What a surprise. AP:
The White House on Friday asked a Senate panel for more time to produce subpoenaed information about the legal justification for President Bush's secretive eavesdropping program.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy had set Monday as the deadline for administration officials already subpoenaed to provide documents and testimony about the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.
In Fielding's letter to Leahy, which was released by the White House in Crawford, Texas, where Bush is staying at his ranch, the president's lawyer said that while the White House had identified a core group of documents in response to the subpoenas, the work is "by no means complete" and could not be completed by Monday.
Naturally, Leahy will say "Give us what you've got," right?
And now the kicker:
[Fielding] suggested further conversations with the panel, saying the White House did not want the issue to interfere with the administration's desire to make more permanent the new powers Congress just gave NSA to monitor communications entering the United States involving foreigners who are the subjects of a national security investigation.
While Congress approved the measure, lawmakers specified that the new provisions would expire after six months, unless renewed.
"Did not want the issue to interfere," eh?
"In the language of Orthanc help means ruin, and saving means slaying, that is plain."
Six months is 24 weeks, right? And Fielding is proposing to eat up at least 3 of them.
And six months from now, with the White House still sliming and defending, still stonewalling, still doing Friday document dumps, still redacting everything, and having run out the clock, what will happen?
Will the Democrats vote to retroactively legalize everything Bush (with the connivance of the telcos) has done, with his illegal and unconstitutional imposition of his program of warrantless surveillance on a people how thought they were free?
Or will they vote to restore the Fourth Amendment, restore the rule of law, restore the Constitution, and protect us?
Of course they will! Why would anybody think differently?
NOTE Great blog title: excuse the mess... that was just my head.
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They Don't Need Any More Documents To Rescind that Temporary Fix
Remember, that was supposed to be what it was.
What we all know that it did was essentially rescind the original FISA statute, which had been amended successfully many times without eviscerating it.
They only need to keep saying that it is totally unacceptable to put into the hands of Abu Gonzales any sort of supervisory capacity which involves him telling congress the truth, or any decisions that involve constitutional questions. It can become a talking point that they should start using in a way that is directed to persistent critics of their lack of bi-partisanship, that at a time when Gonzales's credibility has been torn to shreds, Bush insists on giving him more and more power.
That isn't just a thumb in the eye of congress, it's a fist. What is it that the Bush administration, still receiving unquestioning support from Republican members of congress, is so afraid that those whom it governs might see about the way they are being governed.
They need to be ready to remind the NSA director that he also serves at the pleasure of the congress, and that all that was ever needed was a fix in the FISA law to allow the NSA to continue their listening to foeigners abroad, when a domestic connection is not involved, and American citizens are not involved. In the later cases, they can go to the FISA court.
There was a huge outpouring of anger in the form of emails and phone calls; we need to follow that up to let the Democrats know that this is bedrock stuff. It can not happen that an interim tempporary fix which even Democrats who voted for it say was awful, that it becomes permanent law.
And they need to be planning now how to bring this off. How to inform voters that this new law allows this administration, and any subsequent one to spy on American citizens without any outside supervision, and with no recourse for citizens to find out if they are targets. When you phrase it the right way, a majority of Americans don't trust government with that kind of power.
I think Democrats know all this, and except for a few of them, know they were had. The problem in the Senate is going to be the thinness of their margin, and the fact that not a single Republican can be counted on to vote for constitutional government, even fucking Specter, the rat, not meaning to be unfair to rats.
Why aren't we organizing some specific attempts to reach someone like Jim Webb, to make sure he's on board this time. And Claire McCaskell? Look, when Jane Harman, Mrs. Intelligence-girl, sees through the administration...it's a big one that she isn't satisfied with the law.
Sorry, but I don't trust Mike McConnell anymore either; remember, broad kinds of data mining usually produce more false clues and usable ones.