Thanks for that analysis, lhp @ 45. I’ve been hoping the Ninth Circuit would come down with its pending ruling on these spying cases in time to affect the FISA debate in Congress, although I could see it impacting negatively as well as positively.

Dianne Feinstein was just worriedly mouthing “common law” and concerns about state secrets in the SJC meeting, while hesitating about whether the telecom companies should have obeyed the “highest levels” (of the Executive Branch alone, which Feinstein calls “the government”), in connection with how she might compromise on the immunity provisions via a Specter “substitute” (we, the people in place of the ‘innocent, patriotic’ corporations as defendants) amendment, or with some other “out” for the corporations short of full immunity. She hasn’t done “due diligence” yet on those alternatives, she said, and I hope this Ninth Circuit Opinion helps her (and others) come down on the side of FISA and equal justice under the law (FISA) that was written and passed in the 1970s (when AT&T was our only phone company) to clarify the exact concerns she was expressing yesterday.

Rockefeller, on the other hand, seems to be absolutely a lost cause, and the Democrats will have to resist his efforts to sabotage any unity in the caucus (and to undercut Harry Reid’s honoring of Chris Dodd’s hold) to have a chance at a no-immunity FISA bill.

I think their tendency, and maybe Jay has more of this than other Dems, is to protect the telecoms who were doing what their government asked just after 9/11. However, with our help and perhaps some of their own work, they’ve come to realize the problem of how to structure this law is thornier than they’d originally thought. I have to admit I would be in a quandary myself, trying to justify ‘no immunity’ while still saying the government doesn’t have to have a court order before getting the spying going.

Just how should it work?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XOlrHfgfUGw

Hugh @ 33

… Via wiki, he studied Japanese, was in the Peace Corps, and was friends with Bobby Kennedy.

…

Hugh – I met Rockefeller at a in the early 80s at a function for Mo Udall, who I worked with a bit at the time. Rockefeller was Governor of WV at the time, and this appearance with Udall, Robert Redford, Ted Kennedy and some other notables was the national rollout of his campaign for the 1984 Senate seat he eventually won. He was very shy and almost uncomfortable with the power and limelight; but seemed very bright and very committed to the RFK type of agenda. My thought at the time was that he was a decent and intelligent chap, but a total wuss that needed to toughen up a whole lot. I don’t think he is a bad guy, he just never outgrew the “wuss factor” and got steamrolled into the village and away fro the legacy of RFK.

I agree with that assessment and would like to add that I met him briefly at a social function in 1968 and he was exactly the same then as you describe and as he seems to be today. Also, he studied economics at the London School of Economics (the best money can buy).

Being from a wealthy family, but having some liberal tendencies makes him more complicated. But, I do think he’s genuine and sincere and not a Bush tool.

even though i’m not commenting (i just don’t have anything to add), i’m appreciating all there is to learn from the conversation you-all are having. thanks!

Selise,

I use gmail and palm desktop for an address book. Can I play?

i think so…newtonusr tried the first file with palm desktop and he said it worked.

… but you’ll have to tell me! i’m hoping that people with different systems will give it a try and let me know if they have any problems.

I use gmail and palm desktop for an address book. Can I play?

He’s scum.

Mary – I emailed Whitehouse the AT&T Mark Klein interview for that very reason, and then called his office about it. Mark Klein was on Capitol Hill last week and met with some of the senators but I don’t know who exactly.

selise @ 14

a few days ago when christy asked us to fax the members of the senate judiciary committee, i though it would be useful to make a file of congress contact info to share.

I’ve done the senate… It’s in the form of a vCard file that can be imported into most (I think) email/address book programs on pcs and macs – but so far only ann in az (pc) and newtonusr (mac) have tested the file for me. With newtonusr’s help I now have it posted for download (many tech difficulties because of the file type).

if any firepups think it might be useful to them and want to test it – that would be great. you can download it from here. after downloading it, you’ll have to double click on it to convert it to vCard (it’s a zip file) and import it into your addressbook. feed back, suggestions, corrections welcomed. i don’t want to go through the effort of doing the same thing for the house of representatives until i know the senate data is correct and in a useful format.

Anyway, I though it would be especially useful for faxing or mailing our congress critters when christy asks us to contact more than one or two.

Thanks for this lots. ((((Selise))))

you are most welcome! i’m still making a few changes and trying to make it compatible to programs other than mine (addressbook and entourage)… it hope it will be ready for primetime by tomorrow.

thanks to everyone who was willing to test it out. much appreciated.

eCAHNomics, I do respect Scheuer although not all the decisions made. He at least is willing to put the problems out there and tried to get them addressed and people to take action to give them approaches other than disappearing into torture. We need to be having that discussion and focus (it’s part of what I had way back on the first FISA thread yesterday about how you can’t graft everything you might conceivably want to do for some illdefined “GWOT” onto things that were meant for something else – like FISA.

In the Clinton admin, they did go pick up someone like Yousef and actually bring him back here for trial – that’s a more normal “rendition” A replacement for extradition, but for the same purpose, using different mechanics. At least, IMO that’s how it defines out.

What they also did during the Clinton administration was to cut a deal with Egypt (which spawns a lot of terrorists) that they would go get people and Egypt would take them, at least the Egyptians. And Egypt would paper it up with charges and things before they were turned over, if there were not any already out there. So based on that deal (which, if Egypt was doing the pick up directly of suspects against whom it had warrants but who were in other countries, would have been somekind of a more normal rendition) the CIA picked up a few suspects and shipped them to Egypt to be permanently jailed or executed.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlinewo…..dates.html

Covert extraordinary rendition began as a systematic tactic on September 22, 1995, with the capture of terrorist Abu Talal al-Qasimi in Croatia; he was later transferred to Egypt for execution. The largest pre-9/11 CIA rendition occurred in 1998, when five suspects in Albania and Bulgaria were captured and rendered to Egypt. Two were hanged without trial; all were brutally tortured.

White, Scheuer and anyone involved whould have known that conspiring to send someone to Egypt for torture and taking steps to make that happen would have been a violation of the Torture Conventions and open up the Torture Victims Act avenue as well.

More importantly, it was no secret in the ME or among the Egyptian dissidents, who had been more focused on overthrowing the Egyptian gov than on the US, about the US involvement and right before the Embassy bombings (right after the rendtion to Egypt), Zawahiri sent out a message to an arab paper in London, saying that his group had received the message the US sent when it engaged in that kidnapping with the subsequent tortures and executions – - and that he was sending a message back in a language we would understand.

The bombings may well have taken place anyway (they seemed to have being planned well before the renditions), but the motivation for someone to be a suicide bomber comes from a lot of different sources, but one has to be some fervent reaction to perceived injustice and the Albanians and their treatment were high profile in the ME. And then there’s the shipping of al-Libi to be tortured to order so that he would say what Cheney wanted. YOu can’t really say this country has been well served by the results of either of those renditions to torture.

What the Bush adminsitration tacked on was the concept of kidnapping and sending people simply where they could be disappeared into torture and where there were no legal proceedings/warrants issued and no trials contemplated. Whether it was our black sites, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, etc. – there were no warrant, no trials contemplated, just torture.

That’s why, IMO, you can’t really call them renditions at all (not even extraordinary renditions) bc the so-called “rendition” is not standing in to do what extradition would have done. No trial anywhere is contemplated. Instead, it’s just a Pinochet type disappearing of people into abuse.

The Arar IG report is interesting, too, bc Arar indicated that while he was being held in Syria (which had no warrant for him and was just torturing him as a favor to the US) a big chunk of the population in his torture wing were there courtesy of the US. Not just Arar – but others.