So, you think domestic surveillance is a problem only for terrorists and criminals? Well, take that smug look off your face. As I write, information collected on millions of Americans is being used to punish them for activities as benign as purchasing retread tires.

Have you visited a bar, played billiards, visited a massage parlor or sought marriage counseling? Then, there's a good chance you have been economically punished for those activities through lowering of your credit limits and scores. That could cost you a home loan or a job, or perhaps a government security clearance. If you reported illegal activities by a former employer, you could be blacklisted for life thanks to databases maintained by firms that conduct background checks on workers for both government and businesses.

As activists have repeatedly warned, corporate and government voyeurism, aided by datamining technology, homeland security mandates and secrecy, has progressed to manipulation and penalization of lawful activities. And, it's likely to get much worse.

Below are 2 ideas for amendments that our congress should debate before capitalizing on the terrible legislation which is FISA.  The amendments below are what I feel is the compromised position that is likely to pass.  I have also added the reasoning behind the amendments and some extra points that I would like to see put in them.  

I would like to see the works gummed up as much as possible so am also recommending that congress debate variations of these amendments.  This will help determine exactly were each member stands and how far they are willing to go.  With the added benefit of keeping discussion open as long as possible.

Follow me below the fold.

Recently Markos provided us with his explanation of why he would not send his contribution to Sen Obama because of his disagreement with Sen. Obama's decision to support the FISA legislation.  Well, today part of that story surfaced again in the mainstream media.

In light of the controversy of Obama supporting the FISA "compromise" it must be said that many presidents who we now see as heroes were a disappointment to those who wanted the president to go further. This was true with Lincoln and Roosevelt. I think that it is important that we keep things in perspective in how social change occurs.

Yeah I know Obama sold us out on FISA, the Fourth Amendment and the opportunity to hold Bush and the telecoms accountable for the most criminal abuse of the Constitution in American history, and that he appears ready to sign on to a bill giving presidents vast new powers to spy on citizens without any court oversight, but that’s just one issue.

Netroots only want to lose elections.

Obama, you can do better.

I'm not referring to your position on the pending FISA bill, though I don't believe it should be allowed to pass in its current form. I'm talking about your explanation of your shift in position.

Just how patriotic does someone need to appear to be to be elected? More important, is showing patriotism dfferent from being patriotic?

Now that I've lured you in this is the reaction currently going around on DKos members and their support for Obama and his public statements on FISA...

Some of our support for our candidate "now" hinges on one issue, ONE FUCKING ISSUE.  

Okay you want to stop FISA, well I'm going to help you, I'm going to give you some advice to stop FISA and fan the outrage that has taken DKos by storm the last two weeks.  Learn the ways after the jump.

Obama is a mainstream Democrat. This might come as a surprise to some, who might have mistaken him for some kind of Leftie. Still others pretend to be shocked-shocked!- that Obama is planning on winning the GE. Then there are the single issue crusaders who, in their sole focus on constitutional rights, are reminiscent  the NRA   than Democrats. Add to this the opportunists who see a cause they can ride to National Fame. May be even a media career as commentator on a MSM publication.

If a Liberal supports Obama it is not news. Dog Bites Man. Big Deal. If a Liberal attacks Obama it is news. It feeds into what NYTimes, CNN, WSJ, FOX and others are looking for. Man Bites Dog.

Obama is the first Presidential candidate to use modern technology to let dissenting  supporters tell him what they think. And we should take advantage of that. But who is being helped when  that medium and blogs such as this are used to attack Obama relentlessly day after day?

The concern over the FISA Bill is genuine. Obama shares that concern. But the FISA debate has been taken over by a handful of bloggers and their low information followers who obsess over it to the exclusion of everything else.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Three out of five of you are willing to sacrifice your beliefs to elect a politician.

Another one of you is willing to accept a politician for what he is.

What else are you willing to sacrifice? Your career? Your family? Your Constitutional rights?

What else are you willing to accept?

In Thursday's widely ignored framing piece ("Pot & FISA: Linked, but Not How You Think...") about the potentially strange relationship between the campaign for marijuana legalization and the long term implications of the 2008 FISA bill on civil liberties, I speculated  that future technologies would magnify the FISA problems of today, many fold.

The article drew the analogy between ways in which the original 1978 FISA failed to anticipate the contemporary digital environment, 30 years later, and imagined that in the digital environment of 2038, another 30 years hence, the same will inevitably occur.

I was so busy writing that diary that I failed to browse my usual geekishly obscure wire services that day.  Pity, too, because one item highlighted the problem better than I could have imagined. Check out this gem from the NewScientist.com news service. (more...)

The Republicans can still win, McCain can still win, and the destructive deadly policies of this Bush Administration can still continue.

Think of this, as you call for your donations back, as you attack Senator Obama, rightfully or not, and relegate him to the "Boy Junior Senator from Illinois."

The results of November are not set in stone. There is still a long fight, a long battle left, if we are to take back even a part of Washington for the people who have dedicated themselves to this movement and who have invested so much of their time, their efforts, and their dwindling finances in a common effort to elect a man the next President of the United States. A man, who not 200 hundred years ago would have been brought to this country as a slave bound in shackles and mastered into servitude, a man brave enough to speak to our hopes and dreams for this country, a man who has demonstrated his political abilities, in only a short time, in the halls of national government, a man, who despite the racial divides that still exist in this country, who despite the political divides that tear us apart, who despite the dangers that threaten our country, continues to send forth a message of peace in our time.

Friends, punishing the telecoms for rolling over for Bush (in the aftermath of the most traumatic attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor) should not provide the left with this level of outrage against a candidate with great gifts, offering us a historic opportunity to take back the White House with strong majorities in both houses of Congress. I've sat back for a week reading these diaries, and the last straw was McJoan's attack on a good Democrat who was trying to explain the FISA bill in an LA Times Op Ed. Yes, in a high school civics textbook world, the heads of major corporations should not have caved in to a president's arguments. But these were not ordinary times, and to make punishing the heads of telecoms the most important goal of the left is to make this whole project laughable, no matter how much passion is behind it. The world isn't a civics class, and the president's demands can only be understood in their full effect in context. And what was the context?

Let's put the so-called nuance aside for a minute regarding the debate on the FISA compromise bill (so-called). Obama and others who oppose this weakening of our checks and balances shouldn't vote. Not for it, not against. Not at all.

Time is a funny thing

The President
The White House
July 11, 2008*:

Today, I have signed into law H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The Act authorizes critical intelligence gathering activities designed to defend the United States and its interests at home and abroad and provides much-needed flexibility to manage effectively the personnel and taxpayer resources devoted to the national defense.

Section 301(b) of the Act purports to place require the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense, and any other element of the intelligence community that participated in the President's Surveillance Program, to complete a comprehensive review of all of the facts necessary to describe the establishment, implementation, product, and use of the product of the Program; access to legal reviews of the Program and access to information about the Program; communications with, and participation of, individuals and entities in the private sector related to the Program; interaction with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and transition to court orders related to the Program; and any other matters identified by any such Inspector General that would enable that Inspector General to complete a review of the Program, with respect to such Department or element.

The executive branch shall construe the requirements on the Inspectors General in section 301(b) as advisory in nature, so that the provisions are consistent with the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and to supervise the unitary executive branch.

What then?

*What you're looking at is an adaptation of one of Bush's oft-used signing statements. Since the "administration" claims that the AUMF and the president's "inherent powers" under the Constitution authorize his domestic spying as a "military" operation, a signing statement simply rejecting the obligation of the Inspectors General (a part of the "unitary executive") to produce these reports would be entirely consistent with everything the White House has argued to date, on this and other related subjects.

So, shorter version without legalese: The people supporting this FISA bill say it has accountability built right into it, because it requires the Inspectors General to conduct inquiries and produce reports on what happened.

What if Bush says, "Yeah, but I'm not going to do it"?

    Thousands of individuals like you and I, along with many groups and websites, have generously given of their time and energy to help Senator Obama in his primary bid but that does not mean that we are immune to the pitfalls of fear and mob mentality.   I believe that the Internet as a source of news, analysis and dialogue has brought much good but also identifiable risks along with it.  One of those risks is the speed to which opinion becomes accepted fact.  Several times throughout this election process this unfortunate byproduct of a healthy, self-regulating discussion has become toxic.  Unfortunately, this time it is directed at Obama and the MSM is eating it up.