FISA Court, like warrants that any US attorney obtains, simply turns down nothing. 5/20,000 in twenty something years is granting every warrant.

How many warrants that the FISA court approved were legitimate warrants with a legitimate reason for obtaining them? Plenty were not.

FISA is the Court that chose through John Bates’ opinion, not to let you see the decisions on the warrantless wiretapping.

Just because FISA approves it, doesn’t make it a legitimate warrant by any means. And it’s still secret.

The buzzwords for the rest of your life are “Secret Government Watching You”.

Of course, a pardon would require a) that the individuals either be convicted, or b) they accept that they participated in a criminal act. It would remove their Fifth Amendment protections against testimony before Congress or to a Prosecutor about what their Criminal acts entailed.

Thus Bush couldn’t hide the extent of his domestic espionage if he pardons them. Congress or the Courts would reveal them.

So he needs to “decriminalize” their actions via Congress. The sole purpose is to hide the crimes…not to protect those that participated in them.

Let Bush pardon his co-conspirators!

It seems to me that it’s quite reasonable that Reid decided to suspend the debate simply because he could see that the debate was eating up lots of time needed on other urgent business.

Here’s an idea that we should work on.

Reid argued that he was bringing the SIC “immunity” bill to the floor simply because it had the greater support of the two Bills. But it’s quite clear that this is the version that would require compromise with the House version in negotiations. Thus the Bill that should be under discussion is the one that has the fewest major differences with the version already passed by the HOUSE.

Now lets think about why it’s critical to get that version to the floor and voted upon.

First, it will then be easier to argue that it will not require extensive negotiation before the earlier covering FISA fix expires. If there is extensive negotiation…and futher filibustering, time may run out before the compromise is gained. Then Congress is to blame for not attaining a Bills passage.

Second. The SJC+House version (without immunity) can thus be passed on to Bush before the August temporary” version expires.

Bush will then be under pressure to NOT veto that version because HE will be responsible for going back to the old version of the FISA law that doesn’t “patch” the “domestic router” gap pointed out by a FISA judge. Bush will have to make a difficult decision. He can veto, and ” make Americans at greater risk from terrorists” (because the phone companies are responsible for violating the 4th Amendment). This despite the fact that the domestic router issue is fixed in all the Bills.

Thus Bush is going to have to defend his veto only upon the demand that he wants unlimited power to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Because this is what the current Bill from the Intelligence Committee DOES. It makes the FISA Court and any Judicial oversight irrelevant.

In fact, what is the need for a FISA Court system anymore? If the AG or Director or Intelligence can simply certify “need” and not submit anything to obtain a warrant then why even have thjs bureaucratic structure called the FISA Court?

Maybe that should be another point made in the debate over this bill. And maybe someone should offer an Amendment simply cutting out all the redundant judicial oversight crap…since the Executive Branch now has insisted that “its word is good enuff”.

I think you’re right on there.

DiFi’s compromise, which is not horrible, isto have the FISA Court review the authorization for the wiretaps en banc. If they decide the telecoms had legal authorization, THEN the suits get dismissed, but not before.

Thing is, we KNOW (from the SSCI report) that the telecoms DIDN’T have AG authorization for the period following Mrch 10, 2004 (the hospital confrontation). Their authorization was signed by then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales. Given that the FISA Court has shown some disgruntlement with this program, I think they would see that WH Counsel doesn’t equal AG.

Thing is, what does thta do for oversight? If the telecoms don’t get their suits dismissed, then what happens to all the suits? Back to the 9th Circuit?

In any case, Hatch was absolutely apoplectic about the proposal. Which suggests he sees what I see.

I can’t count all the dumb things they’ve done. I should have expressed myself more clearly. Maybe I was misunderstood. I don’t mean that the Bushies won’t go down because they’re so brilliant. I’m referring to what I believe is serious criminal conduct as to the wiretapping and payback for the cooperation to the Telcos. The CIA tapees and the quick coopting of the puppet Mike Mukasey and DOJ is another example.

What I should have said was that the Bush administration is fighting like hell to keep the Telco material from discovery in any litigation by closing the courtroom doors down precisely as Chris Dodd, and Teddy Kennedy said today explicitly.

What I can’t answer well is how the Bush administration seems to have so many Democrats to vote with them on this and other crucial issues. I may not be an aficianado of Senate head fakes and manuevering behind the scenes. We have a lot of Firepups who have studied legislative manuvering closely for years who know their stuff.

But I don’t trust Harry Reid in this one. I’m taking the way he brought this bill to the floor at Face Value. I think Reid wanted to and wants to insure that Telcos get immunity.

And ad nauseam, I like to remind everyone that the Senate doesn’t know what that immunity is covering up and that the Bush administration is determined they never find out.

Your superimposition of Bush’s personality defects is probably on the money.

For all we know, multiple sources may have transcripts and videos of the entire Interrogation-Discussion-Torture-Repeat Cycle that the White House went through as it Authorized each application of Barbarity that eventually produced a ‘broken’ (and possibly severely damaged) Zubaydah and Nishiri.

There may already be an Open-and-Shut Case that displays Bush’s primary personality defect – Sadism – with devastating clarity for all the World to see – all delivered up by the Boobs at BushCo to themselves.

Proving that you don’t have to be Smart to be a Tyrant – just Mean and Uncurious.

I agree with everything you’ve said, especially this comment:

Absolutely. Keeping discovery frozen in all these cases — whether via state secrets or retroactive immunity grant — does two critical things: 1) Keeps the illegal surveillance facts quarrantined so they can’t be used again in the nextcase; 2) Keeps the Article II wartime powers claim alive so it can be used again in the next case. So I don’t think we will be seeing discovery in those cases moving forward, not as long as Team Dick still draws breath — they simply can’t let it happen because their Administration simply can’t survive that.

Jack Goldsmith’s book kind of lays it all out, if you read between the lines.

I don’t trust Reid in this, and in a number of things he’s handled, and I don’t know what is taking place or will take place behind the scenes, but even if more paperwork is made available to all Senators in Room 407 or wherever by the administration, I believe there is terribly incriminating discovery from Bush’s attorneys and the Telco attorneys that the Bushies will bury forever.

I just don’t trust the Bush administration to reveal anything that is significant. They are truly the administration of redaction, omission, and hidden documents, with millions of emails deleted and I don’t see them behaving any differently here.

This administration has done exponentially worse things and this is one of them than the Nixon administration and they are not going to let any of that material see the light of day I believe.

Bush is leaving, as my neighbor’s bumper sticker says, but they aren’t going down.

That is plausible. That would be a step in the right direction; but what is the end game? If history is any guide, and it usually is, irrespective of whether more documents are turned over the passage of immunity is still a done deal. Even if the contents of the documents make more of a case for impeachment than retroactive immunity, immunity will be the decision. Which, of course would effectively ratify everything done pursuant to the bases of the immunity. The implications of anything along that line are worse than just passing the damn thing today when they could at least argue they had never seen or known of either bogusly misleading incomplete docs or docs that flat out describe criminality. Because those are the only two types of documents they have.

I totally agree with this take. And they will do anything to hide as much of that incriminating documentation as possible. If the 9th Circuit or other Circuits who are probably awaiting the outcome of this legislation were to decide for the plaintifss, Cindy Cohn and her clients in the 9th and in the other Circuits, the Bush administration will (if not already) scoop up every shred of discovery and bury it.

What the courts say or order mean next to nothing to Bush’s lawyers who make up their own rules.

Ok, here comes the grumpy, old, curmudgeonly fart. This is a nice “victory”, but why did Reid pull the legislation? I don’t think these guys have any shame, so I am not sure I am buying the going explanation. Like a page out of Highlights Magazine, whats wrong with this picture? Even if the conventional wisdom that Reid got embarrassed is right, there must be a setup; they are going to slam this thing Thursday or Friday night or something. Maybe there will be a quick in and out special session while everybody is gone for the holidays and the news cycle is parked. Crikey, the one vote was 76-10, that is a lot of cover. You know the Senate is pining to give immunity to Bush; why didn’t they?

While scheduling may have been one of the reasons, I sure share your pesimmism. This pump is primed with a large amount of Democratic votes for the Intelligence version of S. 2248 and one of the major ironies in this to me, is that no Senator has seen a significant amount of the documentation or discovery of what Telco’s and the administration have done that’s out there, and a handful of Senators have seen a fraction of the documents, carefully chosen by Addington, Fielding, and Gillespie and the lawyers who work for them.