Hold Fast

Please make this stop. Think Progress reports the bad news:
One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity. John Brennan is a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. In a new National Journal interview, Brennan makes it clear […]

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Hugh D’Andrade of EFF’s Deeplinks Blog pulls a great quote from Tash Hepting, a plaintiff in a case against AT&T that would be quashed if retroactive immunity becomes law.
In an interview on NPR this morning, he objected to the President’s portrayal of the suits as being led by “trial lawyers” out to hop on some […]

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Scarecrow at FireDogLake wants Obama and Clinton to answer some important questions before they take office.
1. Given that the Bush/Cheney regime has been the most lawless and destructive of Constitutional safeguards in our lifetimes, what do you intend to do to bring those who flouted the law to justice? If nothing, how do you expect […]

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Glenn Greenwald:
A new report to be released this week by the IG, as confirmed yesterday by FBI Director Robert Mueller, details that these abuses continued unabated throughout 2006 as well. It seems there are a few brand new lessons that we can perhaps draw from these revelations:
(1) If unchecked power is vested in government […]

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Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level reports on yet another disturbing instance of a telecom company partnering with the federal government to allow unfettered access to their customers voice and data traffic:
A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and […]

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Yesterday ThinkProgress highlighted a story about Boston College Law School deciding to not honor Attorney General Michael Mukasey as planned when he speaks at their commencement this spring. Mukasey’s selection as the commencement speaker has been the subject of criticism because of his stance on torture.
Dan Roth, a 2004 Law School graduate, said that while […]

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Thomas Young of Lead or Get Out of the Way asks:
What is the point of feigning that you object to a single party government when all you do is help an Executive who thinks he is King.
What is the point of taking the flak that comes from the right wing when you refuse to cave, […]

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Ryan Singel at Threat Level makes a key observation about the information in the Washington Post story yesterday on the potential FISA deal in Congress.
In the end, it turns out it’s all about the emails.
The fight in Congress and the big push for expanded wiretapping powers has nothing to do with intercepting foreign-to-foreign phone calls […]

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Another day, another article pointing towards Democratic capitulation on FISA. The Washington Post reports:
Some aides on Capitol Hill were discussing the potential for the House passing the Senate version but breaking it into two votes: one on the portion of the bill that deals with revising FISA provisions and a second on the immunity measure.
This […]

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Speaking of the Bush administration’s continued expansion of executive powers that impinge on the possibility for legislative or judicial oversight, Atrios writes:
To the extent that this is about his successor, my guess is that they figure that Congress will rediscover its interest in oversight and objections to presidential executive power overreach. The very powers Bush […]

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