Birmingham Blues

It’s September 11 again. September 11 will come around once every year for the rest of time, and I suppose as long as I’m blogging, I’ll want to commemorate it. Last year, the 5th anniversary lent itself to eloquence, but when I look back on what I wrote that day, I’m most impressed by the clarity of my memory.

9YOD came home from school yesterday with the assignment to write three sentences about 9/11. Given that she was three in 2001, she needed to pick my brain for information. I started to tell her about my recollections of the day – and found details that were so clear just 365 days ago are now blurred and faded. This past year has been a long ride of loss and grief, and earth-shaking world events have paled in importance to getting through a day, and then two, and then a few more without bursting into tears at the slightest provocation.

The people who lost family and friends on 9/11 must have felt somewhat the same. Stunned by grief, exhausted by the sheer necessity of getting up every morning and doing the minimum that had to be done to keep those who remained from falling apart. Desperate to find some meaning in the horror of pain and death. Struggling to explain to uncomprehending children why the loved one wouldn’t be coming home again. And forced to do all those things under the microscope of the national media. Judged by those detached souls who provide social commentary, some of whom started out with sympathy but, when faced with diverse, unexpected, or “inappropriate” responses to loss, turned on the survivors.

Six years on, those survivors have been joined by even greater numbers (Americans, Iraqis, and others) whose spouses, parents, siblings, friends have been taken from them by the ravages of an ill-conceived and poorly managed war. And those who now care for loved ones whose minds and bodies will never recover from their injuries. Iraq’s infrastructure has been severely damaged, and the purported “rebuilding” is in the hands of private contractors whose primary, perhaps only, goal is taking the US government for every cent they can steal. Osama bin Laden is apparently still free to broadcast videos around the world and gloat over his crimes. The Taliban is alive and kicking in Afghanistan.

And our leaders are moving the goalposts yet again, telling us, 4½ years in, that they need just a little more time to “win” a war they assured us would take six weeks to six months. The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel is just a mirage.

When I sat down to write this post, I thought I was at a loss for words. I’m not. I’m just at a loss. Period.

TPM Muckraker has been live-blogging the Petraeus/Crocker hearings, complete with video clips.  Check it out.

Here’s Reason #4,739 in an ongoing series:

F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target was in contact with. The bureau stopped the practice early this year in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said.

The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.

The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program. But privacy advocates, civil rights leaders and even some counterterrorism officials warn that link analysis can be misused to establish tenuous links to people who have no real connection to terrorism but may be drawn into an investigation nonetheless… (more)

Despite evidence to the contrary, we’re trained to believe that innocent people are never caught up in law enforcement investigations. And should the unthinkable occur, the movies show us that they will be exonerated in the end. The movies don’t generally show us whether they are restored to their former status - with family, reputation, livelihood, and back pay intact - but we seem to presume that will be the case.

(more…)

Here we go again.

H/T, PTSD Mom

Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to testify before Congress regarding conditions in Iraq on September 11.  Gee, I’m sure the administration’s ongoing efforts to link Iraq to 9/11 have absolutely nothing to do with the choice of date.

Concerns Raised on Wider Spying under New Law

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

Uh huh.  For some reason, those assurances don’t make me feel better. 

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns….

…Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

But of course we know the administration would never overstep its bounds.  Well, actually we don’t, and that’s why a group of attorneys met with Bushco last week to clarify the parameters of the new law.  They weren’t happy with what they heard.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

Gee, I’m shocked to hear that.  Not only did Bush rush through a big expansion of his surveillance power, he has no intention of abiding by the new rules if they get in his way.  And let’s not forget that DNI Mike McConnell and incompetent liar Alberto Gonzales get to decide who will be targeted when Bush unleashes his shiny new superpowers.

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

No shit.  Thanks ever so to the 14 Democratic senators and 41 Democratic representatives who voted for this turkey.  You suck.

The House just passed a FISA bill that Bush “can sign”.  227-183.  I feel safer already.  Not.

I can, most days, bring myself to laugh over the latest doings in Washington.  Some days I’m snarky; some I’m angry.  Today I’m just sad.

The Senate voted last night to give George W. Bush almost everything he wanted in a new FISA bill.  The House is under tremendous pressure to do the same today.  Sixteen Democrats, and of course Joe Lieberman, joined the Republicans to give W unprecedented legal power to spy on American soil.

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government’s terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government’s authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

And, best I can tell, this legislation leaves the decisions of whom to target and the “oversight” as to whether civil liberties are violated to Alberto Gonzales and DNI Mike McConnell.  That’s Alberto “the Geneva Conventions are quaint” Gonzales and Mike “I like this bill — oops, no, I hate this bill” McConnell.  We can all sleep at night, knowing that the über-competent Bush administration is at the helm.

Congressional Democrats and the White House clashed throughout the day not only over the scope of the changes in the law but also over whether the other side was bargaining in good faith. Democrats said they were convinced that their proposal met key the demands of Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) quoted him as saying that the bill “significantly enhances America’s security.”

But Republicans cited a letter from McConnell yesterday afternoon calling the proposal unacceptable and warning that it would prevent him from protecting the country adequately from terrorist attacks. That assertion in turn prompted charges by Democrats that the White House had overruled McConnell in an effort to gain political advantage by painting their party as weak on terrorism.

Bush spent yesterday jawing about how he’d negotiated in good faith.  Sure.  You know, every time he speaks, my crap antenna pops up.  Can’t imagine why.

“We did everything he wants,” Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said of McConnell, “and now he says he doesn’t like the bill. They didn’t move the goal post; they moved the stadium.” Pelosi herself accused the Republicans of not caring “about the truth.”

Civil liberties groups are not happy with this bill:

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats “have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word ‘terrorism,’ they roll over and play dead,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill’s approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government’s electronic surveillance. “If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening,” he said.

Why is it that Democrats continue to roll over for Bush, who’s done such a bang-up job that he’s about as popular as an infestation of termites at this point?  I have to assume that they’re terrified of being painted weak on terrorism.  And that’s a reasonable fear.  It’s much simpler to fill in the paint-by-number spaces for people who aren’t really paying attention.  The “Democrats = al Quaeda” pablum goes down easier than a serious, grown-up discussion of the implications of giving away our freedoms now in the futile hope that becoming more like the world al-Quaeda wants will make extremists hate us less.

I can’t hammer this point too many times: any authority that is granted to President Bush will also extend to President Clinton or President Obama or President Edwards.  Don’t Republicans understand that?  They love to paint Clinton in particular as some sort of authoritarian dictator-wannabe (projecting much?), yet they, and their buddy Lieberman, happily and blindly follow Bush as he grabs more and more power for the executive branch.

Yes, this bill as it now stands will sunset in six months, and that’s a good thing.  But in six months, Bush will just pull the same old “terror, terror, fear, fear” routine out of his hip pocket, and we’ll see the Congress dance to his tune again.  You want to get scared?  Don’t fall for Bush’s “If you don’t pass this bill right now, the terrorists win” temper tantrum.  Be scared by this:

“We’re at war. The enemy wants to attack us,” [Sen. Joe] Lieberman said during the Senate debate. “This is not the time to strive for legislative perfection.”

God help us.  The Congress won’t.

At least this turkey expires in six months.  And it doesn’t give Gonzo sole authority to decide who is targeted.  Keith Olbermann had constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley on tonight to discuss the erosion of our civil liberties.  It’s scary — but important.  Click on the lovely shot of W and the Dark Vice-Lord to see the video (via Crooks and Liars).

W is pitching a fit, saying Congress has to stay in session till it sends him a FISA bill he can sign.  Sadly, a judge secretly ruled four or five months ago that his super-secret spy program was somewhat less than legal — a little, likely classified, tidbit revealed by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-of course) while propagandizing on Faux News.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) disclosed elements of the court’s decision in remarks Tuesday to Fox News as he was promoting the administration-backed wiretapping legislation. Boehner has denied revealing classified information, but two government officials privy to the details confirmed that his remarks concerned classified information.

So now all the sudden there’s a ginormous rush to give W and his pal Gonzo the authority to spy on people in the US without benefit of FISA court review.  Because, according to Trent Lott (R-duh), the country will be attacked between now and September 12 if W doesn’t get his way.  Gee, I can’t imagine why Democrats in Congress — and anyone with a functioning brain — would be hesitant to trust Gonzo with the authority to “create ‘guidelines’ for surveillance on people in the U.S.” and ensure that permission to intercept communications isn’t abused.

Anyway, negotiations have broken off, with Bush doing his best to blame Democrats for not giving him everything Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wanted.  There’s just one problem with that scenario:

A key Democrat in the negotiations, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), says that a deal had in fact been reached with McConnell, who has been busy lobbying Congress on a FISA update all week. “We had an agreement with DNI McConnell,” Hoyer spokeswoman Stacey Bernards tells TPMmuckraker, “and then the White House quashed the agreement.”

DNI McConnell has no comment, which to my mind pretty much confirms Hoyer’s statement.  Yeah, this bill is THE most important thing out there, but we can’t have an agreement before Bush gets to rant and rave about the evil Democrats.