Stop Chris Matthews

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In the past few months I’ve taken up watching Hardball again after more than four years of avoiding it. I swore off in 2001 because host Chris Matthews was just too obviouly shilling for the VRWC.

More recently he had settled down a bit. Matthews still has shit for brains, but sometimes he has good guests. His interview style is based on the ten thousand monkeys principle — you know, if you leave ten thousand monkeys in a warehouse full of typewriters, eventually — it may take centuries, but eventually — random monkey typing will produce an actual sentence. In Matthews’s case, the technique is to spew out as many words as he can in the course of a program, and randomly some of the words come together to make points. Or not. But, like I said, recently he’s had some good guests.

But this week Tweety the VRWC shill is back in all his glory. I swear he spent his entire Tuesday and Wednesday programs wanking over Hillary Clinton and the “plantation” speech. I believe the only thing that kept him from going at it again for a third full night was the Osama bin Laden tape.

And the monkey mouth spake, thus: Bin Laden “sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore.”

I admit I heard this and let it wash past me like the noise that it is, but today Peter Daou writes that we should demand an apology. And he’s right.

One reason the Right gets catered to the mass media is that it throws a screaming fit over every little slight, real or imagined, of their inviolable world view. Today, for example, the Right Blogosphere is on the rampage over the caption of this Associated Press photo: “Exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden is seen in this April 1998 file photo in Afghanistan.”

The problem? Michelle Malkin: “Got that? Osama isn’t a mass-murdering terrorist mastermind. He’s just a poor, exiled dissident who disagrees with civilization.”

They’re on a rampage over this caption, I tell you. Check out the links at Memeorandum.

Now, I think bin Laden is a mass-murdering terrorist mastermind, but by journalism 101 rules he’s an alleged mass-murdering terrorist mastermind until found guilty in court. There are certain principles and practices that professional journalists are supposed to adhere to, and one of them is maintaining a dispassionate distance from one’s subjects. ObL is an exiled Saudi dissident, among other things, so it’s a factually objective caption.

But as Peter Daou says, “last I checked, Michael Moore didn’t massacre thousands of innocent Americans.” Matthews’s comment was not professional. It was not dispassionate or objective. It was shilling for the Right by slandering a well-known personality of the Left. Daou quotes John Kerry:

You’d think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn’t have to hear this barbarian’s voice on tape. That’s what we should be talking about in America.

So today I join many others and demand that Chris Matthews publicly apologize to Michael Moore. If you want to join in, you can email Hardball — [email protected] — and MSNBC TV — [email protected]. The phone number for the Secaucus studio from which Hardball originates is 201-583-5000, and the fax is 201-583-5453. Contacting your local MSNBC affiliates that carry Hardball might be even more effective, though.

Update: What James Wolcott says:

Michael Moore didn’t bring down the towers, Howard Dean isn’t responsible for Bin Laden remaining at large, and, unlike the fisking blogger, the overwhelming majority of liberal Manhattanites didn’t lose their nerve and flee the city after 9/11. They, we, stayed put. It’s the cowardly lions who curled up into a fetal ball and remain there today, talking tough and fooling no one but themselves.

Truce, Shmoose

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If it weren’t for the fact it was released on al Jazeera, I’d wonder if the new bin Laden tape hadn’t been fabricated in the White House basement. The last time we heard from him, I believe, was on the eve of the 2004 elections. And here he is again, just when Georgie needs a diversion from this little Fourth Amendment problem.

On the tape, bin Laden suggests a truce in Iraq. To which I say, whoop-di-doo. Only 7 percent of the people we’re fighting in Iraq are affiliated with al Qaeda, according to authoritative sources, and we don’t know how many of the 7 percent actually take orders from bin Laden. Osama’s talkin’ out of his butt, says I.

Our little altercation in Afghanistan may have started out as a conflict between al Qaeda and supporters versus Afghan freedom fighters with western military support. And the scuffle in Iraq may have been conceived as one between BushCo and anti-western Islamic terrorism. But it seems to me that the violence in both countries is spinning out of control and is in the hands of more conflicting factions than you can shake a kufie at. It’s way past the point where two sides can shake hands and make a deal, even if they both wanted to. We’re not in control over there, but neither is Osama bin Laden.

I’m not sayin’ that’s the way I want it. That’s just the way it is.

Osama says he is preparing new attacks on the U.S., which isn’t exactly a big surprise, either.

ObL wanted to talk to Americans because increasing numbers of Americans want to pull out of Iraq. Naturally this touched off fury among the die hards of the Right who believe ObL is the real mastermind behind Moveon.org. For an example of crushing non-logic, check out this post. Osama says most Americans would be willing to leave Iraq. Moveon.org says most Americans would be willing to leave Iraq. The blogger lets this astonishing coincidence stand on its own, as if it self-evidently proved something.

I got news for you, toots; a majority of Americans think invading Iraq was a mistake and think we ought to be working real hard at getting out. That’s what polls say. Facts is facts.

If both Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush remark that the sky is blue, what does that tell us? (a) ObL and GWB are secretly in cahoots, or (b) the sky is blue.

Work on it, son.

Whether today’s message has any real significance, or whether it’ll prove to be something the Right will wank over for a while and then forget … well, your guess is as good as mine. Is there anything we should be doing differently because of this tape? Possibly beefing up security in major cities, but given the general waste of space the Department of Homeland Security seems to be, the cities are on their own. There’s no meaningful hope for a truce, unfortunately.

Deja Vu

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Is it just me, or does it seem to you the Right is more frantic than usual these days?

This week, through the media echo chamber, the VRWC has fallen back to snapping at the Clintons. They’re on the third day of a rampage because Hillary Clinton said Congress is run like a plantation — Chris Matthews has been wanking over Hillary and the P word since Tuesday — and they managed to place “Clinton” and “Cover-Up” together in a headline in today’s New York Times. On page 1, right under the masthead, no less. Seems like old times.

Like the plantation flap, the Times‘s story — “Inquiry on Clinton Official Ends With Accusations of Cover-Up” — is one that begs the question, “What is it about the Clintons that drives righties batshit crazy?” Here’s the lede:

After the longest independent counsel investigation in history, the prosecutor in the case of former Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros is finally closing his operation with a scathing report accusing Clinton administration officials of thwarting an inquiry into whether Mr. Cisneros evaded paying income taxes.

Yes, indeed; the investigation of Henry Cisneros, which cost taxpayers $21 million and lasted more than a decade, is finally closed.

You might recall that in the long-ago days of the Clinton Administration, Cisneros was indicted on 18 felony counts, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of lying to investigators, and eventually was pardoned by President Bill C. Yet the prosecutor, David M. Barrett, has been toiling away these six years since trying to pin more indictments on Cisneros, and he blames a Clinton cover-up for his inability to do so. (It couldn’t possibly be because Barrett is an incompetent investigator or that there wasn’t any more wrongdoing by Cisneros for an investigation to uncover, huh?)

Barrett’s final report will be made available today. The Times says is “reveals little new about the accusations that led to Mr. Barrett’s appointment” in the 1990s.

But, sure enough, the report was “leaked” to the New York Times early — “A copy of the report was obtained by The New York Times from someone sympathetic to the Barrett investigation who wanted his criticism of the Clinton administration to be known.” And it worked, too; the righties got their “Clinton Cover-up” headline.

In spite of the Times’s compliance with the VRWC program, some rightie bloggers are screaming about liberal bias. Makes me wonder what the Times would have to do to appease them.

The rest of the article consists of Barrett accusing the Justice Department and IRS officials of hiding evidence that would have incriminated Cisneros, and JD and IRS officials saying that Barlett is too incompetent to sort his own socks. The ever-optimistic Captain Ed writes that the story “will prove explosive to the 2006 re-election effort of Hillary Clinton, but even more damaging to her expected run at the Presidency in 2008.” So some good may come of it after all. However, seems to me that unless Barrett has actually uncovered something new it’s going to be hard for the Right to sustain this story long enough to impact the elections, no matter how hard the VRWC flogs it.

But, no question, today the VRWC wins on points. These are some of the stories not on the front page of the New York Times: “White House won’t discuss meetings between officials, Abramoff“; “Congressional Agency Questions Legality of Wiretaps“; and “Going Nuclear: Iran and North Korea seem determined to build up arsenals of nuclear weapons.” I say righties should enjoy success when they’ve achieved it.

SCOTUS Punts on Abortion

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Just posted at the New York Times, by the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that a lower court was wrong to strike down New Hampshire abortion restrictions, steering clear of a major ruling on they placed an undue burden on women. …

… Justices said a lower court went too far by permanently blocking the law that requires a parent to be told before a daughter ends her pregnancy.

An appeals court must now reconsider the law, which requires that a parent be informed 48 hours before a minor child has an abortion but makes no exception for a medical emergency that threatens the youth’s health.

The opinion was written by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The AP points out this may be the last SCOTUS opinion she will write.

An appeals court must now reconsider the law, which requires that a parent be informed 48 hours before a minor child has an abortion but makes no exception for a medical emergency that threatens the youth’s health.

I’d like to read the decision before writing much about it. The AP story highlights the fact that the justices had been asked to decide if the Nebraska law had put an undue burden on young women seeking an abortion. Instead, the court punted the decision back to lower courts.

Update: Carnival of the Feminists at Feministe.

Update update: Written decision here (PDF).

More Liberal Bias

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Seems to me that if the dreaded “MSM” were really hellbent on making the Bush Administration look bad, this story would have been more widely reported in the U.S. press. Had I not spotted it in The Guardian (UK) today I might not have noticed it at all —

Julian Borger of The Guardian writes,

An official assessment drawn up by the US foreign aid agency depicts the security situation in Iraq as dire, amounting to a “social breakdown” in which criminals have “almost free rein”.

The “conflict assessment” is an attachment to an invitation to contractors to bid on a project rehabilitating Iraqi cities published earlier this month by the US Agency for International Development (USAid).

The picture it paints is not only darker than the optimistic accounts from the White House and the Pentagon, it also gives a more complex profile of the insurgency than the straightforward “rejectionists, Saddamists and terrorists” described by George Bush.

The USAid analysis talks of an “internecine conflict” involving religious, ethnic, criminal and tribal groups. “It is increasingly common for tribesmen to ‘turn in’ to the authorities enemies as insurgents – this as a form of tribal revenge,” the paper says, casting doubt on the efficacy of counter-insurgent sweeps by coalition and Iraqi forces.

Meanwhile, foreign jihadist groups are growing in strength, the report said.

The Guardian said this story was first reported in the Washington Post. Sure enough, it was — yesterday, buried on page A13. Walter Pincus wrote that the dire report was an annex to a request for contractors to bid on a $1.32 billion project to help stabilize Iraqi cities.

To prepare potential bidders for the task, USAID included an annex with the contractor application. It describes Iraq as being in the midst of an insurgency whose tactics “include creating chaos in Iraq society as a whole and fomenting civil war.” Many of the attacks are against coalition and Iraqi security forces, the annex says, and they “significantly damage the country’s infrastructure and cause a tide of adverse economic and social effects that ripple across Iraq.”

Is that supposed to encourage bidders?

Although President Bush and senior administration officials tend to see the enemy primarily as Saddam Hussein loyalists and foreign terrorists, the USAID analysis also places emphasis on “internecine conflict,” which includes “religious-sectarian, ethnic, tribal, criminal and politically based” violence.

The Sunni-vs.-Shiite violence goes back centuries. Today, the differences are being exploited on both sides as Sunni bombings of Shiite sites along with kidnappings and killings have been matched by Shiite retaliation and revenge killings of Sunnis.

“It is increasingly common for tribesmen to ‘turn in’ to the authorities enemies as insurgents, this as a form of tribal revenge,” the paper says.

The activities of religious extremists against secular Iraqis were also noted by USAID. The paper describes how in the southern part of Iraq, which is dominated by Shiites, “social liberties have been curtailed dramatically by roving bands of self-appointed religious-moral police.” In cities, women’s dress codes are enforced and barbers who remove facial hair have been killed, and liquor stores and clubs have been bombed.

Get this:

The USAID paper describes some findings that in the past were carried only in classified briefings, congressional sources said.

In other words, it’s not like the White House and Congress are utterly unaware of this. They just aren’t telling us. And neither is most of the “liberal” media.

Which leaves us with getting the truth from Riverbend, who posts today about Iraqi reconstruction, then and now.

In 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, southern Iraq was badly damaged.

What happened in the south in 1991 is similar to what happened in Baghdad in 2003- burning, looting and attacks. The area fell into chaos after the Republican Guard was pulled out to different governorates for the duration of the war. Meanwhile, the US was bombing the Iraqi army as it was pulling out of Kuwait and the Tawabin were killing off some of the Iraqi troops who had abandoned their tanks and artillery and were coming back on foot through the south. Many of those troops, and the civilians killed during the attacks, looting, and burning, were buried in some of the mass graves we conveniently blame solely on Saddam and the Republican Guard- but no one bothers to mention this anymore because it’s easier to blame the dictator.

But I digress- the topic today is reconstruction. Immediately after the war, various ministries were brought together to do the reconstruction work. The focus was on the infrastructure- to bring back the refineries, electricity, water, bridges, and telecommunications.

The task was a daunting one because so many of Iraq’s major infrastructure projects and buildings had been designed and built by foreign contractors from all over the world including French, German, Chinese and Japanese companies. The foreign expertise was unavailable after 1991 due to the war and embargo and Iraqi engineers and technicians found themselves facing the devastation of the Gulf War all alone with limited supplies.

Two years and approximately 8 billion Iraqi dinars later, nearly 90% of the damage had been repaired. It took an estimated 6,000 engineers (all Iraqi), 42,000 technicians, and 12,000 administrators, but bridges were soon up again, telephones were more or less functioning in most areas, refineries were working, water was running and electricity wasn’t back 100%, but it was certainly better than it is today. Within the first two years over 100 small and large bridges had been reconstructed, 16 refineries, over 50 factories and industrial compounds, etc.

It wasn’t perfect- it wasn’t Halliburton… It wasn’t KBR…but it was Iraqi. There was that sense of satisfaction and pride looking upon a building or bridge that was damaged during the war and seeing it up and running and looking better than it did before.

So how does the U.S. reconstruction measure up?

Now, nearly three years after this war, the buildings are still piles of debris. Electricity is terrible. Water is cut off for days at a time. Telephone lines come and go. Oil production isn’t even at pre-war levels… and Iraqis hear about the billions upon billions that come and go. A billion here for security… Five hundred million there for the infrastructure… Millions for voting… Iraq falling into deeper debt… Engineers without jobs simply because they are not a part of this political party or that religious group… And the country still in shambles.

Let’s skip back to Walter Pincus in WaPo.

Paul Pillar, the CIA’s former national intelligence officer for the Middle East and now a visiting professor at Georgetown University, said the analysis conveyed “the reality that the violence in Iraq is complex and multi-faceted.”

One weakness of the paper, Pillar said, is the underplaying of the “resentment of the foreign occupation.” He said there are Iraqi “nationalists” beyond just the Sunnis who resent the presence of U.S. and other foreign troops. “There is a valid basis for some of the pro-withdrawal arguments,” he said, referring to recent statements by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).

Seems to me Riverbend makes a case for putting Iraqis in charge of Iraqi reconstruction, also, and then getting out of their way. However, given the mess the U.S. has made of nation-building, and the fact that the Iraqi government is still trying to get on its feet, one wonders if the Iraqis could bring the same focus to rebuilding infrastructure this time.

(Cross-posted to The American Street)

Update: See Jeanne at Body and Soul.

Responsibility

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A few days ago, in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, President Bush talked about responsible debate. “The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it,” he said.

So what did Mr. Responsibility’s spokesman do today? He attempted to deflect criticism of his policies with smears and lies. Yeah, real responsible.

Alleged journalist for the Associated Press Nedra Pickler wrote today,

The White House accused former Vice President Al Gore of hypocrisy Tuesday for his assertion that President Bush broke the law by eavesdropping on Americans without court approval. …

… [White House Press Secretary Scott] McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

“I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds,” McClellan said of Gore.

Pickler, uncharacteristically, did some fact-checking.

But at the time that of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.

In December I wrote about this new variation on the righties’ favorite excuse — “Clinton did it too!” — and linked to a report on the Ames investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that says the FBI had obtained the required search warrants and was in compliance with the FISA law in effect at the time. What the righties have done is take part of Jamie Gorelick’s (admittedly confusing) testimony out of context as “proof” of warrantless wiretapping, in spite of other documentation that shows the Clinton administration acted within the law. See also Jack at Ruminate This.

Alberto Gonzales also repeated the lie on last night’s Larry King Live; Think Progress provides a smackdown. See also Steve Soto.

You know righties; once they got some excuse for bad Bush behavior in their heads, no amount of debunking will flush it out. But usually the White House has surrogates spread these little stories, to create some distance between the lie and the President. It seems they’re getting reckless.

In other smear news, E.J. Dionne admits that he “underestimated the viciousness of the right wing.”

Last November, Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat and a decorated Marine combat veteran, came out for a rapid American withdrawal from Iraq. At the time, I wrote: “It will be difficult for Bush’s acolytes to cast Murtha, who has regularly stood up for the military policies of Republican presidents during his 31 years in Congress, as some kind of extreme partisan or hippie protester.”

No, the conservative hit squad didn’t accuse Murtha of being a hippie. But a crowd that regularly defends President Bush for serving in the Texas Air National Guard instead of going to Vietnam has continued its war on actual Vietnam veterans. An outfit called the Cybercast News Service last week questioned the circumstances surrounding the awarding of two Purple Hearts to Murtha because of wounds he suffered in the Vietnam War.

The only surprise, of course, is why a smart guy like E.J. is surprised. Here’s the essential part:

What’s maddening here is the unblushing hypocrisy of the right wing and the way it circulates — usually through Web sites or talk radio — personal vilification to abort honest political debate. Murtha’s views on withdrawing troops from Iraq are certainly the object of legitimate contention. Many in Murtha’s party disagree with him. But Murtha’s right-wing critics can’t content themselves with going after his ideas. They have to try to discredit his service.

Like duh, E.J. Those of us out here in the leftie blog trenches spend most of our time countering rightie smear and disinformation campaigns. Not that it does any good. But it’s a damn shame that, with all the serious problems we face, we can’t have civilized debates based on facts.

And you know what’s funny? Right now I’m listening to Chris Matthews chrip away on Hardball. And he’s asking if Hillary Clinton should apologize for a speech she made yesterday. It’s OK to smear and lie to undermine the Constitution and deceive the American people, but you don’t dare insult the gawdallmighty Republican Party.

Update: Tweety dedicated his entire bleeping program today to Hillary Clinton’s speech, just because she used the word “plantation” to describe Congress. The day after the former vice president of the United States accused the president of breaking the law; and after the White House, through the press secretary and the attorney general, issued lies to smear that former vice president — Tweety spends an hour talking about Hillary Clinton and the “P” word. Bleeping unreal.

Update update: Nice quote by Thomas Frank in the February 2006 Harper’s (not online):

Get a conservative talking about the importance of character” and before long the word “strength” will come up. This is a quality treasured by the right, both on the battlefield and in the risk-taking world of business, and yet the distinguishing stylistic feature of the anti-liberal genre is precisely the opposite: irritability, a keen sensitivity to every last little insult. … Not only is conservatism the ideology of the powerful but conservatives are in command of all three branches of government. And yet the offense taking persists. Outrage is the melodramatic resolution to which all the action inevitably leads, the canned emotional response that every anecdote generates. …

… A convenient rhetorical benefit of this emphasis on electronic speech is that it solves the difficult problems of real-world power – by which I mean a problem that is difficult for conservatives populists who like to depict themselves as society’s victims. If offensive speech is the raw material of politics, then things like ownership or wealth distribution are not worthy of consideration. Nor can the threat posed by liberals be minimized or made to mean less dire by pointing out those liberals’ inability to win elections: as long as liberals exist, getting their ten seconds on TV or posting their liberalisms on the Internet, the danger to America is clear and present.

Staggering Incompetence

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Today’s New York Times story by Lowell Bergman, Eric Lichtblau, Scott Shane and Don van Natta Jr. — “Spy Agency Data After Sept. 11 Led F.B.I. to Dead Ends,” is not the first to question whether the once-secret NSA wiretapping program was effective. On January 4 Mark Hosenball posted a Newsweek web exclusive that asked the same question — illegal or not, did it work?

Hosenball writes,

Did the National Security Agency’s controversial eavesdropping program really help to detect terrorists or avert their plots? Administration officials have suggested to media outlets like The New York Times–which broke the story–that the spying played a role in at least two well-publicized investigations, one in the United Kingdom and one involving a plan to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.

But before the NSA’s warrantless spying program became public, government spokesmen had previously cited other intelligence and legal tactics as having led to major progress in the same investigations. In the Brooklyn Bridge case, officials indicated that the questioning of a captured Al Qaeda leader had led to investigative breakthroughs in Ohio. In the British case, Justice Department officials told NEWSWEEK a year ago that investigators had made progress by using a controversial provision of the Patriot Act which allows authorities to monitor potentially suspicious activities in public libraries.

In other words, if next week we learn the White House has been getting intelligence from a Ouija board, expect the Bushies to claim the Ouija board helped save the Brooklyn Bridge.

NEWSWEEK reported extensively on these cases when government investigations were coming to fruition. In both instances, officials originally indicated that key investigative developments came from sources other than NSA electronic eavesdropping–then still a closely guarded secret.

And if we’d had that Ouija board before 9/11 — the WTC towers would be standing today.

In the New York Times story linked above, Bergman et al. report that the FBI found the NSA “intelligence” to be a nuisance — “tips” that required a lot of legwork to check out but led to dead ends.

F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained that they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs said intelligence officials turning over the tips “would always say that we had information whose source we can’t share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Qaeda operative.” He said, “I would always wonder, what does ‘suspected’ mean?”

“The information was so thin,” he said, “and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up.”

More critically, Bergman et al. reveal that the NSA did too snoop on communications that were entirely within the United States.

Officials who were briefed on the N.S.A. program said the agency collected much of the data passed on to the F.B.I. as tips by tracing phone numbers in the United States called by suspects overseas, and then by following the domestic numbers to other numbers called. …

… in bureau field offices, the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more “calls to Pizza Hut,” one official, who supervised field agents, said.

I’m assuming nobody was ordering pizza from Pakistan.

The New York Times article raises several more questions. One, was the NSA program in fact counterproductive because it wasted FBI time and resources playing Trivial Pursuit?

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators.

And, of course, we are still arguing over the legality of warrantless snooping on American citizens. One argument from the Right is that the nature of data mining makes warrants too cumbersome. On last night’s Hardball someone with expertise in FISA regulations (transcript not yet available) said that it has always been understood that warrants are not necessary for keyword searches, because they don’t involve people. But once the keyword search identifies a “U.S. person,” then law clearly requires a warrant. Seems to me that the process of applying for a warrant, as time consuming as that might be, would have forced the NSA to distinguish dead ends from genuine risks, thereby saving the FBI considerable time. Sort of the old “measure twice, cut once” principle.

Further, it is obvious the NSA program was not limited, or controlled, as the White House claims. We’re being lied to again. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you …