A FISA roundup for today

Update your "Little Black Book:" Navigating your way around in the muck of the congressional FISA Law controversy. Congress is about to prostitute itself by legalizing a vast domestic surveillance process that will allow the government to ride roughshod over your Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights to privacy.

Black Book Sources -- Stay informed through the best sources on the 'Net regarding the National Security Agency and its spy programs. I list them in alpha order so as to be fair. They are all trustworthy and useful resources for keeping up with what is currently happening in the field. Over time the stories will change but the resources will continue to be up to date and reliable.

CQ - Homeland Security: (subscribe to E-mail newsletters) Sample entry:

. . . McClatchy Newspapers has an exhaustive Pentagon review of seized Iraqi papers reaffirming the absence of any Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda linkages.

Daily Kos Kagro X asserts "FISA: Why we fight." This is a link-rich post that is well worth the read as a good overview of what is behind a lot of the passion of this question.

emptywheel: "HJC calls bull on SSCI's conclusions." Much behind the scenes info about what the House Judiciary Committee has been doing in recent weeks. Includes valuable quotes from official documents. To quote the conclusion:

"I like this approach: it undercuts the logic of SSCI's insistence on immunity, shows a concern for the prospective legal position of the telecoms, while putting something on the table--a bipartisan commission--that we can negotiate with if we ever have to cede on immunity."

firedoglake - by Christy Hardin Smith: "FISA Overreach and other Surveillance State Realities and Questions." What may be happening in the House this afternoon re: FISA; readers urged to contact their Members. CHS added some important background info on the issues, additional supporting opinion, and links to other blog information written today

Salon.com by Glenn Greenwald: "Signs of life from House Democrats." If you can only read one of these sources Greenwald remains the best. He is a Constitutional Lawyer, par excellance.

TPM Muckraker: Video of Speaker Pelosi calling President Bush's hand on the truth about threats to U.S. security.

Wired/ThreatLevel by Ryan Singel. 1) FBI Tried To Cover Patriot Act Abuses With Flawed, Retroactive Subpoenaes, Audit Finds. ( 3/13/08) To quote:

The report shows the need for Congress to narrow the FBI's powers and strengthen privacy laws, according to Mike German, a longtime FBI agent who now works for the ACLU, who says it's clear the FBI has been breaking the law.

2) "Hoover-Era Spying on Father Motivated Anti-Wiretapping Plaintiff." Real people and real history stands behind all the complexity of the FISA fight. (2/12/08)

View my current slide show about the Bush years, "Millennium," at the bottom of this column.

My links:

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news news and politics fisa blogs congress domestic surveillance