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February 15, 2006

"All politics are local." Except when they're national.

So early in 2002, the wary court and government lawyers developed a compromise. Any case in which the government listened to someone's calls without a warrant, and later developed information to seek a FISA warrant for that same suspect, was to be carefully "tagged" as having involved some NSA information. Generally, there were fewer than 10 cases each year, the sources said.

According to government officials familiar with the program, the presiding FISA judges insisted that information obtained through NSA surveillance not form the basis for obtaining a warrant and that, instead, independently gathered information provide the justification for FISA monitoring in such cases. They also insisted that these cases be presented only to the presiding judge.

Lamberth and Kollar-Kotelly derived significant comfort from the trust they had in Baker, the government's liaison to the FISA court. He was a stickler-for-rules career lawyer steeped in foreign intelligence law, and had served as deputy director of the office before becoming the chief in 2001.

Baker also had privately expressed hesitation to his bosses about whether the domestic spying program conflicted with the FISA law, a government official said. Justice higher-ups viewed him as suspect, but they also recognized that he had the judges' confidence and kept him in the pivotal position of obtaining warrants to spy on possible terrorists.

In 2004, Baker warned Kollar-Kotelly he had a problem with the tagging system. He had concluded that the NSA was not providing him with a complete and updated list of the people it had monitored, so Justice could not definitively know -- and could not alert the court -- if it was seeking FISA warrants for people already spied on, government officials said.

Kollar-Kotelly complained to then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, and her concerns led to a temporary suspension of the program. The judge required that high-level Justice officials certify the information was complete -- or face possible perjury charges.

In 2005, Baker learned that at least one government application for a FISA warrant probably contained NSA information that was not made clear to the judges, the government officials said. Some administration officials explained to Kollar-Kotelly that a low-level Defense Department employee unfamiliar with court disclosure procedures had made a mistake.

Kollar-Kotelly asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to ensure that wouldn't happen again, government officials said.
The ruling effectively means that for 15 years, law enforcement authorities have had unfettered discretion to violate the privacy of Hong Kong citizens protected by the Bill of Rights Ordinance implemented in 1991.

Quoting from a 2005 Court of Final Appeal judgment, Hartmann said the right to private communication must be protected by a law that "must be accessible to the citizen and must be formulated with sufficient precision to enable the citizen to regulate his conduct."

The current section of the law authorizing wiretapping "does not in any detail regulate the scope of the Chief Executive's discretion or the manner in which it may be exercised," ruled Hartmann. "It is plainly inadequate."
It used to be the case that in order to be considered a "liberal" or someone "of the Left," one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, "judicial activism," hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a "liberal," such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.
"Are we losing our lodestar, which is the Bill of Rights?" Barr beseeched the several hundred conservatives at the Omni Shoreham in Woodley Park. "Are we in danger of putting allegiance to party ahead of allegiance to principle?"

Barr answered in the affirmative. "Do we truly remain a society that believes that . . . every president must abide by the law of this country?" he posed. "I, as a conservative, say yes. I hope you as conservatives say yes."

But nobody said anything in the deathly quiet audience. Barr merited only polite applause when he finished, and one man, Richard Sorcinelli, booed him loudly. "I can't believe I'm in a conservative hall listening to him say [Bush] is off course trying to defend the United States," Sorcinelli fumed.
The plans for the launch of GOP.com last spring included two things that have never made it to the light of day - a viral fundraising component, and a "MyGOP" functionality that would have let activists build a MySpace-like site on GOP.com. Practical reality set in, however, and killed both. The trouble with the MyGOP concept was the conflict it created with incredibly tight internal controls on message.

When we were forced to pull a Social Security Testimonials tool off the site because someone dared to use the word "private" instead of the more acceptable "personal" accounts, it became apparent that our internal tolerance for self-expression would not allow that sort of openness. Arguments that restrictions of that nature are ridiculous and hamper our ability to be effective online were met with stony silence. In the end, MyGOP went nowhere.

The fundraising tool was a different problem altogether. The fact is, allowing that sort of functionality causes a slew of legal problems that the FEC (and clearly the Democrats) have not considered. We looked at developing an ActRed site, but the legal restrictions prevent a national committee from doing so. It could be done by a third party, and I undertand several are working on the concept. Unfortunately, the RNC is bound by FEC laws, not to mention our party rules, and would run afoul of both.

As far as I know, a viral fundraising tool is still under development. However, given a tendency within the RNC to view the site as nothing more than a communications vehicle - a really, really, expensive brochure - I'm not sure when that may get done.

For anyone who is casting aspersions on Patrick Ruffini, I would caution against that. Patrick is pretty much the only friend we have in that building.
U.S. law enforcement sources said that more than four years of surveillance by the National Security Agency has failed to capture any high-level al Qaeda operative in the United States. They said al Qaeda insurgents have long stopped using the phones and even computers to relay messages. Instead, they employ couriers.

"They have been way ahead of us in communications security," a law enforcement source said.
Instead, federal authorities have been allowed to use non-terrorist material obtained through the surveillance program for investigation and prosecution.

In more than one case, the sources said, a surveillance target was prosecuted on non-terrorist charges from information obtained through wiretaps conducted without a court order. They said the FBI supported this policy in an attempt to pressure surveillance targets to cooperate.

When asked about the growing destabilisation of Iraq, Mr Diskin said Israel might come to rue its decision to support the US-led invasion in 2003.

"When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos," he said.

"I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam."
As you can see, it is rare for short-term interest rates to be as high as or higher than long-term interest rates, a phenomenon known as an "inverted yield curve". And unfortunately, those episodes have historically corresponded to periods immediately preceeding a recession. (The US experienced recessions in 1982, 1990, and 2001.)

There are a few possible reasons for that correspondence. First, it is likely that low long-term interest rates (at least relative to short-term rates) are the result of some pretty pessimistic thinking on the part of bond market participants. Low long-term rates suggest that they think that the economy is going to slow, which will cause the demand for long-term borrowing in the economy to fall, and which will force the Fed to lower short-term rates in the not-too-distant future.

Secondly, banks make a lot of their money by borrowing at lower short-term rates and lending at higher long-term interest rates. If that differential disappears, then the financial incentive to lend money disappears. And as banks lend less money, the economy tends to slow.

Posted by Jon Rubin at February 15, 2006 02:30 PM

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