I thought that I would jump right into the Alito hearing speculation. I was happy to hear that Alito said that he thought Robert Bork of Reagan era fame was one of the most "outstanding nominees of the 20th century" and was "unjustifiably rejected" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/08/AR2006010801165.html). According to Senior Analyst at the Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, Bork was actually rejected because of his wearing a doo rag to his confirmation hearings, that and his being crazy. But I digress.
It will be interesting to see how the Republicans react to Alito's testimony today. An open mind on abortion does not sound like the requirements that Sam Brownback of Kansas laid out for the next justice. Following the nomination of Harriet Miers, he demanded that the next nominee be clearly against abortion. Considering his lack of dissent in the process so far, one must wander how open Alito has been with some on his actual opinions on the subject. This topic is even more intriguing with news that the staunchly pro-life James Dobson is launching an ad campaign in support of Alito (http://www.family.org/cforum/news/a0039112.cfm). I would imagine that if this support from extreme conservatives continues, we can fill in the blanks on some of Alito's positions.

DailyKos Picks Up on the Power Issue

'Bout time, great site that has largely missed the boat here on what's really going on with Bush Supreme Court appointments, Amando picks up on signing statements, and Alito's radical view of executive power. Front pagers at DailyKos didn't get it with Roberts, didn't get it with Miers, but they're finally getting the picture on Alito.

Alito's Executive Power: The Link is Revealed

One last post before I go off to Mexico where I'll post if I have a chance, in the meantime, myself, and others have talked in the past about Bush's desire to pack the Supreme Court with executive power judges. With Roberts the agenda was made clear by looking at the Hamdan decision, and with Miers it was apparent through her proximity to the President, and the fact that her proximity seemed to be her only redeeming quality. With Alito however, its not obvious, though Bush's recent domestic spying program provides some insight. Dahlia Lithwick had previously made the connection that the executive power warning with Alito revolves arround his hostility to 4th amendment claims and his deference to law enforcement in such cases. A judge who allows law enforcement to search anyone for any reason would be very useful to an Administration that wants to drop eaves on American citizens without warrant.

Liberal Oasis has managed to finally clear up the confusion today with new insights provided from Alito memos when he worked in the Reagan Administration. The link between Alito and Bush's view of executive authority become much more clear in light of these revelations.

That is Bush’s signing, last Friday, of the bill which included what’s known as the McCain Amendment, banning torture of detainees.

As Balkinization and MyDD have noted, Bush included a “signing statement” along with the bill, which read in part:

The executive branch shall construe [the provision] relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President ... of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

As Balkinization said, “Translation: I reserve the constitutional right to waterboard when it will ‘assist’ in protecting the American people from terrorist attacks.”

Or as MyDD said: “I'm the President, and you can't enforce jack.”

Wait a second, you might say, what the hell is a “signing statement” anyway?

It’s a concept cooked up by Sam Alito, back when he was in the Reagan Justice Department, to diminish the weight of the congressional record and increase the weight of the president’s whims when the Supreme Court interprets the law.

Bush is a big fan of Alito's signing statements, though as the W. Post noted, the Supreme Court has not given them nearly as much weight as congressional debate when determining a law’s intent.

Signing statements, that's the link. A way for the President to bypass Congressional mandates that has been given little wieght by the Supreme Court, one which Alito cooked up and Bush hopes to give weight on the High Court that it has never possessed. While I had continued to weakly follow the executive power argument before, I am once again convinced, this is all about executive power. Bush sees the Constitution as it has been interpreted in recent years to be an obstacle to the war on terror, and seeks to expand his own authority by stacking the Supreme Court with executive power judges. This is the primary issue that should be talked about in the committee hearings, not to say that other things are unimportant, but because this is the most threatening aspect of Bush's Supreme Court agenda, and Mr. Alito.

Life Under Cheney's Rationale For Torture

If Cheney's rationale for torture made sense.

Is the Bush Administration Engaging in Large Scale Fishing Expedition?

The debate over Bush's domestic spying program has sparked this interesting question. Is the Bush Administration fishing for information that they could not possibly get a warrant for? The evidence seems to be pointing in that direction as Josh Marshall recently noted, in 2003 the FISA Court issued its first denied warrant in its history and denied 4 during that year. The next year, in 2004 there were 0 denied requests again, just like every year previously. So once the Bush Administration started getting their requests denied they began the secret spying program without FISA approval because they knew that they couldn't obtain a warrant for those searches. That tells me that they started coming to the extremely deferencial FISA Court with requests that would never be taken seriously by any Court. Requests for warrants on people who they had no probable cause whatsoever to believe were involved with anything. In other words, a fishing expedition, they are intercepting such a huge volume of communications that they couldn't possibly hope to obtain a warrant.

Bush administration officials believe it is not possible, in a large-scale eavesdropping effort, to provide the kind of evidence the court requires to approve a warrant. Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."

The NSA program, and the technology on which it is based, makes it impossible to meet that criterion because the program is designed to intercept selected conversations in real time from among an enormous number relayed at any moment through satellites.

Interesting, But Wrong

I feel the need to respond to a comment I noticed here recently on my post about the Diane Rehm Show. The poster brought to my attention a 1982 New York Times article about a Federal Appeals Court having upheld domestic wiretapping. The article fails to bear a legitimate comparison to what is happening now. The FISA law provides that the NSA can seek warrants from a FISA Court for precisely the kinds of investigations that the Bush Administration authorized here. The difference is that the Bush Administration is bypassing the FISA Court and keeping it entirely secret that an individual was ever wiretapped. The 1982 ruling, therefore, upheld the legitimacy of the FISA Courts, as without knowledge of having been wiretapped the plaintiff could never have filed suit. Upholding the legitimacy of the FISA Courts seems like a decision of questionable merit to me, but that is a totally different issue than we are discussing today. Now, unlike in 1982, nobody is informed the these wiretaps ever took place and the Administration has not sought any warrant from the FISA Court, even though such warrants can be issued up to 72 hours after the wiretap was conducted. So, while the commenter brings up an interesting point, the comparison between the NYT article cited and the current situation falls desperately short.

Judge Puts Stiff Penalty on Striking Transit Workers

A New York judge ruled today that the transit strike was illegal and fined the union $1 million per day that they remained out on strike. The rationale being that it was illegal for public workers in New York to go out on strike. Sounds like your typical anti-worker ruling, workers have an inherent right to organize into unions, and the only tool that unions have to force improved conditions, wages, or benefits is the threat of a strike. Once that threat is removed unions have no power, nothing to force employers to the bargaining table. I would even contend that the New York law is unconstitutional as it violates the 1st and 14th amendments of the Constituion. Banning strikes violates the 1st amendment right to freedom of assembly and forcing people to work violates the liberty clause of the 14th amendment. The Judge said the following, "This is a very, very sad day in the history of labor relations for New York City," indeed it is, it is the day the judge refused to have the guts to back up the right to organize and to use the one tool that unions have at their disposal to force bargaining agreements against an unjust and unconstitutional law. Michael Bloomberg added in more bashing of workers.

An angry Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, appeared at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon and called the union strike "selfish and illegal."

He said the strikers had "thuggishly turned their backs on New York City and disgraced the noble concept of public service." Bloomberg threatened "severe consequences" for the strikers, who he said were breaking the law.

Nice attitude Bloomberg, as though no one else bears any responsibility for the strike, perhaps Mr. Bloomberg, the city of New York should have worked out an agreement with the transit workers before they felt they had to use their one weapon and walk out. Who's a thug Mr. Bloomberg? I see a thug running the city who refused to talk to the union and prevent a strike that it sounds like has been a horrible inconvenience and burden on the citizens of New York.

NYT Held Wiretap Story Before Election

The Los Angeles Times today reports that the New York Times had the wiretap story before the 2004 elections and did not publish.

The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall, before the 2004 presidential election.

But the newspaper held the story for more than a year and only revealed the secret wiretaps last Friday, when it became apparent a book by one of its reporters was about to break the news, according to journalists familiar with the paper's internal discussions.
...
"The publication was not timed to the Iraqi election, the Patriot Act debate, Jim's forthcoming book or any other event," Keller said in a statement. "We published the story when we did because after much hard work it was fully reported, checked and ready, and because, after listening respectfully to the administration's objections, we were convinced there was no good reason not to publish it."
...
The initial Times statements did not say that the paper's internal debate began before the Nov. 2, 2004, presidential election — in which Iraq and national security questions loomed large — or make any reference to Risen's book, due out Jan. 16.

But two journalists, who declined to be identified, said that editors at the paper were actively considering running the story about the wiretaps before Bush's November showdown with Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.
...
"When they realized that it was going to appear in the book anyway, that is when they went ahead and agreed to publish the story," said one of the journalists. "That's not to say that was their entire consideration, but it was a very important one of them."

The list of things the New York Times knew before the election that they didn't bother to print mounts, as we know that at least some of their reporters knew where the Valerie Plame leak came from. Salon.com puts it well when they say:

But still. When voters went to the polls in November, the New York Times knew -- but didn't tell its readers -- that the Bush administration had been lying about Scooter Libby's role in the outing of Valerie Plame. It now appears that the New York Times also knew -- but didn't tell its readers -- that the Bush administration had been spying on American citizens in violation of an act of Congress. The Times isn't alone in keeping secrets from its readers: Reporters at the Washington Post and Time magazine also knew about White House involvement in Plame's outing, for example, but chose to let Scott McClellan's denials stand through Election Day in favor of protecting their sources.

Would any of it have made a difference in November? We'll never know because journalists decided to keep the news to themselves until long after the voting was over. In the statement he released Friday, Keller said it's not the Times' "place" to "pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions" raised by Bush's secret spying plan. But it is the Times' place -- it is a journalist's responsibility -- to report the news, especially when that news involves the possibility that crimes were committed by the highest officials in our nation's government.

Conservatives Tear Bush to Shreads Over Domestic Spying on NPR

This morning's Diane Rehm Show featuring Bruce Fein-Republican Counsel during the Reagan Administration, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute was brutal to Bush on the domestic spying policy. One of the guests (can't recall which) said "Bush is now claiming more authority as Commander in Chief than King George did in 1776."

Hillarious Web Site

Make Bush say what you want. Great fun, watch others or create your own.

Gonzalez Lied in Confirmation Hearings

Bush's wiretaps of American citizens without warrants are a violation of Federal Law, and yet in response to questions about Presidential "Commander in Chief Authority" Gonzalez specifically said the Administration had not authorized any actions against Federal Law.

During his confirmation hearings for Attorney General in January 2005, Sen. Russ Feingold asked Gonzales about this precise issue:

SEN. FEINGOLD: I — Judge Gonzales, let me ask a broader question. I’m asking you whether in general the president has the constitutional authority, does he at least in theory have the authority to authorize violations of the criminal law under duly enacted statutes simply because he’s commander in chief? Does he — does he have that power?

After trying to dodge the question for a time, Gonzales issued this denial:

MR. GONZALES: Senator, this president is not — I — it is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.

The Myth of Guiliani the Moderate

I don't care if he's pro-choice, the man is an authoritarian leader whose solution to everything is to reduce civil liberties. Giuliani once threatened the closing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art because he was offended by the use of some nude works, his policies to crack down on crime in New York City essentially came down to the essential idea of arresting people for every minor offense, similar to the test policy in Washington DC that lead to the Hedgepeth case which came to light when John Roberts was the nominee for the Supreme Court. This article in the New York Times by Mr. Giuliani is indicative of how out of touch and unconcerned for civil liberties Mr. Guiliani is. For starters his entire contention is based upon a lie.

The central provisions of the Patriot Act allow law enforcement and the intelligence community to share information. This might seem elementary, but for years law enforcement had been stymied by a legal wall that prevented agencies from sharing information. For four years now, inter-agency collaboration, made possible by the Patriot Act, has played an important role in preventing another day like Sept. 11. The act's provisions helped make possible the investigations in Lackawanna, N.Y., and Portland, Ore., in which 12 people were ultimately convicted for attempts to aid Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
...
So what happened in Washington? The House voted on Wednesday to renew the act; it stalled in the Senate. If the Senate fails to approve the extension, the government will be forced to revert in many ways to our pre-Sept. 11 methods. Sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire on Dec. 31, including the key information-sharing ones.

Yes, those are central provisions of the act, but the problem with this contention is that none of those provisions are in the now expiring sunset bill that was filibustered yesterday.

It is simply false to claim, as some of its critics do, that this bill does not respond to concerns about civil liberties. The four-year extension of the Patriot Act, as passed by the House, would not only reauthorize the expiring provisions - allowing our Joint Terrorism Task Force, National Counterterrorism Center and Terrorist Screening Center to continue their work uninterrupted - it would also make a number of common-sense clarifications and add dozens of additional civil liberties safeguards.

Concerns have been raised about the so-called library records provision; the bill adds safeguards. The same is true for roving wiretaps, "sneak and peek" searches and access to counsel and courts, as well as many others concerns raised by groups like the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Nobody is saying that these provisions have been entirely unchanged, some safeguards have been added to the bill, the argument is that they are not sufficient safeguards. Giuliani is so desperate to defend the indefensible that he has to litter his article with half truths in order to seem coherent. He makes many of the same contentions that Sununu rebuked Sean Hannity for last night.

The Supreme Court Should Accept the Padilla Appeal

SCOTUSblog has a recent post about the government's brief urging the High Court not to hear the Padilla case. However, the legal maneuvering by the Bush Administration should give the Court little choice, there is a consistent pattern at work here of changinging one key cercumstance and dodging the Supreme Court preventing a definitive ruling on this important matter. We need a precedent, the Bush Administration cannot be allowed to ontinue this Court dodging.

The Bush Administration late Friday afternoon urged the Supreme Court to deny review of the challenge by Jose Padilla to his designation as an "enemy combatant" in the war on terrorism, arguing that the case is now moot. "The predicate for this habeas action...no longer exists" because Padilla has now been charged with crime in civilian court, and ordered released from military custody, the brief contended. (The text of the government's 30-page brief can be found at the link provided in the post just below. The attempt by Padilla's lawyers to keep the case alive through action in the Fourth Circuit is discussed in the post further below.)

If this were the case in terms of matter of law, it seems clear that the Supreme Court would have little choice but to deny review, for the issue that they have been asked to take up is no longer a circumstance, but as SCOTUSBlog noted previously, this is not the case.

For the time being, however, Padilla is both an "enemy combatant" and a criminal case defendant. One of the attorneys handling his Supreme Court appeal, Jonathan M. Freiman of New Haven, Conn., said on Friday: "A senior attorney at the Solicitor General's Office informed me, on the very day the indictment was unsealed [Nov. 22], that it was possible that Padilla would again be detained as an enemy combatant if he was found innocent of the criminal charges against him."

On Nov. 22, the government released a Nov. 20 order by President Bush to the Pentagon to release Padilla from military custody, saying that this would "supersede" his earlier order designating Padilla an "enemy combatant" and ordering his detention by the military. But that new order does not say explicitly that anything is being changed except Padilla's custodian. In fact, another of Padilla's lawyers, Michael P. O'Connell of Charleston, S.C., said in a court filing there Nov. 28 that the new presidential order "does not remove the designation of 'enemy combatant' that the President placed upon Mr. Padilla..." And O'Connell said that "the government continues to assert the authority to return Mr. Padilla to military custody."

O'Connell, who is handling the Padilla case that remains in federal court in Charleston, said in his filing: "Given the fast-moving developments and the current uncertainty that surrounds them, I respectfully request that these proceedings be stayed" until the Supreme Court acts on Padilla's appeal to the Justices.

The legal uncertainty, of course, is pervasive, and remains quite confusing.

It looks to me like a civilian Court ruling favorable to Mr. Padilla will prompt the Bush Administration to once again place him under military custody as an enemy combatant. The charges against him are not the same as the grounds argued by the Bush Administration for his detention previously demonstrating that the whole thing was bogus, not to say that he may not be involved with Al-Qaeda, but there is not way to know and the Bush Administration has now charged him with something totally unrelated to the argument they made for continuing to detain him. The Supreme Court must take this case in order to establish a definitive ruling against the enemy combatant determination for Amerian citizens on American soil. Without that ruling it looks apparent that a civilian exoneration of Padilla will prompt the Administration to detain him once more as an enemy combatant. The Bush Administration played this game before by moving Padilla's place of detention then arguing that Padilla's lawyers filed suit in the wrong district court, the Supreme Court cannot allow themselves to be fooled like that again.

---UPDATE---This case should henceforth be referred to as "Legal Dodgeball"
---UPDATE2---Cross Posted at DailyKos.

Abramoff Buys Favorable Articles As Well

In addition to buying off members of Congress for their votes, Abramoff appears to have paid off writers in exchange for the writing of articles favorable to his clients.

Mr. Abramoff, who built a powerful lobbying business largely through his affluent Indian tribe clients in the late 1990's, paid Mr. Bandow during those years to advance the causes of such clients as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

In one column in 2001, Mr. Bandow extolled the free-market system that had allowed the Marianas to thrive, saying that fighting terrorism was no excuse for "economic meddling" - the same position that Mr. Abramoff was being paid to advance.

The federal government "should respect the commonwealth's independent policies, which have allowed the islands to rise above the poverty evident elsewhere throughout Micronesia," Mr. Bandow wrote.

In an earlier column, in 1997, Mr. Bandow defended the gambling enterprise of the Choctaws. "There's certainly no evidence that Indian gambling operations harm the local community," he wrote.

We can see now for all the cries of "freedom" that we see coming from CATO that one form of freedom they obviously don't believe in is freedom of the press, for no press is free when it can be purchased.

Sununu Makes Hannity Look Silly

I just saw John Sununu (R-NH) on Hannity and Colmes talking about the PATRIOT ACT vote, and until now never thought I would see a Republican stand up to Sean Hannity like that. When Hannity tried to claim that it was essential to law enforcement that it be reauthorized as is Sununu said "No, its not essential to law enforcement that we not have judicial review of these cases, you're misstating the facts." Then Hannity tried to play the game of telling him he wasn't properly towing the party line to which Sununu said "This isn't about numbers, lets debate the merits of this." Hannity then responded "This is about numbers you're one of only three Republicans to oppose this." Very revealing statement by Hannity there, demonstrating very clearly that he doesn't give a shit about the merits of proposals, Sean Hannity doesn't care about what is good policy. This brings to light quite effectively that Hannity is a Republican before he's an American.

New York Times Pushed Around By Bush

Salon.com has an interesting little scoop today. The New York Times sat on the secret spying story for a year before printing it today at the request of the White House.

As we noted earlier today, the New York Times is out with a story in which it says the Bush administration has been monitoring -- without warrants -- telephone calls and e-mail messages originated in the United States. What we didn't mention, and should have, is this snippet from the piece: "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting."

Our question: When did the White House make its request, and what does "a year" mean? The Times is awfully light on details here, leaving itself open for speculation from the left as to whether the Times sat on the story through last year's presidential election. At the same time, the right is free to speculate about the Times' decision to run the story now, just as the Senate was about to take up and -- as it turns out -- vote down the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.
...
"A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security. Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions. As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.

Its a legitimate question, did the Times withhold this story during the Presidential election? In other news from Salon, Bush tells reporters what the top story of the day is.

When Bush tried to sidestep questions today about the New York Times' report on his secret spying program, PBS's Jim Lehrer protested that the story is on "the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, every newspaper in America today, and it's ... it's the main story of the day." Bush cut him off and said: "It's not the main story of the day ... The main story of the day is the Iraqi election."

The President who thinks he determines what the news of the day is. I guess that's what happens when you elect someone who doesn't read the paper.

Cloture on PATRIOT ACT Fails

52 in favor of invoking cloture, 47 against. No vote will take place on this bill at least for the time being. Haven't seen any indication of when the Senate leadership will seek another cloture vote, but this is a major victory. Crapo (R-ID) and Smith (R-OR) vote in favor of cloture, demonstrates a couple of things. Crapo doesn't really care about civil liberties even though he says he does. And Smith isn't moderate even though he says he is. Anyone who supports the PATRIOT ACT at this point is nothing more than a tool for the Bush Administration, we've all seen now both that the PATRIOT ACT grants Federal law enforcement more power than is reasonable, and that the Bush Administration cannot be trusted with it.

Why Do Republicans Hate Courts?

Senator Lindsey Graham has inserted an amendment to the defense spending authorization bill to take the meat out of McCain's amendment. The White House threatened veto with McCain's amendment, and now says that they won't with Graham's. Why's Graham's Ameendment so important? Because it removes judicial review from the equation giving the President unilateral authority to determine what is and is not "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment."

But he won't have to, thanks to a recent amendment by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R., S.C.). This one bars Guantánamo detainees from going to federal court to enforce the rights that McCain would declare sacrosanct.

A shabby compromise is in the making. Bush removes his veto threat - as long as Graham's amendment remains in the bill - to transform McCain's principles into a hypocritical gesture: Listen up, world, we are against torture at Guantánamo - as long as nobody can complain about it.

To deflect critics, Graham has created an exception to allow Guantánamo inmates their day in court once they are finally convicted of a crime by a military tribunal. But this exception creates more perverse incentives. If a detainee has been victimized, the best way to cover it up is to hold him indefinitely as an "enemy combatant" and never send him before a military tribunal. That way, he will never get access to a federal court.
...
Despite the high stakes, Graham did not even give Congress a fair chance to consider the matter. He made an end run around the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.), and persuaded the Senate to accept his court-stripping rider as a floor amendment. Specter eloquently protested, but he was outvoted in the rush to push the matter into a conference committee.

The Senate leadership plans to continue its rush tactics this week. It will ask the Senate to rubber-stamp the final conference bill before it begins its Christmas recess. But Specter should stand firm against a cynical compromise that will defang McCain's anti-torture initiative. Given the grave issues raised by the Graham amendment, a filibuster is entirely appropriate to give the judiciary committee a chance to expose the Graham amendment to sober second thought. It would be tragic if McCain's admirable proposal becomes an occasion for yet another assault on the fundamental principles of the American Constitution.

This is just one more case of a right wing war on judicial review and the courts, it is far more than just rhetoric that assails judges for what they term "judicial activism" the Republican Party today seems fundamentally opposed to the legal rights of prisoners. Jon Kyle sponsors a bill to severely limit federal judicial review in death penalty cases. Its as though "judicial activism" is the root of all evil and that the definition of "judicial activism" is any decision that upholds the rights of the accused. The Republican Party today is against the essential concept of due process of law, that is the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from this string of bills stripping the rights of those accused of crimes and detainees.

Leahy Says the Votes are there for a Filibuster of the PATRIOT ACT

Senator Patrick Leahy stated today that Russell Feingold's filibuster of the PATRIOTIC has 40 votes to prevent cloture. Including Sen. Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Craig (R-ID), makes me proud to be from Oregon and Idaho.

Now add more than two dozen senators to Feingold's side, including the leaders of his party and some of the chamber's most conservative Republicans, and the balance of power shifts.

The new Senate arithmetic that emerged this week is enough to place the renewal of major portions of the law in doubt. It was enough to inspire Senate Republican leaders to consider a backup plan in case Feingold's filibuster threat succeeded. Enough to prompt
President Bush to dispatch Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to Capitol Hill twice in two days to lobby on the accord's behalf.

No luck so far, said the chief Senate sponsor.

"We've got a battle on our hands," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told reporters after Gonzales had departed Wednesday.

Bush weighed in personally Thursday, urging opponents of the renewal to abandon the filibuster threats.

"That is a bad decision for the security of the United States," the president said. "I call upon the Senate to end the filibuster and to pass this important legislation so that we have the tools necessary to defend the country in a time of war."

Moments later, the senior Democrat on the issue, Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., told reporters that more than 40 votes exist to sustain a filibuster in a test vote Friday. White House allies said they would rather see the law's 16 temporary provisions expire entirely than give opponents another three months or more to keep whittling away at them.
...
Chief among their concerns are the National Security Letters that the FBI can use to compel the release of such private records as financial, computer and library transactions. The bill for the first time explicitly says the third-party recipients of NSLs — banks, Internet service providers and libraries — can hire lawyers and challenge the letters in court.

Feingold and his allies want more reports from the Justice Department on how NSLs and other tools in terror investigations are used. They also want to set limits on how long law enforcement officials can continue to use NSLs in terror investigations.
...
Whatever happens with the renewal, the mere debate is a boost for Feingold and any presidential aspirations he may nurture after next year's midterm elections — a development that carries some irony.

"People don't go to the well of the Senate and become the only senator to vote against something called the 'USA Patriot Act' five weeks after 9/11 because they're trying to get ready to run for president," Feingold said.

But four years later, during visits to the presidential proving grounds of New Hampshire and Iowa, Feingold says there's evidence his position has resonated with more than just the Democratic base.

Persistance pays off, Feingold was the only one with the guts to oppose this the first time arround, and now many more see that he was right. I would like to focus briefly on Sen. Larry Craig's membership in this coalition. His is a demonstration that even in the reddest of the Red States, Idaho, opposition to the PATRIOT ACT is a popular position. Craig supported the PATRIOT until one of the people who originally opposed it (Rep. Butch Otter R-ID 1st) convinced him of how bad this law is. Craig has been outspoken in his opposition since that time. It'll be interesting to see who is in this coalition of 40 that Leahy refers to. Thank you Sen. Feingold for making an issue out of this, it will never be forgotten.

My Head is Going to Explode

This from CNN, Zarqawi caught! Zarqawi let go! I need to remove myself from news for the day, I've had about as much as I can take.