1 Boring Old Man

Ruling Limited Spying Efforts
Move to Amend FISA Sparked by Judge’s Decision

A federal intelligence court judge earlier this year secretly declared a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal, according to a lawmaker and government sources, providing a previously unstated rationale for fevered efforts by congressional lawmakers this week to expand the president’s spying powers.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court’s decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

The judge, whose name could not be learned, concluded early this year that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States, according to two other government sources familiar with the decision.

But why do I always feel like I’m on the other side of some argument [the wrong side] with this Administration? Why do I always feel that whatever I think is going to meet with some sarcastic attack ["You Liberals think …"]? And why do I feel that whatever they say, it is unlikely to be the truth – rather some overly simplified version designed to lead me down some predetermined path I wouldn’t go down if I had all the facts?

The O’Reilly/Dodd scream fest yesterday is a great example of what we’ve had to live with for more years than I want to count. O’Reilly [or his staff] found some offensive cartoon on a DailyKOS weblog and used it to trash DailyKOS, the YearlyKOS meeting in Chicago, and all the Democratic Candidates [who will appear at YKC]. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Dodd did a fine job of staying with O’Reilly, but why should he have to do that? No one wants to defend that cartoon. It was some doctored photo depicting Joe Lieberman about to give Bush a blow job. It is, in fact, an example of some Liberal Blogger doing exactly what O’Reilly does – simplifying something and being sarcastic. Lieberman is pretty criticizable – a man who has turned on the Democrats and a lot of his own constituents, but that cartoon is, as O’Reilly says, offensive. O’Reilly makes his living attacking others for doing what he, O’Reilly, does himself – and Dodd did as good a job as is possible in calling him on it. But why should he have to do that? O’Reilly is a media monkey – like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. What is it that makes such antics acceptable to so many people [See, I can do it too]?

The Nazis did it. The Stalinists did it. Hussein did it. Bin Laden did it. I guess divisive simplifications and sarcasm work in the public forum. I’ll bet they had such shouting matches in the Senate in Ancient Greece. And so it’s why we have oversight – to keep people from simplifying one side of an argument and ignoring the other side. Rather than go nuts about the F.I.S.A. judges and have some big reform, how about telling us what that judge decided? Let us think about it before we have some simplistic debate. Maybe that judge had a good point…