In all likelihood, the Senate will vote today to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act for a few years, just before the act was scheduled to expire. The House reauthorized it all the way back in September, but the world's most deliberative body likes to take its time (plus Ron Wyden placed a hold on the bill until Senate leaders agreed to at least have a debate on proposed amendments to the Amendments).

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The question arose ahead of a vote over reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 law permitting the government to spy on correspondence between Americans and foreign individuals. Wyden, leading the charge to challenge the reauthorization, argues that the "Senate cannot say that we passed the smell test with respect to vigorous oversight if we don't have some sense of how many Americans … are being swept up under the legislation."

A number of FISA provisions passed in recent years are set to expire at the end of this year, and as Politico reported, "[Wyden] has placed a hold on the bill as he seeks information from the federal authorities, who have told Wyden in the past that they can’t deliver that data [on how many Americans are caught up in the surveillance dragnet]. And Wyden said this week that he’ll maintain that hold unless the Senate allows a vote on his amendments to introduce new legal checks and transparency rules to the law."

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What you missed : On Friday, Lt. Col. Frakt agreed to an exclusive interview with Maddow. But shortly after the interview was taped, federal agents, sporting a secret warrant from the FISA Court, forced their way onto the set and confiscated the video footage, citing national security. Fortunately, one of the technicians secretly recorded the interview on his iPhone, which is how Salon obtained the following transcript:

Maddow: Lt. Col. David Frakt is a JAG officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a law professor in California. Professor Frakt, welcome back to the program.

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The need for such extraordinary data storage capacity stems in part from the Bush administration's decision to open the NSA's surveillance floodgates following the 9/11 attacks. According to a recently released Inspectors General report, some of the NSA's operations -- such as spying on American citizens without warrants -- were so questionable, if not illegal, that they nearly caused the resignations of the most senior officials of both the FBI and the Justice Department.

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Though we can’t get anything like a complete picture because so much is still classified, the report says that the program exceeded the warrantless wiretapping we already knew about. The IGs use the term “President’s Surveillance Program” to encompass the full monitoring effort.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has a good run-down of key nuggets from the report. Most notably, at the urging of Vice President Cheney, President Bush recertified the program without the consent of the Department of Justice, outraging Deputy Attorney General James Comey. In fact, for two years, no one in the DOJ who ranked below deputy attorney general even knew about the program, with one exception: John Yoo, who was somewhat mysteriously tasked with writing legal opinions in defense of the operation. (Indeed, Ambinder says, it's not even clear that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft knew that Yoo was providing the department's legal opinions on the program.)

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The most intensely fought civil liberties battle of 2008 -- the one waged over FISA and telecom immunity -- ended the way most similar battles of the last eight years have: with total defeat for civil libertarians. Even before Democrats were handed control of Congress at the beginning of 2007, the Bush administration had been demanding legislation to legalize its illegal warrantless NSA eavesdropping program and to retroactively immunize the telecom industry for its participation in those programs. Yet even with Bill Frist and Denny Hastert in control of the Congress, the administration couldn't get its way.

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A cornerstone case in this legal battle is that of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc., an Oregon-based charity group, in which there appears to be the most known evidence of such spying. And, as it turns out, one need look no further than the FBI's official Web site to find irrefutable evidence that surveillance of the group occurred -- and that the government's persistent claims of maintaining secrecy about it have been spurious.

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Earlier this month, Rasmussen Reports announced the humiliating finding that "the percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits [9 percent] for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history." That extremely negative view of Congress cuts across partisan and ideological lines, as only small percentages of Democrats (13 percent), Republicans (8 percent) and independents (3 percent) believe that Congress is doing an "excellent" or even a "good" job. Perhaps most remarkable, some polls -- such as one from Fox News last month -- reveal that the Democratic-led Congress is actually more unpopular among Democrats than among Republicans, with 23 percent of Republicans approving of Congress compared with only 18 percent of Democrats. One would be hard-pressed to find a time in modern American history, if such a time exists at all, when a Congress was more unpopular among the party that controls it than among voters from the opposition party.

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Anyone who listens to the regular talk among progressive activists on- and offline is familiar with such terms of opprobrium for Democratic politicians, particularly in Congress, who are alleged to be ideologically unreliable, insufficiently partisan, too cozy with corporations, or subversive of efforts to fight the Bush administration. These terms often involve members of the official congressional Blue Dog Coalition, which houses many party dissidents while exerting starboard-side pressure on the Democratic leadership. But discontent with Democratic incumbents frequently goes deeper.

Such talk reached new levels of intensity last year during futile efforts to cut off funding for the Iraq war, and again just last month when sizable Democratic defections paved the way to reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

And naturally, the unhappiness is leading to revived talk about a systematic effort in the future -- presumably in 2010 -- to intimidate or even defeat selected Democratic members of Congress, preeminently Blue Dogs, through primary challenges.

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While reporting on domestic surveillance under Bush, Salon obtained a detailed memo proposing such an inquiry, and spoke with several sources involved in recent discussions around it on Capitol Hill. The memo was written by a former senior member of the original Church Committee; the discussions have included aides to top House Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers, and until now have not been disclosed publicly.

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Before long, though, the meaning became clear: the Republicans were chanting, "Flip," "Flop," "Flip," "Flop," alternating from one side of the arena to the other, and waving back and forth as they did it. The target, of course, was John Kerry, and in case you haven't noticed who's in the White House these days, the attack was a hit.

So it shouldn't be surprising that, in the same spirit, John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are going after Barack Obama on similar grounds. Just in the last week, the RNC has sent out two detailed press releases titled "Obama vs. Obama," and forwarded around a few news articles with headlines like "Flipping and Flopping." Meanwhile, McCain and his aides and allies are hammering Obama for changing his mind on whether the troop surge in Iraq has helped calm the situation there. "It seems to me this is not just the kind of normal political flip-flop, back and forth," Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent who has become one of McCain's most aggressive surrogates, said on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning.

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Harper's Scott Horton yesterday interviewed Jane Mayer about her new book, The Dark Side. The first question he asked was about the Bush administration's fear that they would be criminally prosecuted for implementing what the International Red Cross had categorically described as "torture."

Mayer responded "that inside the White House there [had] been growing fear of criminal prosecution, particularly after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamdan case that the Geneva Conventions applied to the treatment of the detainees," and that it was this fear that led the White House to demand (and, of course, receive) immunity for past interrogation crimes as part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. But Mayer noted one important political impediment to holding Bush officials accountable for their illegal torture program:

An additional complicating factor is that key members of Congress sanctioned this program, so many of those who might ordinarily be counted on to lead the charge are themselves compromised.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/15/complicity/feed/ 318 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_organization/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_organization/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2008/07/11/obama_organization A little over two weeks ago, Barack Obama announced that he would vote in favor of FISA legislation even if it bestowed retroactive immunity upon the lawless, but deep-pocketed, telecom companies. This announcement reversed his earlier stance and came as a great disappointment to a swath of Fourth Amendment defenders who ran clear across the political spectrum. Many of them, myself included, were loyal Barack Obama supporters.

Within days of Obama's announcement, I found myself administrating the largest "group" on Barack Obama's social networking site, My.BarackObama.com (MyBo), "Senator Obama -- Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity -- Get FISA Right." Over 20,000 people joined the group in an effort to convey their disappointment in their candidate's reversal. (Obama had promised to filibuster any bill that contained telecom immunity.) Thousands of e-mails were sent, a core group of full-time (and then some) volunteer administrators worked around the clock, and thousands of phone calls were made to scores of Senate offices.

Obama eventually responded to the group with a statement that simply rephrased some things he had already said. And then he voted for the bill.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_organization/feed/ 131 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/obama_netroots Amid the anguish being expressed in the progressive net roots about Barack Obama's vote for FISA legislation (and to a lesser extent, his recent positioning on the death penalty, Iraq, abortion and faith-based initiatives), there's an interesting subtext of resignation about the presumptive Democratic nominee's basic ideological nature.

This is nowhere more evident than at the influential site OpenLeft, whose founders, Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, have long argued that Obama is a centrist pragmatist rather than a reliable progressive.

Stoller was particularly blunt in a post Thursday titled "Why It's Important to Note That Obama Is NOT Liberal or Progressive."

After assessing Obama's policy positions, Stoller has this to say about the attitude progressives should have toward his candidacy going forward:

Obama isn't ours, he never was, and we shouldn't pretend he is or else we are throwing away the opportunity to have real progressive policies enacted sometime over the next few years.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/feed/ 116 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/aclu/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/aclu/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:10:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald//2008/07/10/aclu (Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)

This afternoon, I spoke with Jameel Jaffer, the Director of the ACLU's National Security Project, regarding the two legal proceedings commenced today by the ACLU challenging the constitutionality of the new FISA law. The roughly 20-minute discussion can be heard here.

The ACLU filed one action in the FISA court, requesting that -- contrary to how the FISA court normally works -- all proceedings regarding the constitutionality of the FISA law be open to the public and transparent, and that the proceedings be adversarial (i.e., that the ACLU -- rather than just the Government -- can participate). The other action was filed in a federal court in the Southern District of New York, alleging that the provisions which vest vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President are, for multiple reasons, violative of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ACLU's lawsuits do not challenge the constitutionality of the telecom immunity provisions of the new FISA law because those sections will be challenged by EFF and local/affiliate ACLU groups in separate actions. The legal documents filed today by the ACLU are here.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/aclu/feed/ 506 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_5/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_5/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/10/obama_fisa The fallout from Barack Obama's vote Wednesday for a FISA reauthorization continues to rain down on his campaign from vast swaths of the blogosphere and the MSM, and from within his own supporter base. The words "betrayal" and "sellout" occur very often, along with threats to take retaliatory actions ranging from the withholding of financial support to the withholding of votes in November.

Moreover, Obama's vote for the Dodd amendment to strike the retroactive telecomm immunity provisions of the bill isn't helping him much with unhappy progressives, who often cite his earlier pledge to support a filibuster of the bill if telecomm immunity was retained. And to top it all off, the vote against final passage of the FISA bill by Hillary Clinton -- supposedly the triangulating centrist of the Democratic primary field -- has left Obama without a lot of cover.

Assumed in a lot of this angry talk is the premise that Obama's FISA vote is part of a broad strategy to "move to the center" or even "the right," reflecting a theory of how to win general elections that is in itself deeply unpopular on the left.

But was Obama's position on FISA really a matter of political calculation? If so, he needs to check his math.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_5/feed/ 92 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_4/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_4/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:49:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh//election_2008/2008/07/10/obama_fisa What an interesting week: I came back from vacation to find the two presumptive presidential nominees running away from their bases. Suddenly John McCain is evading, not embracing, the media, limiting access and getting testy with the very people whose formerly friendly coverage made him a popular "maverick." Meanwhile, Barack Obama is complaining that his "friends on the left" just don't understand him -- he's not moving to the center, he is "no doubt" a progressive, just one who now supports the scandalous FISA "compromise" and Antonin Scalia's views on gun rights and the death penalty, no longer plans to accept public campaign funding, and wants to make sure women aren't feigning mental distress to get a "partial-birth" abortion (the right's despicable term of choice; the correct phrase is either late-term or third-trimester abortion).

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/obama_fisa_4/feed/ 483 http://www.salon.com/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:59:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California made a ruling particularly worthy of the nation's attention. In Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a key case in the epic battle over warrantless spying inside the United States, Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA -- which means Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously -- at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics -- to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/feed/ 91 http://www.salon.com/2008/06/22/calabresi/ http://www.salon.com/2008/06/22/calabresi/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald//2008/06/22/calabresi (updated below)

It's hardly news that Time Magazine's principal function is uncritically to amplify false claims from government officials, but this article by Massimo Calabresi -- entitled "Behind the Compromise on Spying" -- is such a masterpiece in spouting simplistic government propaganda and rank falsehoods that it is revealing on numerous levels. The article has only one purpose -- to depict the spying "compromise" as a brilliant and heroic centrist masterstroke by Nancy Pelosi to protect us from Terrorists while simultaneously preserving our liberties -- and it employs one factually false claim after the next to achieve this. Let's just take it piece by piece, beginning with the first passage:

A compromise deal to extend the federal government's domestic spying powers, passed by the House on Friday and expected to sail through the Senate next week, has drawn attacks from both sides of the political spectrum. The right is unhappy at concessions made to protect civil liberties; the left is furious that the Democrats allowed the domestic spying powers to be extended in any form.

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