Brian Lehrer and Glenn Greenwald on FISA Vote

Barack Obama on FISA

This is pretty disappointing.

Just this past October, Obama spokesperson Bill Burton had this to say about Obama and FISA:

"To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies."

Even more recently, in January 2008, Obama himself had this to say:

"I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill."

However, Obama came out in support of a "compromise" on FISA that includes retroactive immunity. Within his statement, he said this:

"[The bill] does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

Despite this language, it appears that Obama will support the bill even if he cannot remove the provisions relating to retroactive immunity. I'm doubtful that he will make a big issue over this, and I'm doubtful that he will remove anything. But even besides the retroactive immunity provision, there are some troubling aspects in this bill that would give a future President Obama some pretty broad powers to spy domestically without a warrant, and without cause.

Although this may be the politically expedient thing to do, it's not the right thing to do.

UPDATE: I've been a little too busy to write regularly here lately, but I'm also skeptical of the "windfall profits tax." Does anybody have some good reading material on the topic?

UPDATE II: On the other side of the aisle, John McCain has made very clear his total support for retroactive immunity, and has actually already voted in favor of it.

Glenn Greenwald on the Media

From Salon:

In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

"Yoo and torture" - 102

"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73

"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16

"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043

"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to count)

"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607

"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079

In a non-insane press corps, you would expect a Justice Department memo arguing that the fourth amendment does not apply to the President within the United States would rank higher as a story than a bowling score. At the very least, the bowling score shouldn't be reported 65 times as much as the memo.

Glenn Greenwald on The "Rezko" Game

I've said this plenty of times before, but Glenn Greenwald's column at Salon should be required reading for everyone, everywhere, every day. Today, he looks at The "Rezko" Game and how the innuendo has been flying around without any substance to back it up.

One could read literally thousands of news accounts about the "Whitewater scandal" and never encounter a single, specific charge of impropriety. The word simply stood for a series of confusing, complex, boring financial transactions that were combined with dark and vague innuendo which, repeated enough, led to a "where-there's-smoke- there's-fire" presumption of guilt. Slothful journalists could not get enough of the tactic because tossing "Whitewater" around required no real work, active investigation or critical thought -- the mortal enemies of most establishment reporters -- but instead was just a cheap and easy way to imply that they were pursuing some sort of scandal.

"Rezko" is the Whitewater of the Obama campaign. It's almost impossible now to find an article or news account about Obama that doesn't include some dark reference to the "Rezko" affair, always with the suggestion or even overt claim that it's reflective of some serious vulnerability, some suggestion of wrongdoing and corruption. But what is it? The reporters throwing the word around quite plainly have no idea.

Having paid only casual attention to it in the past, I spent several hours yesterday morning reading every "Rezko" article I could find in an attempt to understand as much as possible about the allegations. The point isn't that there is no credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Obama, although that's unquestionably true. It's far beyond that. There aren't even any theoretical allegations or suggestions as to what he might have done wrong at all. The person who is accused of wrongdoing is Tony Rezko, in matters inarguably having nothing to do with Obama. Nobody claims otherwise (although many try to imply otherwise).

The only substantive connections Obama and Rezko have is that the latter was a contributor to Obama's campaign and was a partner in a standard residential real-estate purchase which nobody suggests, at least in terms of Obama's conduct, was anything but above-board. But Rezko himself has a sinister-sounding, villain-like last name and is of Syrian origin, which, for multiple reasons, helps build the shallow media drama.

But Obama isn't even accused of -- let alone proven to have engaged in -- any wrongdoing at all. I spent many years litigating all sorts of civil cases involving financial transactions like these. Few things are easier than concocting some nefarious angle to innocuous real estate transactions, yet they can't even do that here. Despite that, the "Rezko" innuendo lurks and grows and clearly isn't going anywhere.

What I find most peculiar is that now it is the Clintons themselves who are playing The Rezko Game. It seems that ever since their string of losses in February, they can't make it through a conference call without saying things like this: "We urge Senator Obama to release all relevant financial and other information related to indicted political fixer Tony Rezko." It is maddeningly obvious that they are simply smearing innuendo around wherever they can, in a last-minute attempt to shift whatever press coverage they can to Rezko (notice that they never allege any kind of wrongdoing - there is none - but rather just hector the press to "start asking questions" and just hector Obama to "start answering questions").

I hope that he starts responding to this by calling it out for what it is.

John King Interviews Mike McConnell

CNN's John King recently interviewed Michael McConnell about FISA, while confessing his ignorance on the topic and praising McConnell's apolitical nature (despite the fact that he was caught lying to Congress about FISA, has reneged on a legislative agreement back in August, etc.). Glenn Greenwald writes about it here. I'd just like to say again the Glenn Greenwald should be required reading for everybody.

UPDATE: Maybe John King will write another whiny email to Greenwald about this Salon piece.