We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

Molly Ivins, August 30, 1944 – January 31, 2007

1.31.2007 FBI turns to broad new wiretap method -- FBI's Internet wiretaps after retiring "Carnivore" appear to involve compiling massive databases of information on thousands of users at a time. By Declan McCullagh

1.30.2007 Marty Lederman and 22 other constitutional law professors write to the leaders of Congress regarding their proper role in setting limits on Bush in Iraq. (Here)

1.29.2007 "Let them have their pot -- The feds should stop harassing sick patients who have the legal right to use marijuana." >>>

1.29.2007 U.S. judge sets aside verdict of corporate fraud in Iraq on technical ground NYT via Jurist

The case was expected to be the first of dozens to be filed under the act, a crucial tool against government fraud that allows company insiders to sue and share any damages awarded to the government. Numerous such cases from Iraq have been filed and are under seal while the Justice Department completes its initial investigations, lawyers and federal officials say.

But an underlying issue, raised by Custer Battles during its trial and on appeal, was whether bills submitted to the Coalition Provisional Authority could be regarded as bills presented to the United States government. The coalition authority is an entity created and largely financed by the United States to run Iraq, and largely staffed by American officials, but with an ambiguous legal status.

What is very odd, however, is that the government is now arguing that because of its compliance with FISA, the court of appeals should vacate the district court injunction.

According to the Department of Justice, there is "no longer any live genuine controversy to adjudicate." Well, that would be true, if the government were committed to FISA compliance going forward -- in which case the government could simply live under the injunction, and withdraw its appeal. But the government understandably wishes to preserve its future prerogatives to depart from FISA, which is why it has not withdrawn its appeal.

1.26.2007 Kafka Meets Alice in Wonderland: "Secrecy Is at Issue in Suits Opposing Spy Program" By ADAM LIPTAK, NYT

1.25.2007 "Deregulatory Review" Lisa Heinzerling (Congress may propose. A Presidential Appointee will dispose)

1.25.2007 "Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon" (Here)

1.23.2007 " Democratic Response of Senator Jim Webb to the President's State of the Union Address" (Here)

1.23.2007 David Corn on the first day of the trial.

A diagram of Fitzgerald's case would be a straight line: Libby sought official information, he shared this classified material with reporters, he then made up a story to hide all this from investigators. To get a graphic representation of Well's argument, take a large pot of spaghetti--with plenty of sauce--and hurl it against the wall. Then look at the wall. (Here)

1.22.2007 "Lying Like It’s 2003", Frank Rich

1.19.2007 "It's Still About The Oil" By Antonia Juhasz
Bob Cesca: "Unsolved Mystery: The Iraqi Hydrocarbon Law"

1.22.2007 "DOJ Inspector General finds FBI provided public with "inaccurate" info. about Foley e-mails"

1.22.2007 Gregory Djerejian on The Surge:

This time, however, if it comes to all this, let's be sure to ascribe blame in the right quarters, to the maximalists who continued to promise us victory, when instead intense region-wide damage control initiatives (many of them diplomatic) should have been the priority. Let's remember who helped drive us over the cliff, in other words, if the faith-based adventurism we're seeing w/ Kagan et al. ends up, as is so very likely, not working as intended by the breezily cocksure authors of this half-baked plan. In the meantime, even if we have to drag them along kicking and screaming, let's also try to keep them just a wee bit honest--by showcasing that we don't have enough resources to do the job right--so as to try to avoid more lives getting sacrificed in vain for a victory that is not achievable in the manner they contemplate--not least by reminding them of the details of their very own plan.

Then we learned that Green, a 19-year-old Texas high-school dropout, had enlisted despite three convictions: fighting, plus alcohol and drug possession. Once, the Army would have rejected him.

Now, he was accepted, under a "moral waiver." He got "born again" religiously while being trained to kill legally; got sent to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division's 502nd Infantry Regiment; got shot at; and got discharged for a "personality disorder" after allegedly leading the Abeer massacre.

Yet according to a January 9, 2007 Associated Press story by Ryan Lenz, three months before that massacre, an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq had diagnosed Green as a "homicidal threat." (We assume they did not mean he was simply a well-trained soldier.) Green sought psychiatric help in December, 2005, pleading he was so angry about the war and so desperate to avenge his platoon friends' deaths that he felt driven to kill Iraqi citizens.

They told him to get some sleep.

Two prominent labor organizations have sued the Bush administration for failing to protect nearly 20 million workers from job injuries. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed a rule requiring employers to pay for protective clothing, face shields, gloves and other equipment used by workers. But before the proposal became a standard Mr. Bush was elected to office. Since then, the Department of Labor has neglected to enact the standard and has consistently failed to ensure the safety of America’s working men and women.

"If somebody has the power of life and death over you, that's a very good guy to feel aligned with, and so the mind does this: It tells people, look, I'm on his team because he has the power of life and death over me... What you see is, you see an absence of the reactions that we might anticipate. There's no great rage. There's no terrible sadness coming forth... That means the mind has compartmentalized his plight, which is what the mind does."

Okay, that might explain Hornbeck and Devlin. What about Bush and us?

Paul Krugman:

Why, then, are prosecutors that the Bush administration itself appointed suddenly being pushed out?

The likely answer is that for the first time the administration is really worried about where corruption investigations might lead.
...
The next two years, in other words, are going to be a rolling constitutional crisis. (Here)

1.19.2007 Must Read: "WIPO and the Global Consolidation of Rights in Audiovisual Works"

1.19.2007 Paul Bremmer has been invited to testify about the missing 9 Billion Dollars. (Here)

1.19.2007 Robert Parry:

In one of the most chilling public statements ever made by a U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales questioned whether the U.S. Constitution grants habeas corpus rights of a fair trial to every American.
...
Gonzales continued, "The Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended" except in cases of rebellion or invasion." (Here)

1.19.2007 "[JURIST] The US Senate passed the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007 [PDF text; CRS summary] by a 96-2 vote [roll call] Thursday, but declined [roll call] to create a Senate Office of Public Integrity to investigate ethics breaches." (Here)

1.18.2007 "New military commissions manual allows convictions on hearsay, coerced evidence"

1.18.2007 What now!? "Child Car Seat Findings Withdrawn"

"Consumer Reports was right to withdraw its infant car seat test report and I appreciate that they have taken this corrective action," said NHTSA administrator Nicole Nason. "I was troubled by the report because it frightened parents and could have discouraged them from using car seats."

Also forgotten in the mainstream news coverage was the fact that in 1998, Armitage was one of the 18 signatories to a seminal letter from the neoconservative Project for the New American Century urging President Bill Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein by military force if necessary.

Armitage joined a host of neoconservative icons, such as Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, William Kristol, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Many of the signers, including Donald Rumsfeld, would become architects of Bush’s Iraq War policy five years later.

Nevertheless, the Armitage-as-innocent-gossip version of events was embraced by leading Washington pundits as the final proof that Rove and the White House had gotten a bum rap on the Plame affair.

1.17.2007

"Justice Dept. to Seek Court's Approval for U.S. Spying" NYT
The Justice Department, easing a Bush administration policy, said Wednesday it has decided to give an independent body authority to monitor the government's controversial domestic spying program. What flaming chutzpa!
In a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said this authority has been given to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and that it already has approved one request for monitoring the communications of a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida or an associated terror group.

Gonzales balks at releasing FISC order authorizing domestic surveillance"

GWB: ... "Nothing has changed in the program except the court has said we've analyzed it and it's a legitimate way to protect the country." (Here)

Congressman Silvestre Reyes, D-TX, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: "This announcement does not end our Committee's interest in this matter. Until our Committee has the opportunity to review the Court orders and conduct in-depth oversight over this program, I am withholding judgment on whether it is effective and whether it protects the rights of the American people. (Here)

Marty Lederman: "According to the letter, the FISA court seems to have approved orders finding that at least part of the FISA statutory standard was [would be?] satisfied -- that "one of the communicants is a member or agent of Al Qaeda or an associated terrorist organization." (That's not quite the statutory standard, which requires that the target of the intercept be such an agent, and also that "each of the facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.") It apparently took "considerable time and work" for DOJ to persuade the FISA judge to go along with whatever this newfangled sort of approval is." (Here)

Glenn Greenwald: What seems to have happened is that they convinced one single FISA judge whom they like to sign a broad, sweeping Order allowing them to do everything they were doing before but declaring it all to be in compliance with FISA. That is why the Committee Democrats are so eager to get the Order. But, as Schumer pointed out, they could just start eavesdropping without FISA warrants again any time they want because they continue to insist that they have that power. And if they did, we would never know (unless someone told Jim Risen again).
That seems like a very compelling reason why the court should continue to decide whether they, in fact, broke the law. The question is not moot even though they are claiming to have stopped warrantless eavesdropping because the conduct in question is both capable of reptition and likely to evade review (because it will be done in secret). (Here) Dan Eggen:Administration officials suggested that the move was aimed in part at quelling persistent objections to the NSA spying by Democrats who now control Congress and that it is intended to slow or even derail challenges making their way through the federal courts. The Justice Department immediately filed a notice with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit yesterday informing the panel of the new program and promising to file papers "addressing the implications of this development" on pending litigation. (Here)

Peter M. Shane: Does the Administration think that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court can authorize a program of data mining? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court only has authority to decide matters over which Congress has vested jurisdiction in the court through FISA. With regard to electronic surveillance, warrants may issue only upon an application that includes “the identity, if known, or a description of the specific target of the electronic surveillance.” The reference to a “specific target” would seem to foreclose the possibility that the FISA court could sign off on any broad program of data mining. (Here)

Ann Beeson, ACLU: “It’s another clear example of the government playing a shell game to avoid accountability and judicial scrutiny.” (Here)

Big Tent Democrat says: "Alberto Gonzales Should Be Impeached"

In his speech today, Attorney General Gonzales utterly repudiates the view he expressed under oath to the Senate. He now states that it is his view that a state of war is in fact a blank check for the President, that there are no limits to Presidential wartime power and that he no longer recognizes the role of the courts in our system of government regarding national security issues. (Here)

1.17.2007 "UN rights investigator visiting US to review terror detention practices"