Briefly, on FISA

[solarbird]

Okay, so, a picosummary:

The House Democrats have so far declined to be steamrolled into the "bipartisan" Senate carte blanche assignment of unconstitutional power and retroactive immunity. This is somewhat surprising, but good. The PAA amendments from the previous round have also been allowed to expire; House Republicans staged a walkout in protest over Democratic refusal to grant unlimited warrantless spying power on Americans. However, given that Chief Executive Mr. Bush ignored the law previously, I rather imagine he'll continue to ignore it now. Mr. Olbermann's declaration of Mr. Bush's fascism was rather bracing, tho' I'm wonk enough to wish he'd spent a little more time on political theory.

Sadly, however, the Supreme Court decided to lock Americans into a catch-22^*, making enforcement against illegal spying programmes more difficult, by ruling that the Executive branch doesn't have to say anything about anything until a suit is established, and saying that you can't sue unless you can already prove you're a target of illegal spying. This removes the private lawsuits that were directly targeting the administration's illegal actions from the courts, leaving only the private lawsuits against the telecom companies (and their separate and specific violations of the law) standing. This makes it even more important that this retroactive immunity not succeed.

That's all for now. Things are on hold for a small assortment of days; after that, we'll see whether these House actions are real, or some combination of grandstanding and kabuki play. Hopefully, it's real.

---

^*: link was this other URL before Yahoo! broke it, gir)

Comments

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

and i'm just as worried about the related decision in the 9th circuit (cited in the same story) that if one does find out, the gov't can play the national security card to quash the evidence.