I really haven’t followed the story closely, but there appears to be an interesting development.
There are now indications that the 16 year old bride, the girl who allegedly made the phone call to authorities which resulted in the court order, may not exist.
It appears that authorities have been able to locate the girl, and the day after the raid, a similar call was made regarding another FLDS compound in Arizona.
This may make criminal prosecutions difficult.
Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated in Memphis, TN.
This time, it appears that the protests are in Xinjiang, where the Muslim Uighur protested Chinese rule.
There are a number of non-Han areas in China, and I think that the indigenous people in those areas are all looking at the Olympics as a potential opportunity to demand greater autonomy and cultural respect.
The folks at TPM have found another Yoo memo, this one only 37 pages long, and discovered that one of the conclusions there was that the 4th amendment, which protects against “unreasonable search and seizure” did not apply in anti-terror investigations.
Seriously, these guys had no concept as to the rule of law. They really hate everything that out founding fathers worked for.
The memo is no longer in effect, but little known state agencies known as “fusion centers” have been sucking up every bit of personal data they can find:
See the ACLU report here.
It appears now that name calling, invocations of 911, and threats of dire political consequences to Democratic members of Congress, it appears that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are willing to negociate in food faith.
Honestly, I don’t trust them, but it’s clear that something has changed:
The White House’s more conciliatory posture reflects a recognition that the Bush administration’s leverage on national-security matters has slipped since this past summer, a top Republican congressional aide said. “There’s a recognition that if they’re actually going to get a product they can support, there’s going to have to be some new level of engagement,” the aide said.
Pa4rt of this, IMSNHO, was that Representatives got many enthusiastic high fives from constituents when they left for the recess, and part of it is because it is increasingly clear that DNI Mike McConnell is a lying sack of sh*% (like his lying about telcos refusing to wiretap) who does nothing but carry water for Bush.
There is talk of a compromise along the lines of something like limits on liability, or some sort of government indemnification (which was probably already part of the deal).
I don’t object to indemnification or damage limits, there are precedents for this, and it would not have the effect of covering up Bush’s law breaking.
What worries me is that Steny Hoyer is point man on this, and when the going gets tough, he folds like overcooked broccoli.
It is now being reported that, after having thrown everything at the Congressional Democrats but the kitchen sink, Bush is trying to adopt a more conciliatory attitude on the FISA update.
You’ve accused Pelosi and Reyes of everything short of buggering goats, and now it’s time to make nice.
Bush does not get it. The congressional Democrats stood up to him before the recess, and when they got back to their home districts, their constituents basically high fived them for standing up to him.
They realize that standing up to Mr. 19% is a political winner, so you have to convince them of the benefit to the public good of your proposals.
Bush’s problem is that there is no public good to telco immunity. It’s not about the public good. It’s about keeping Bush and His Evil Minions™ out of jail.
Telco immunity is important to Bush because Bush illegally coerced the telecommunications companies to Hoover the phone and internet well before 911, and if it comes out in court, he goes to jail, as do many of his cronies.
Even the MSM is getting it now, with the LA Times describing DNI Michael McConnell’s behavior at a retreat with members of the House Intelligence Committee as being water carrying for the administration.
Took them long enough. He has been lying, and lying in ways that can be disproved in a few minutes with “the Google”, for months now, and the press is finally starting to notice.
All of this lot need to go on trial after January. The pardon of Nixon has created a cult of impunity among Republicans that needs to be shut down.
Now the Chinese are claiming that Tibetan protesters are planning suicide attacks…..puhleeze.
When they won the Olympic bid, they should have hired a competent PR firm.
The PRC public relations apparatus may be the only one in the world more incompetent than the Democratic Party public relations apparatus.
Sarkosy is considering, and Tusk of Poland and Klaus of the Czech Republic have said that they will boycott too.
The Chinese had no bloody clue what they were getting into when they won the Olympics.
The effects of the spreading protests on the China, and on the Olympics are as yet unclear.
I don’t expect a descent into anarchy, but China may soon take the gloves off, which would not be pretty.
In related news, the Chinese have decided to add some demonstration sports to the games:
傻冒儿 Stupid Hat aka ShaMao’er makes the following statement on Tibet:
3) I could not fucking believe that the first article about this I saw on CNN (other than the ticker at the bottom of the screen) featured Richard Gere in a 5 minute interview as the ‘expert’. How many real experts are there on Tibet and even Tibetan/Chinese relations in our universities and they choose that idiot.
I agree.
In the discussion of the House FISA bill, I’ve frequently discussed the telco immunity, it also represents a a significant change to the much abused state secrets privilige.
It now requires that evidence be presented to the judge, though not the litigants.
This is important because the state secrets privilege has been rotten to its core from its first use, which the Supreme Court heard as U.S. v. Reynolds, that had no actual state secrets involved.
The government just lied to the court in claiming that the B-29 involved in a crashwas on a secret mission, when the aircraft was not on a secret mission.
They simply did not want to admit that the crash was caused by grossly negligent maintenance.
The state secrets privilege should be abolished.
From The Gavel, Pelosi’s Blog:
House Passes FISA Amendments Act
March 14th, 2008 by Jesse LeeThe House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.
You can find the vote here.
In the anti-American crowd (Nays), you have 12 Democrats, including Lampson and Shuler.
Nick Lampson I keep getting emails from, because he bought Richard Morrison’s mailing list when he took over the campaign.
As to Heath Shuler, he was an overpaid, no brain, no guts punk when he played for the Redskins, and he’s an overpaid no brain, no guts punk now.
We have reports of rioting, with cars and shops set ablaze.
This is going to get very ugly very quickly.
It will make Tienanmen look like a tea party.
In this case, we have the FBI using national security letters, which require no judicial review, as a giant Hoover to spy on tens of thousands of Americans illegally.
What’s more, when they were informed that this was illegal, they engaged in an orgy of illegal ass-covering:
This created a backlog of records that the F.B.I. had obtained without going through proper procedures. In response, the letter said, the F.B.I. devised a plan: rather than issuing national security letters retroactively for each individual investigation, it would issue the blanket letters to cover all the records obtained from a particular phone company.
Lets be clear. This is not the exception, this is the rule. It is the basic place that any part of the state security apparatus is coming from, and it has been since well before the founding of the Republic.
These sorts of situational ethics are simply part of the mindset.
This is not a common event, and if you have a “blue dog” representative, call him, and make it clear that you will never vote for him for anything under any circumstances if he approves Telco immunity.
I’m still not sure what put some spine in the House dems, but when Pelosi is saying things like, “the president is wrong, and he knows it“, it’s clear that something has given them the will to resist Mr. Nineteen percent.
My theory is that when they left without passing telco immunity, they were overwhelmed at the support that they received, and that they realize that opposing Bush on anything for any reason is a winning tactic.
Of course, Senator Rockefeller is still determined to put telco immunity back in there. My guess is that he was briefed and signed off on it, and thinks that it will harm him politically.
The house is completely defying Bush on the FISA wiretap update proposal.
Instead of immunity, they are putting forward giving, “the federal courts special authorization to hear classified evidence and decide whether the phone companies should be held liable.” Meaning that their answer to Bush’s demand for a coverup is even more judicial overview with regard to spying on Americans.
Word that I’ve read is that the freshman Democrats are very opposed to immunity, and my not so educated guess is that when they went on recess, that the reps got hundreds, if not thousands, of “attaboys” from theid constituents.
The Bush administration hates the bill, and the response for John Conyers and Sylvestre Reyes is brutal:
The Administration, which has refused to even attend negotiation sessions between the House and the Senate, has now apparently launched another round of scare tactics and falsehoods. The American people expect government officials to wrestle with these difficult issues and reach common sense solutions that protect Americans from terrorism and preserve our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the President’s advisors seem more inclined to issue ‘my way or the highway’ press releases concerning a bill the Administration hasn’t even read. The Congress will continue to give this issue the careful consideration it deserves and we hope the Administration will change course and join us in this effort.
I don’t know who put some steel in their spine, but it feels good.
FWIW, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who got bunked by Reid on immunity, likes the House bill too.
So does the EFF.
The Wall Street Journal details just what the NSA is drift netting with out benefit of warrant from your telecommunications records.
This is the NSA, so it means that if the can collect this data, they are collecting this data.
Anyone want to bet that this is also being used to target political opponents of Bush and His Evil Minions™ in the US?
They are trying to subvert the most basic principal of scientific journals, the peer review process, and making the bogus claim that “Scientific journals such as NEJM may have received manuscripts that contain exonerating data for Celebrex and Bextra which would be relevant for Pfizer’s causation defence,” for cases involving its Cox-2 inhibitors Celebrex and Bextra.
One hopes that the just slaps them down.
The Home Secretary in the UK intends to deport a Lesbian back to native Iran, where her partner has already been sentenced to death.
It appears that the home office thinks that everything is “just hunky dory”, because so long as, “Iranians are discreet about their homosexuality, they will not be persecuted”.
That the hell happened to the Labor party?