopla about who won which states, the bigger, fundamental story seems to be the surprising number of new voters. Dems need to stand up to BushCheney on many things. FISA and PAA are an ideal place to begin.
Sorry, I am a little distracted tonight.
And that’s a problem because?“Tell me again why we SHOULD give it to them?”
If we don’t immunize the telcoms for breaking the law … they may say “no we can’t do that without a court order” next time?
Basically. I’ve asked WTF the penalty provisions are doing in the law, looking forward, if they’re going to be blown off anyway. Repeal 50 USC 1809 and 50 USC 1810, and all the other privacy provisions. They’re meaningless, by Congress’s own hand.
As many of you probably know, Arizona has enacted a strict voter ID law. The key piece of identification contemplated by the law is a government issued photo ID; presumably a driver’s license. Arizona now issues driver licenses that are good for twenty years at a time. Mine was issued in 2001. In late 2003, when I moved to a different house about 2 miles from the last one, I went to a MVD office to update my license; all they did was put a sticker on the back and write in my new address on the sticker in addition to updating the address in the State’s MVD computer. I was able to vote with it fine in 2006 when the new and strict Arizona voter ID law first took effect. Today when appearing at my local polling place, a group of addled senior citizens working the polls huddled and determined that since the address on the front of the license didn’t match my address on the voter rolls that it was no good and that I was prohibited from voting. I was offered a provisional ballot, but was specifically told that it would not be counted unless the election was close (which I also think is wrong, but that is what they told me). When I demanded their names so that I could properly sue them for disenfranchising me; they threatened to call the police on me and have me arrested. I, of course, offered the use of my cell phone for the call and asked them to hurry up so that I could get it all on the news. I was there for quite some time, and no police ever showed; so I finally left (without having voted I might add). While I was there, I would say that a full 30-50% of the people trying to vote had similar issues; most of them walked out in disgust, although a couple executed provisional ballots. And for the record, these were not minorities and illegal aliens being weeded out either; this was happening in literally the most affluent area in the city; most of the cars in the parking lot were foreign and very expensive. This is the most maddening thing I have ever personally seen voting in my entire life. It is my belief that many laws were, and are, being violated in Arizona polling places. It is crystal clear to me that the onerous identification and proof requirements for registration are being falsely applied to actually exercising the right to vote once registered; which is not what the screwed up law requires. I later returned to the polling place with copies of the law, multiple pieces of identification (including my original birth certificate which my wife was kind enough to find), as well as a video camera to document the atrocities. I was still denied the right to vote, but was allowed to vote a provisional ballot which, again, was not guaranteed to be even counted. I was also threatened with arrest again, this time for having a video camera. I would like to personally thank Karl Rove, and his best friends, the Democrats in Congress, for all of this through their “bipartisan” work on the
ScrewHelp America Vote Act. Is there anything significant that the Democrats, supposedly our own voices and people in Congress, haven’t screwed us to high heaven on? Seriously??bmaz, that is just unacceptable. Did you get names? Will it be possible for you to bring suit?
Anything we can do to help???
Thanks Phred; but no there is nothing for you guys to do. I have the names; but I doubt I will file a suit, quite frankly it would take up too much of my time. I do intend to file a formal protest with the Secretary of State and County Recorder; that is likely as far as it goes. My real outrage is more that if this is happening to me in the upscale part of town; what in the world is going on with minorities and others in other parts. From what I can discern from others, it is really ugly out there and there are also many people being refused by being told that they had already voted mail in ballots when they never requested nor voted a mail in ballot.
You mentioned having a video camera during your second sojourn to the polls. Any chance of a video being made available for raising hell on the progressive blogs?
I’d understand if your anonymity requirements stand in the way, but I had to ask.
I was made to turn it off; turns out there really is a law that you can’t have a camera in the polling place (how does the media always get the clips?) so I don’t know how good the footage is. It was pretty much background stuff I was taking right before I got up there. I have it saved and will download it tomorrow. I doubt there is much of use, but if there is, heh heh, my guess is that it will find it’s way onto the nets…..
Bmaz,
Make them stop!
Dickheads, they are dickheads.
Thanks for sharing your story.
We dare call our nation a “democracy”
Like Mollie Ivins decrying the war, “We need people in the
streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”
I just posted the entirety of your comment on the current FDL post ’cause it needed to be seen by all!
bmaz – This happened to me in 2006. Only I refused the provisional and they said I could come back with utility bills showing my home address. I did that and they were surprised when I did come back. I lectured them and asked how many people had they sent away that did not come back. Several people I talked to in 2006 took the provisional ballot. Who knows if they got counted.
Today I was only asked for my driver’s license, which still does not match my current address listed on their rolls. I had the other docs this time but they didn’t ask for them. Just my license and gave me the ballot.
(That ballot had 24 people running for the Dem nom!!!)
There was a reporting website in 2006. I hope you submitted the provisional. AZ also had waiting times over 2 hours in phoenix and possibly some people still voting…
Oh I had utility statements, my voter registration materials and sample ballot they had sent to me, my vehicle registration (listed as an ID under the law), my birth certificate (I am a native Arizonan), my aforementioned driver’s license, and a printed out copy of the stinking law with the relevant parts highlighted. Still no joy. I did vote the provisional under protest.
bmaz, I hope you won’t mind if I repeat your story (with credit) on a couple of little sites where people will be interested and need to know? Our ConGov is trying to convince Canadians that we have a problem with voter fraud (we don’t; until these guys started messing around, our elections ran like clockwork on the low tech known as pencil and paper, standard ballot across the country), and they’ve begun introducing the same barriers I read about here.
More than welcome to use my travails, that is why I put them out there. This stuff needs to be stopped. Thanks for all the condolences folks; but I’ll be okay. I am one testy little prick when confronted with such BS; I have a pretty good record as to what happened (although the video of the ordeal would have been perfect).
BSRH – Way cool story; and way to go!
EW – Meager food for souls forgot; but thanks.
Unless you have a strong heart, low blood pressure, and infinite free time; don’t move here! It’ll kill ya’. *g*
Heh, My in-laws have a winter place on the ocean in Naples; been down there a couple of times. Never seen so many cops per capita in my life; not very friendly ones either.
It won’t make you feel better, but given my ambivalence to Macs at this point, know that I went to the Apple store yesterday. They checked my ID when I gave them a credit card. The credit card has my nickname, Marcy; the driver’s license my real name, Margaret.
I had to explain it to him about 10 times before he believed Marcy was a family nickname. But he wasn’t going to let me spend my money, all because he was asking for greater ID than it would take to get on a plane.
I have to say, as we tend not to use credit cards. that the most problem I have is trying to pay with cash. Spending cash in Canada is no problem. Nuts!
Slightly OT, but … bummer. The Apple stores that I go to (I have two that I frequent) are extremely helpful, and once they get to know you, can be a wealth of great tips and info. When you’re ready, head on back.
A lot of good, creative thinking goes on in those Apple stores every day. And the Mac Genius bars are, IMHO, one of the finest customer service setups I’ve ever encountered. Plus, for $90/year, anyone can sign up for 12 months of ProCare one-on-one, tutorials, and you can make appointments as often as once/week if you want — podcasting, video editing… you name it. http://www.apple.com/retail/procare/
My Apple stores have been tremendous resources for myself, and for several teachers that I know — who then use the skills picked up at Apple to create resources that really engage their students. (Now, some of their former students work in thos Apple stores, so the cycle continues… ;-))
Bummer that you had a bad experience; I’d encourage you to try again.
I’ve got a shorter one that is a good compliment to yours:
My SO and I went to vote (against Chimpy) in 2004. We had moved recently so neither of our ID had the proper address on them. When my SO showed her ID, two of the workers started questioning her until the one with the list said “she’s a Repuglican”. The questioning ended and she was waved through to vote.
When I got there next, I said sardonically “I’m a registered Repuglican too” (expecting to annoy them); they basically checked my name on their list and waved me through!
We both went right in and, without coordination, and voted almost a straight Dem ticket.
FYI, neither of us have voted for a Repug for years but never bothered to change our registration. (I left mine that way just to screw with Rover’s numbers).
To neuter my own story; this IS Florida, so no surprises about corruption in anything government. Pinellas county (St.Petersburg) has incredibly mixed demographics (one of the things I liked about this place coming here from just outside the Beltway).
Down here, even bmaz wouldn’t dare do what he did in his home area; you are safer walking through a crack neighborhood with money hanging out of your pocket than dealing with the local police (the crackheads will take your money, but won’t beat you up if you give it to them; unlike the police who will still beat you up AND take your money AND charge you with resisting).
Ouch, sorry about the lousy grammar; I’ve been writing way too much “C” code this morning to form a proper sentence in English. (Assembler is worse since everything is in RPN).
Who needs a 4th Amendment? Bush could never count that high anyway.
bmaz, I believe HAVA was a project that Philip Zelikow worked on. I wonder if the ACLU would be interested in filing a lawsuit and seeking an injunction for the general election.
That’s a great idea. I know in MA, ACLU is fighting Real ID, and I would bet the national ACLU would be very interested in this.
bmaz, i’ve recently moved and re-registered. today on my way out the door i just happened to catch a l.a. times article saying re-registered voters and newly registered voters have to show i.d.
as in arizona, california DMV just inputs your new address into the database and doesn’t send out a new i.d. i started to freak, thinking they would make me vote provisional. i grabbed bills and a print-out confirming DMV had rec’d my change of address and headed for the polls.
the women at the table never asked for identification and i voted the regular ballot, but the experience showed me the HUGE gap between voter laws and DMV procedures that has to be rectified. your nightmare confirms this.
bmaz, wow, just wow. Tennessee doesn’t have that law yet, and I voted with only the card they sent me years ago. Not even a photo ID.
Tennessee for Huckabee!
Obama wins Alaska.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……kup-tapes/
Remember the lady in charge of email backups for the Whitehouse back then. Before coming to the WH, she worked for Wachovia:
Perhaps it is a coincidence but it seems another of her employers have criminal
enterpriseproclivities. BlueStateRedhead has family in a state which is Wachovia country, and we always joked that it was the bank that watched over you. Guess not. not if you are elderly and preyed up by criminal telemarketers (Wachovia is I believe the name of a GA tribe of Native Americans, and I could look it up, but I am just too frigging tired).http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02…..ia.html?hp
Bmaz,
So sorry for your troubles. And after such an exciting week of observing the
hookerscelebrities and football fans, this must be especially depressing. Not to mention the fact that you are one of the great champion of the rule of law, it must piss you off for that reason, too.Seriously, on the later.
This may not be a great conciliation, but here is a happy ending story from the BlueBayState.
In my part of the BlueState, our little town spent very big bucks at my fervent request to send an absentee ballot FedEX to a family member in a very distant country so that the junior BSRH could vote in the primary. Junior BSRH then went all the way across the very congested city to return it by US embassy mail. Don’t know how that was managed, but I got a kick out of the fact that the State Department went the extra mile for a town that went the extra 8 000 miles to allow a Registered Dem to vote in a state that went overwhelming for Kerry.
There’s more.
Junior BSRH then wrote a thank you email to town and Mom for teaching her what a democracy can do.
Sniff, happy type. mild snoopy dance.
Great story, thanks
Great story about junior BSRH : ) Over a million voters in our BlueBayState went Dem yesterday compared to less than 500k for the ‘thugs. Brings a tear to one’s eye ; )
And thanks also for the Wachovia story. IIRC they were implicated in fraud related to the shit-pile as well. Guess they weren’t philosophically opposed to crime as a business model.
Just a quick warning over the story where Hayden admits the waterboarding of three 9/11 related detainees.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0205.html
I strongly believe that the Govt did not waterboard in these cases. It is important for them to hype and assert the bogus hijacker story by associating it with an over the top, national security bitch slapping necessity. As I said in a previous thread,
It is now my working theory that no detainees have been tortured with waterboarding because in the case of KSM and the two others the direct video evidence was supposedly destroyed. This is an obvious cannard.
It is likely that there were no torture tapes because the three are likely manipulated patsies or agents, or some combination. Why would an agency have to extract information from its own tools.
We have been judiciously studying created realities.
OT, but this sites attracts some fairly geeky political junkies, so I wanted to share a link to some NYT web apps:
http://politics.nytimes.com/el…..index.html
Here’s hoping that the better media organizations can continue to develop credible, usable web apps. The interactive vote maps go down to the county level, where it becomes more clear that states aren’t simply ‘red’ or ‘blue.’
The NYT is designing information for easy browsing and exploration; interested readers can explore data and draw their own conclusions.
FauxNewz and other raunchy partisan gabfests can’t hope to compete with web apps like these… Hehehehehe…
Who are you calling geeky? ; ) Oh. Right. That would be me. So for the other geeks around here, who prefer vote totals to percentages, here is a handy little summary table of votes cast yesterday (posted on the Boston Globe website). What I find most encouraging about these, is only in CO, UT, and AK do you see vastly more Republicans voting than Democrats. In every other contest with a head-to-head matchups, they are either running neck-and-neck (generally in the South) or there are large majorities going to Dems.
Excellent! Thanks – another bookmark in my folder…
Those Alaska numbers are bizarre, though…. must be a mistype? There can’t be only 302 caucus voterse for Obama, and over 8,000 total Republicans turning out. That doesn’t make sense.
Good resource – thanks!
Oh you noticed those, eh? I’m not sure how caucus “votes” are recorded. I think in some cases they are proportional representations, not head counts. However, I have no idea how things work in AK, nor do I know if the Dems and Reps employ a different system to record the tally. Hopefully I’ll find out more later…
I saw that! It was much better than trying to figure out 22 sec of state websites, especially when you have no idea where these places are.
especially for phred, feingold’s complete fisa floor statements from yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWCy3PklqK4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z3RFnc6V_8
Thanks selise! : )
any time phred!
especially for marcy, the weekly list of congressional hearings is back from vacation. (i know marcy isn’t the only one waiting on this one….)
Oral Hatch has got one hell of a lot of nerve to be asking “do we really need a statute to ensure the separation of powers” after what THIS ADMINISTRATION has done to that concept! He’s on the same list of mine with LIEberman and really really needs to GO AWAY FOREVER!
aaaaand…… this is so LAME to be arguing the stimulation legislation WITH FISA! WHAT! a clusterf&#!*ck!!!!!!!!