I Don't Like You Either.

The Scope of the NSA's Domestic Spying

The Wall Street Journal discusses the role of the National Security Agency in analyzing the data they sweep up via FISA.  Apparently "A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance." (WSJ)  And, points out one expert somberly, the constitutional questions of whether the government can probe the wide array of data it's currently examining without violating reasonable expectations of privacy has never been resolved. (WSJ)  "NSA officials say the agency's own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it's increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information," the article observes.(WSJ)

Do you mind?  Should you mind?  Let's take a look at exactly what they're sweeping up, and in.

In Re: Comey, Gonzalez, and the State of the Rule of Law; or "Why Do the [Liberal] Heathen Rage?"

IN RE:  THE STATE OF THE  RULE OF LAW. 

Let's have a look round the Watchtower of Babel, shall we?   Yes.  Let's!  Today I want to give some well-merited attention this posting from blogger Digby at Hullabaloo. 

First, a bit of background: 

First consider this article from The Washington Post concerning the Comey testimony by Dan Eggen and Paul Kane [Gonzales Hospital Episode Detailed:  Ailing Ashcroft Pressured on Spy Program, Former Deputy Says].  It concerns [quote begins from article] "the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, [and] his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.... White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal." [quote ends]

Then have a look at this Washington Post op-ed by Douglas Kmiec [Testimony in a Teacup:  What's Overlooked in Comey's Histrionics]. 

Then there's this:

Then let's look at this liberal blogger's response and see if we can't see exactly why he thinks this op-ed reveals something important that people should be noticing.

No matter how I spin it, I end up unable to solve the following conundrum, as presented in this note by Digby:  How do the Right contrive to be always in the right, even with respect to behavior that violates the standards they themselves have proclaimed?   

Better Late than Never....Conservatives Launch a Movement to Reclaim Power from the Executive Branch.

Two articles at The Huffington Post of interest to those of us who have been watching the erosion under the Bush Administration of constitutional checks and balances.

Why, hello, guys, what took you so long?  Melissa Hanneberger at The Huffington Post:  Four Prominent Conservatives Launch Effort to Restore Civil Liberties Under Assault by the Executive Branch.

Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who led the effort to impeach President Clinton, is one of the organizers of the effort, called the American Freedom Agenda. Others are David Keene of the American Conservative Union, writer and conservative direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie, and constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served in the Reagan administration as associate deputy attorney general.....

At a 1 p.m. news conference today at the National Press Club, they will pitch a legislative package "to restore congressional oversight and habeas corpus, end torture and extraordinary rendition, narrow the President's authority to designate 'enemy combatants,' prevent unconstitutional wiretaps, email and mail openings, protect journalists from prosecution under the Espionage Act, and more."

In a statement, the four said the president "has encroached on the power of Congress to make laws, and on the power of the courts to interpret the law - a scenario that the Founding Fathers foresaw and warned against." As a result, they said, "We are issuing this call to Americans of all political and philosophical persuasions to join us in urging Congress to enact The American Freedom Agenda."

"The AFA would roll back the alarming recent concentration of power in the White House and its end runs around due process... The AFA seeks to restore America's tradition of respect for the rule of law and the benefits of dispersed as opposed to concentrated power, to redeem the principle that no man is above the law, and to prevent injustices that undermine national security."

"We are conservative scholars, activists and writers. We do not favor a crippled executive or enfeebled government. In a time of danger, checks and balances make for stronger government because the people will more readily accept a muscular authority if barriers against abuses are strong. If at some future time Congress, in turn, aggrandizes power and invades the executive or judicial domains, we will be equally alert to sound the alarm. But today, the clear and present danger to conservative philosophy is the White House."

[quote ends]

IN ADDITION, and also at The Huff Post:  The FBI's evidently been warned by Democrats and Republicans "that it could lose broad spying power following revelations of abuses."  Well, well, well.