On other blogs...

Brad Friedman is having trouble making ends meet, so he's offering a premium. Unlike me, Brad depends on his political work for his egg-and-cheese money. And his scoops have been phenomenal. Please help him out!

Neo-connecting the dots. I continue to be impressed by Jeff Huber's series on Iran, which you can read on Larisa Alexandrovna's site. How's this for a socko opener?

As parts I through IV of "Neo-connecting the Dots to Iran" discussed, Congress can't really stop Mr. Bush from attacking Iran if that's what he really wants to do, and before any legal action against Bush reaches the Supreme Court, what's left of humanity may be living in mine shafts. The major media have proven wholly incapable of acting as a power balancing fourth estate. Can it really be that the only institution that can keep America from committing yet another devastating misapplication of military force is the military itself?

FISA, new and improved. Marcy Wheeler offers the internet's best writing on the upcoming "permanent" FISA patch.

I'm hesitant to touch the issue. Not long ago, my readers raked me over the coals when I argued that the main flaws were in the original law, not in the "emergency patch" that aroused so much ire and bad reporting. My readers assured me that they knew so much more than I did about that amendment. Funny thing, though: They refused to read the law, as I had.

Marcy, who is anything but intellectually lazy, also read the actual legislation and addressed the same issues I talked about. Somehow, she escaped the rakes and coals. To paraphrase a Roman axiom, Juno may do what the ox may not. According to Marcy:

...this bill appears to have regular oversight of the program (IG reports to both FISC and Congress). And it refuses to give immunity to telecoms without first knowing what those telecoms did. These account for several of the eight demands issued by the Progressive Caucus. But the bill only requires a FISA warrant if the surveillance targets someone in the US, not if it touches on someone in the US (though this is better than the "related to" language in the amended FISA act).

Let's look at the sixth of the eight demands:

Once the government has reason to believe that a specific account, person or facility will have contact with someone in the United States, the government should be required to return to the FISC to obtain a court order for continued surveillance. Reliance on the FISC will help ensure the privacy of U.S. persons' communications.

A good idea, I say. But I will also point out -- yet again -- that this is a needed improvement not of the recent amendment but of the 1978 legislation. The original wording clearly stipulated that no warrant was needed when foreign targets communicated with domestic sources (yes, such conversations were being overhead, even then) as long as the minimization procedures were observed. Those procedures stripped away identifying information of U.S. persons involved and restricted data retention. And, yes, those (arguably insufficient) constitutional protections still applied in the amended version of the law -- despite the misleading impressions you may have gathered from the newspapers, the progressive web sites, or Air America.

Have tempers cooled sufficiently for me to make this argument? Dare I hope that some of you may now actually read the law before lecturing me on it?

The eight recommendations of the Progressive Caucus do not go so far as they should. As I noted in my earlier pieces, the minimization procedures must be re-written in light of new technology. Even if the Caucus has its way, the FISA law will still use Carter-era tech as a reference point -- and that ain't "progressive" at all.