Blueberry Lavender Coconut Cream

Lyra has done it again... extreme Yum!

Mini Polenta Lasagnas with Rosemary Tapenade

Lyra has gone gluten-free, which has inspired her to start creating some amazing recipies. This was outstandingly delicious...

NY Times: FISA law was a wider power grab

Remember how Bush rammed through a FISA reform bill in just five days? Remember how just when the Dems thought they had a deal Lucy - er, Bush - pulled the football? Remember how there wasn't enough time to fine-tooth comb the bill to find out what they were REALLY authorizing?

Dig this, my friends:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

(More...)

This is what The New York Times is reporting in tomorrow's paper. You'll be shocked, shocked, to learn that the administration put things in the bill they weren't telling anyone about.

Or perhaps you'll be reassured by the Admin's statement:

But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

Considering the track record of this bunch, I am not terribly reassured.

Here's the really fun part:

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of "electronic surveillance," the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called "trap and trace" operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

For instance, the legislation would allow the government, under certain circumstances, to demand the business records of an American in Chicago without a warrant if it asserts that the search concerns its surveillance of a person who is in Paris, experts said.

Note that the administration has already lied and dissembled about the extent of surveillance. They have also nitpicked tiny word differences to allow them to do anything they damn well please. And of course, they have also claimed that the Preznit's power as Commander In Chief bears no oversight or control whatsoever.

Which, of course, makes it worse. The Times also reports on a meeting last week with legal groups - looks like even Republican groups - critical of the Admin's wiretapping power-grab.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so... It sent the message, Mr. Fein said... that the new legislation... "is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence."

So really, nothing that happened in Congress this month made a damn bit of difference.