It comes down to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court being, in essence, a movement conservative Star Chamber.
In that piece, I quoted the EFF at the time saying of the FISC that it is "the most conservative and secretive federal court in the nation."
Unless or until Congress fixes this nonsense of letting the Chief Justice unilaterally pick the FISC at the very least we can all remember that everyone on it from this point on was personally picked by one of the most extremely conservative Justices since the dawn of political science measuring such things. Anyone picked by Roberts for such a job can be presumed to be a movement conservative activist.
If conservatives are looking to make America completely ungovernable, this sort of thing is a pretty good way to go about it. Pass even the most modestly liberal law and rest assured there's a crew of right wing ideologues with robes to strike it down and declare their rulings no-precendent freebies.
House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) may have agreed to a compromise on a deal to rewrite the nation's electronic surveillance laws.
That would be the bad deal I criticized here, for basically amounting to handing the decisions about immunity to a hand picked bench of John Roberts' personal favourite judges.
But:
But an aide for Reyes appeared to backpedal, saying Reyes still supported a proposal being pushed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to shift the decision-making about immunity from the secret FISA courts to traditional federal courts.
So that's a better sign. So if I'm following the timeline properly we get this news tonight from the Hill about Bush going over Kit Bond's head:
The chatter about a compromise bill on FISA to replace the expired PAA got louder last week:
The new Republican proposal_ which Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri said is backed by the White House and intelligence agencies, would allow the FISA court to decide. It would require the attorney general to certify that the companies acted lawfully and at the request of the president.
The court would be allowed to read classified warrantless wiretapping documents, and the plaintiffs could file their complaints with the court. The court could dismiss the lawsuits if it finds that supported by "a preponderance of the evidence."
There's little reason to trust any "compromise" offered by Republicans. The only thing they typically compromise on is the size of the fig-leaf they offer to Democrats to hide their shame in supporting whatever is being offered. That said, it is worth looking in particular why this offer is utterly unacceptable. It comes down to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court being, in essence, a movement conservative Star Chamber.
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