SCOTUSBlog on the Ceballos Decision

Basically this decision is outrageous, it severely limits the Constitutional rights of whistleblowers and is completely impractical. SCOTUSBLOG has the scoop.

Today, the Court took that very signifiant step, holding that "when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline." This apparently means that employees may be disciplined for their official capacity speech, without any First Amendment scrutiny, and without regard to whether it touches on matters of "public concern" -- a very significant doctrinal development.

Or perhaps not quite. In order to issue such a holding, the Court would have had to distinguish or overrule Givhan v. Western Line Consol. School Dist., 439 U. S. 410, 414 (1979), which provided First Amendment protection to an English teacher who had raised concerns to the principal about racism in her school’s employment practices. Citing Givhan, Justice Kennedy writes that "[t]he First Amendment protects some expressions related to the speaker’s job," even when made within the workplace. But, he argues, "[t]he controlling factor in Ceballos’ case is that his expressions were made pursuant to his duties as a calendar deputy.".

So, it appears that if one's duties are to expose wrongdoing in the workplace, such exposure is entitled to no constitutional protection, but that if an employee whose duties do not involve such whistleblowing makes the exact same complaint, then Pickering/Connick analysis still applies. A somewhat odd result, at least on first glance. And odder still: Under today's opinion, if Mr. Ceballos had written a newspaper article complaining about the wrongdoing in question, rather than taking the matter to his supervisor, he would at least be entitled to whatever constitutiional protection Pickering/Connick offers.

I guess the lesson in all this is that if you have a complaint about your workplace you're better off going to the press than to your employer, great idea Justice Kennedy. Furthermore, Jack Balkin makes the argument that employee whisleblowers are screwed no matter which way they go. If they use internal channels they forfeit their first amendment rights and if they go to the press they become workplace pariahs and will probably have to leave their job anyway.

My Published Work on Immigration

Several weeks ago I was asked by the Linfield Review to write an article on immigration. I did, and it was published. I had hoped to link to that article here, but that issue of the Linfield Review seems to have not been posted on the web, so without further ado, I present to you the article, edited for one or two things that I meant to change before I submitted it but forgot.

Since 1886 the statue of liberty has welcomed immigrants to the United States with the famous slogan “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free…I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Now as the United States debates immigration, with some proposals featuring a giant fence along the Mexican border, that sentiment is threatened. What emerges from the immigration debate that we are currently engaged in will define who we are as a country for a long time to come.

The United States is in a unique position economically and geographically in the world. Very few developed nations share a significant border with a developing nation as we do with Mexico. Immigration from the developing world into the developed world is a common trend worldwide, the United States is somewhat unique because of that 2,000-mile border with a developing country. This situation makes the United States perhaps a more desirable destination for people from Latin America. Other developed nations, which also serve as destinations for immigration from the developing world do not have this geographic situation that may make immigration to the United States in particular so appealing to Hispanics seeking a better life.

There has been much debate over whether immigrants, and particularly illegal immigrants improve or harm the US economy. Some of the arguments are patently false, and need to be dismissed from the discussion, that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes, and that they are a drain on social services in particular. In fact, illegal immigrants are ineligible for services such as food stamps, Medicaid, or welfare benefits, but do pay taxes on their income, in fact they serve as a major boost to social security since they pay the payroll tax but are ineligible for its benefits. Businesses appreciate the labor that these individuals provide, for they are very hardworking individuals who, unfortunately are not always paid the minimum wage or given the essential protections afforded to most workers. There is some wage loss due to immigration, according to George Borjas, a Harvard economist; immigration from 1980 to 2000 caused an average 4% wage decrease for US-born males. When lower prices, increased productivity, and other benefits of illegal immigrant labor are considered, Borjas estimates that the average American is 1% wealthier because of illegal immigration.

While the opportunities that people find in the United States are certainly greater than they were in Mexico the lives of these individuals hardly transforms from poverty to wealth. The Pew Hispanic Center notes that in 2004 the poverty rate in the United States among Hispanics was 22.5% compared to a 14% national average. That number includes both citizens and non-citizens; you could imagine that the non-citizen and illegal numbers would be far higher. People endure these conditions to enter the United States illegally because conditions are worse in Mexico. After the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the number of Mexicans living in conditions of poverty increased by 19 million. NAFTA is not bad, the agreement has generally improved the Mexican economy, but it lacked provisions to protect low wage workers and small farmers. Some Mexicans employed full time may make as little as $2.50 a day.

Given the apparent minimal effect that illegal immigration seems to have for Americans it is the cultural implications of immigration that make it such a big issue. This is about a perceived threat to the American way of life with millions of people creeping up from the South speaking primarily a foreign language. If this is true then the issue is ultimately about isolation. Many Americans want to seal their culture off from perceived outside threats. This would explain why people are willing to support free movement of goods across borders, but not free movement of people, for tennis shoes from Malaysia bring no apparent cultural change, while socializing with a completely different culture does.

An honest approach to the immigration issue should seek greater integration, for down the road of greater integration lies the best course for the United States. We should welcome immigrants and the good work they do in this country as we have in the past, perhaps make it easier to gain citizenship for those who want it, and pursue policies that help Mexico and Latin America to improve itself, like renegotiating NAFTA and supplying aid directed towards improving infrastructure. Down this path we welcome what it different and take the cultural changes as they come while easing the desperate circumstances that drive people to risk their lives to come here. The slogan on the statue of liberty signals an attitude that built this country into what it is today, we cannot afford to abandon that sentiment now.

Why Don't They Come Here Legally?

The New York Times ran an article today pointing out the absurdity of much of the "illegal immigration" frame that has dominated our public discourse on this issue. George Lakoff points out at the Rockridge Institute that this is more properly a "economic refugee crisis" than it is a "illegal immigration problem". When we think of the issue in terms of illegal immigration it is likely that the discourse revolves arround the fact that so many hispanic immigrants are here without the proper paperwork to be legal. It sets the debate in terms of the immigrants having broken the law. What the New York Times does excellently today is point out that the idea that people should "wait in line" is a false one, for oftentimes there is no line to wait in.

Six years after he came here from Mexico, David E. has a steady job in a poultry plant, a tidy mobile home and a minivan. Some days he almost forgets that he does not have legal documents to be in this country.

David's precarious success reflects the longtime disconnect between the huge number of Mexican immigrants the American economy has absorbed and the much smaller number the immigration system has allowed to enter legally.

Like many Mexicans, David — who spoke in Spanish and whose last name is being withheld because he feared being fired or deported — was drawn by the near-certain prospect of work when he made his stealthy passage across the desert border in Arizona to this town among the cucumber fields of eastern North Carolina.

"If I had the resources and the connections to apply to come legally," said David, 37, "I wouldn't need to leave Mexico to work in this country."
...
By big margins, Mexican workers have been the dominant group coming to the United States over the last two decades, yet Washington has opened only limited legal channels for them, and has then repeatedly narrowed those channels.

"People ask: Why don't they come legally? Why don't they wait in line?" said Jeffrey S. Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington. "For most Mexicans, there is no line to get in."

The United States offers 5,000 permanent visas worldwide each year for unskilled laborers. Last year, two of them went to Mexicans. In the same year, about 500,000 unskilled Mexican workers crossed the border illegally, researchers estimate, and most of them found jobs.

"We have a neighboring country with a population of 105 million that is our third-largest trading partner, and it has the same visa allocation as Botswana or Nepal," said Douglas S. Massey, a sociology professor at Princeton.
...
For Mexicans who try to immigrate legally, the line can seem endless. A Mexican who has become a naturalized United States citizen and wants to bring an adult son or daughter to live here faces a wait of at least 12 years, State Department rosters show. The wait is as long as seven years for a legal resident from Mexico who wants to bring a spouse and young children.

Although David E. graduated from a Mexican university, he does not have an advanced degree, a rare skill or family ties to a legal United States resident that might have made him eligible for one of the scarce permanent visas.

Instead, he said, after he despaired of finding work at a decent wage in his home city, Veracruz, he discovered an alternative immigration system, the well-tried underground network of word-of-mouth connections. Contacts he made through the network helped him to make the trek to Arizona, traverse the country in a van loaded with illegal Mexicans and land a job eviscerating turkeys at a poultry plant in Mount Olive three weeks after he arrived.

David has been at the plant ever since, rising to become the chief of an assembly line but still working as much as 12 hours a day on a red-eye shift that ends at 3 a.m.

From time to time he has made inquiries about becoming legal. But he said he was detained twice by the Border Patrol when he first tried to cross into the United States, and with that record, he feared that any approach to the immigration authorities might end in deportation.

Emphasis mine. So great, we're going to demonize people for coming to the United States illegally when there are no channels for them to come here legally. This grossly unfair visa distribution must end. Thanks to Mountain Man at DailyKos for the catch.

The Irony of the DaVinci Code Uproar

I went to see the DaVinci Code today. While it seems to have been largely panned I liked the movie, but that's not what I intend on speaking to here. At the end of April Vatican Officials called for its boycott. Numerous other groups have protested the film as well.

The irony of it all of course is that by reacting as they have to a fictional film, based on a novel that never claimed to be anything else, those who have reacted to this film and are offended by its content serve only to prove its point.

Now is the time for a spoiler alert, if you have not seen the film or read the book you may be well served to stop here. The premise of the film is that in order to justify a patriarchal message the catholic church had suppressed that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and had a female child with her. In short, that Jesus christ was human, and that the catholic church would go to any length to prevent this getting out in order to justify a doctrine that serves to oppress women.

The uproar over this movie by the Catholic Church and many other religious groups makes Dan Brown's point more effectively than the book itself. It suggests that some are so determined to prevent free thought and questioning of church doctrine that they will go to extreme radical measures to prevent it. And there lies the point of this movie. Those who have put so much effort into killing this movie should perhaps consider Robert Langdon's (Tom Hanks) ending remarks. "Is it divine? Is it human? Can't the human be divine?" To question doctrine should not be something so actively fought, but considered. The Catholic Church has throughout its history been an organization less than committed to womens rights and equality. The movie is treats the Catholic Church brutally and in many regards with historical honesty. Maybe it should be considered whether it is really worth trying to destroy those ideas that question your doctine or whether it is better to consider the substance of the attack and admit ones past mistakes moving forward with more compassion.

As a side note, fiction is fiction ya know, its not like anyone is claiming this to be a documentary or to be factual. It is an engaging fascinating mystery flick, making a major PR campaign to get out the news that fiction is fiction seems a little odd.

Back In Action

Ok, after a long semester featuring the class from hell I can now restart this blog over the summer and hopefully keep it going into the fall. With the research project that bogged me down this semester out of the way I suspect I can pull it off just fine. Now I hope to once more be able to write about the world's happenings. I missed the isolationist immigration proposals, the new wiretapping revelations, and much more. Now with fewer conflicts over the next three months I will be able to discuss what happens in the world here as I also attempt to transition this into a place for labor related stories in particular. Cwech Blug open for business again.

I Quit!

I've been trying to juggle this blog with school all year long, and I just can't pull it off. I will keep this open and post when I'm dying to say something, but beyond that, this blog is shutting down until June. I simply cannot pull it off at this time, I have not posted much recently and I do not expect to in the near future.

The Hillary Media Circus

I'm trying to keep an open mind about the 2008 Presidency. For starters its simply too far out to worry about. There are people I like (Feingold, Edwards), and people I don't like (Biden, Kerry, Hillary). I kind of suspect that the 2008 Democratic nominee might be someone on nobody's radar screen who will emerge from some obscure governorship. The in thing right now on those who can't bother to wait for people to actually start campaigning is to treat Hillary Clinton as the defacto nominee 2 years before the primaries begin. The Washington Post runs an op-ed piece today explaining I think quite well the Hillary Clinton phenomenon. It also does an excellent job of expressing why I think Hillary Clinton is not the right person to nominate.

It is, of course, Hillary's very wifeyness that titillates. All wives are mysterious to others (even to their husbands, I suspect) since their relationships to their men are not based on merit, as we know it, or patronage, as we know it, but on love and sex (at first), children (after a while) and then something else. Since we do not know our own marriages, we cannot know anyone else's. This engenders endless speculation about the distribution of power and the importance of pillow talk. (Somehow, it's OK for the unelected Karl Rove to advise Bush, but if Laura did it, some people would go nuts.) Did Nancy Reagan actually tell Ron what to do? What about Eleanor Roosevelt -- especially Eleanor? She was even more vilified than Franklin and all she ever did was go down into a coal mine, invite Marian Anderson to sing on the Mall and make some speeches in that high, squeaky voice of hers. Hardly worth hating, you'd think. But, oh, she was certainly hated.

Hillary, of course, is a very famous and very mysterious wife. We need not enumerate the reasons. They were more or less impeachable. Did she know? How could she not have known? Was she complicit? Is she an enabler? And now that she is a public official in her own right, even more mystery attaches to her. Who is she? What, exactly, are her politics? Is she a Cubs or a Yankees fan?
...
Some scrutiny of a possible president, even a mere senator, is expected, even required. But for one person to be so loved, so hated, and of such compelling interest -- so much more a celebrity than, say, John McCain -- suggests that more than politics is involved. Like Marie Antoinette, Hillary has emerged as the repository of so many fears, so much dread, such aspirations -- so much good and bad -- that we have to look past her office or her ambitions and suggest, strongly, that something deeply Freudian is at work. It was Freud, after all, who spoke for all men (and many women) by asking, "What do women want?" Now -- some fear, others hope -- we may finally have the answer.

My frustrations of late with Senator Clinton have been based arround her push to the center and apparent pandering to the non-existent centrist voter. But I am confident that if hypothetically Hillary could get elected, then she would make a good President whether I like her campaign style or not. The reason to object to Hillary Clinton running is that nobody has an open mind about her. It would be very difficult to get people to look beyond the irrelevencies that Cohen discusses and to consider the merits of candidate Clinton. It does not have to do with her being a woman, it has to do with her person, she is a much loved and much hated person who everyone has already made up their mind about. A less famous woman could stand a chance. I would welcome and support a Boxer candidacy if she decided to run, Hillary's problem is not her being a woman, but her presence as an irrational vent for many people to express everything wrong in the world.

Shhhh

I take a perhaps unusual view of Senator John McCain of Arizona. In spite of the conventional wisdom of McCain as a moderate I consider him a relatively conservative Senator who's image as a maverick, a moderate, and a pragmatist make him unbeatable. Paul Krugman exposes McCain's conservatism in the New York Times today, and I agree with most of his argument though he uses some questionable data as "facts". For example he sites voteview.com as ranking McCain the 3rd most conservative member of the United States Senate. Now, voteview could be right, and seems to be run by trustworthy people (a UCSD Poli Sci professor), but the ranking of McCain as the Senate's most conservative member is way out of step with everything else I've seen which tends to place him towards the middle and mainstream of the Republican caucus. That said, Krugman hits the principle quite accurately.

He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him at the right wing of the REpublican Party.

And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.

While I think Krugman's analysis of Arizona's senior Senator is ultimately correct I don't think this is a cat you want to let out of the bag. If McCain decides to run for President in 2008 his moderate image may prevent him from winning the nomination for lack of traditional conservative voters supporting him. I would argue that McCain cannot be beaten, he's too well liked accross party lines. Should he decide to run, the only thing keeping him out of the White House will be the Republican Primary, and in that setting his moderate image might kill him. So let's not tell the public that McCain is a right winger just yet.

The Plight of Airline Pilots

The New York Times illustrates the hardships pilots currently endure as the airline industry continues to limp along. The thing that particularly disturbed me was the discussion of increased hours. This is not just about pilots, the more fewer pilots are pushed to work more hours with less rest the more dangerous it is for everybody flying. I don't know what can be done here, the airline pilots union is in a bind, they work for an industry that is running in most cases out of bankruptcy and is really struggling to get by. That is the root cause of the problem, and with that in mind it is difficult to know how the union should react to improve the situation. I think everyone can tell that pushing too hard on airlines to improve pensions and reduce hours could be the final blow to many airlines experiencing losses from reductions in the number of passengers. There is one thing I do know though, this is the wrong attitude.

Not everyone agrees that the longer working schedule is a problem.

"It's hard for me to feel sorry for them," said Capt. Jeffrey R. Hefner, the safety chairman of the union that represents pilots at Southwest Airlines, who have always flown longer hours than pilots at older airlines.

"They're a bunch of spoiled brats," he said. "Historically, this has been a really cushy job once you get to the majors. You make a lot of money and you don't have to fly a lot. But there had to be a market balancing at some point."

Great, so pilots have union officials who think the members of the union are a bunch of spoiled brats, I'm sure that really helps the situation. What ever happened to union officials who fight for improved conditions for their members?

Dubai Ports Controversy Ends

Dubai Ports World has agreed to sell operations to a US Company effectively ending the showdown over ports. In an amazing bipartisan effort to shut the US off from the rest of the world, Congressional Democrats and Republicans joined together to stop the deal. I just don't get this, especially the Democrats, Republicans have a long history of xenophobia and it would be unreasonable to expect it to end now. But the Democrats should not have made this the issue they made it. This will come back to hurt Democrats ultimately in the attitute it enforces. That attitude is that we must resign within ourselves because there are people in the world who seek to hurt us. Democrats saw this as a political opportunity to show the Country that they were better on national security than Bush, but it will come back to hurt them because it reinforces that isolationist attitude that Republicans thrive upon.

That said, I feel no sympathy for Bush here, he dug his own grave on this issue through his rhetoric towards Iraq. Paul Krugman pointed this out on February 24th and puts it far better than I.

The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam -- what's the difference?

Now comes the ports deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

The administration also tells us not to worry about having Arabs control port operations. "I want those who are questioning it," Mr. Bush said, "to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a Great British company."

He was being evasive, of course. This isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's a company controlled by the monarchy in Dubai, which is part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan.

But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs."

This is all about retreat from the rest of the world, and thus Democrats should not be blocking this deal. It is nice however, to see Bush get nailed by his own rhetoric. That said, today the xenophobes have won with the Dubai company agreeing to sell operations to a US company. Next up, a 2000 mile long fence between the United States and Mexico.

Where is all this Iran Rhetoric Going?

LiberalOasis confronts Bush administration saber rattling towards Iran and offers a strategy for preventing another war. While I agree with them that the United States is engaging in the same kind of rhetoric and action with Iran that preceeded the Iraq war, I see no way this is a precurser to war with Iran. The simple fact is that we have no army with which to invade Iran if we did want to. The only plausible way to go to war with Iran would be to institute a draft. The Bushies could not gain support for another war if there is a draft, and probably can't without one since they no longer have any credibility on these matters. Once you start talking about a draft very few people will support war and Congress will stand up to the Administration.

Given that, I don't understand what is going on with Iran. I am convinced that Liberal Oasis is correct, we are engaging in a strategy just like we did prior to Iraq to frame Iran as the #1 threat to US security. But again, the Bushies know that we have no army anymore so I don't see what the hoped for end result of this rhetoric is. It can't possibly be war for the reasons I stated above, so what is happening

Crap, Ciro Lost

Ciro Rodriguez appears to have lost his primary challenge to Henry Cuellar in the TX-28. Quite unfortunate. Texas has an open primary system, so it seems likely (especially given the Club for Growth endorsement) that Republicans turned up in the primary to make sure they didn't lose their Dixiecrat congressman to a reasonable Democrat. Cuellar was clearly one of the worst Democrats in Congress voting for the right wing Bush agenda, it is very unfortunate that he was able to hold on against this challenge. I will now be taking Rodriguez off the candidates list.

In other news, the United States somehow managed to lose to Canada today. Dontrell Willis got absolutely shelled and a late offensive run to tighten the score at 6-8 came up just short.

NYT Can't Find Anything New to Report

The New York Times runs the "Democrats in Dissaray" story for the 8 millionth time on the front page this morning, ignoring the fact that the New York Times has run some version of this exact same story at least one other time in the last month, the article made little sense.

The article begins by pointing that Democrats in different places are (gasp!) talking about different things! As if that's some huge indication of having no direction, the simple fact is that different people prioritize different things. In a Democracy that should be respected as a normal human fact, some people think one issue is most important that other people don't. Not only that, but many argue that Congressional elections are fought on local issues, so shouldn't it then be considered a strength that Democrats aren't all talking about the same things? The article then moves on to say how in sink Republicans were in 1994 and how they were all talking about the same thing. It then goes to Rahm Emmanuel arguing that the election must be nationalized because so many districts are gerrymandered to Republican advantage. Then instead of pointing this out as a reason that it may be good that Democrats are talking about different things, it goes to Republicans arguing that Congressional elections hinge on local issues, and uses that instead as an argument that Democrats don't know what they're doing. Never mind the way this article began, and the fact that this counters the entire thesis of the article, we'll just pretend that it supports it.

In short this was horrible rotten writing that ignored obvious logical conclusions to be drawn from the evidence it presented all to run their favorite story once again on the front page, that the Democrats have no message.

Senate Passes PATRIOT ACT

And Larry Craig is a goddamn hypocrite. After Rep. Butch Otter proved to him that opposition to the PATRIOT ACT was politically popular in Idaho Craig spend the next 3 years speaking against the act. Now when the time to really stand up comes, he votes for it again. In other news, most of the Democratic caucus is gutless. Feingold was only able to garner 15 votes against cloture and 10 against the bill itself. Though in the end, it may not matter since the President doesn't seem to think it matters what is and is not legal. Since Bush thinks he's king, in fact, a post over at the Volokh conspiracy wonders whether the domestic spying program began even before the AUMF passed Congress. I don't see why anyone felt the need to pass the PATRIOT ACT even if they are its most outspoken supporters.

Specter's Specter FISA Bill

I wrote yesterday that Arlen Specter's bill introduced yesterday appeared to do absolutely nothing, now we have an observation from Marty Lederman that it does in fact do something. Quite a lot actually, Lederman argues that Specter's bill actually dismantles FISA. Quite a different interpretation than what was presented by the Washington Post yesterday. I'll let Lederman take it for a while now.

As I read the draft bill, however, this is wrong. It's not simply a a reenactment of the "FISA framework" -- instead, it's a wholescale dismantling of that framework, a substantive amendment to FISA that would vastly increase the surveillance authority of the President. It would give the Executive branch everything it has always wanted, and much more: The punishment for having broken the law with impunity would be a wholesale repeal of the law that has governed electronic surveillance for almost 30 years (and not only with respect to Al Qaeda or terrorism). In one fell swoop, the Specter legislation would undo the detailed regulatory scheme that both political branches have so carefully calibrated over more than a quarter-century.
...

Under FISA, in order for the federal government to engage in electronic surveillance targeted at someone here in the U.S. -- i.e., at phone calls and e-mails going out of the U.S. -- there must be probable cause that the person targeted is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. See 50 U.S.C. 1805(a)(3). The Specter bill would go much, much further. Under that bill, it would not be necessary for the NSA to show that either party to an intercepted phone call or e-mail has anything to do with Al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. It would not even be necessary for the government to show probable cause -- or reason to believe, or any evidence -- that etiher party to the call or e-mail is a foreign power, an agent of a foreign power, or even associated with a foreign power.

Instead, the bill would permit domestic electronic surveillance targeted at U.S. persons merely upon a showing of "probable cause" that the surveillance program as a whole -- not even the particular targeted surveillance -- will intercept communications of anyone who has "had communication" with a foreign power or agent of a foreign power, as long as the government is seeking to monitor or detect that foreign power (or agent)! (See the new section 704: The standard for the FISA Court's review of the application is whether "there is probable cause to believe that the electronic surveillance program will intercept communications of the foreign power or agent of a foreign power specified in the application, or a person who has had communication with the foreign power or agent of a foreign power specified in the application.")

So, if Lederman is correct (and he makes a disclaimer that this is an initial impression and perhaps he's missing something) then the Specter bill actually prevents the President from ever having to show probable cause for a wiretap. If he can demonstrate that there is probable cause for the program as a whole then the NSA may conduct these wiretaps. I would read that to essentially declare that the President can moniter any conversation he likes if he can demonstrate that somewhere at some time there is or was a threat that wiretapping could or did stop. Assuming that Lederman is right, the Specter bill then essentially allows the President to data mine at will, as long as he can justify the program itself to the FISA Court.

Another issue unrelated to the bill comes up here. How could the Washington Post have done this awful a job in reporting on the Specter bill? Did the author not bother to wonder why Specter would propose a bill that does absolutely nothing that FISA doesn't do already? How could the Washington Post have printed an article that makes the reader think that the bill does the exact opposite of what it actually does? Come on Washington Post writers and editors, grow a brain.

Specter Proposes Bill to do Nothing

Sen. Arlen Specter, chair of the Judiciary committee has proposed a bill to require "The federal government...to obtain permission from a secret court to continue a controversial form of surveillance, which the National Security Agency now conducts without warrants." Sounds like FISA. There's a reason for that, it is. Given what can be determined from this article, Specter's bill does absolutely nothing, because it is entirely contained within the status-quo. Maybe Specter should introduce a bill to criminalize marijuana now as long as he's introducing bills that offer no change to the present situation.

William F. Buckley Admits Defeat in Iraq

Yes, Editor of the National Review William F. Buckley has admitted that the United States cannot win in Iraq.

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. The same edition of the paper quotes a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Reuel Marc Gerecht backed the American intervention. He now speaks of the bombing of the especially sacred Shiite mosque in Samara and what that has precipitated in the way of revenge. He concludes that “The bombing has completely demolished” what was being attempted — to bring Sunnis into the defense and interior ministries.

Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

Unfortunately we have a President backed by a whole lineup of neocons who can't accept this reality, so we continue to pursue an unatainable policy. If the Administration could accept the obvious reality of the situation in Iraq we could move forward to find a reasonable way to cut our losses and get our troops out.

TIA Returns

Remember Total Information Awareness? Well, it's back. When Congress refused to fund it the Bush Administration folded the program into the NSA. This Administrations disdain for the Congress, the Constitution, and the privacy of the American people is unbelievable. Unfortunately Bush has now stacked the Supreme Court with Executive Power Justices and Congress doesn't give a damn.

So Much to Blog So Little Time

It's not like there's nothing to blog about, I just can't find the time or energy to do it.

Republicans Admit Domestic Spying Program is Illegal

The Associated Press runs a story about a "deal" struck between Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts and the White House.

Without offering specifics, Roberts said the agreement with the White House provides "a fix" to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and offers more briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The deal comes as the committee was set to have a meeting Thursday about whether to open an investigation into the hotly disputed program. Roberts indicated the deal may eliminate the need for such an inquiry. Democrats have been demanding an investigation but some Republicans don't want to tangle the panel in a testy election-year probe.

I feel farely confident that whatever this "deal" is, its no good. Anything that allows the executive to bypass Court approval for searches can't be good, and that's the only solution the White House would settle for. DeWine is also suggesting changes to the law.

Earlier in the day, White House spokesman Scott McClellan hinted at a "good discussion going on" with lawmakers and praised in particular "some good ideas" presented by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record). The Ohio Republican has suggested the FISA law be changed to accommodate the NSA program.

Republicans suggesting changes to the FISA law in order to permit Bush's program? By suggesting that the law needs to be changed to allow for a program that Republicans claim is absolutely necessary to national security, they admit that the program is illegal. So, seeing how we are all now in agreement that the President defied US law in order to engage in a domestic wiretapping program we can move forward to the proper place right? If we all agree that this is illegal there are only two arguments that one can make. One, that the President has the authority to do whatever the hell he wants and the law doesn't matter. And two, that the President violated the law and should be impeached. If we choose the first then we may as well abolish the Constitution to establish a monarchy. If Republicans are not willing to take this step then the only other option is to join Representative Conyers to impeach the President. Since that won't happen, they remain hypocrates who support dictatorship.