its too late for them to show leadership. Both have shown just the opposite: that they’re easily bought and their true interest is in representing the powerful money interests over the interests of the American people.

SHORTER OBAMA AND CLINTON: you support me, I don’t support you.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Majority Leader is Harry “Pink Tutu” Reid, well-known wuss and cave-in quisling. Not much hope for leadership there.

Unless Hillary or Obama show some steel, some leadership on this issue, I will not contribute, nor actively work for either of them come November. I would only vote for them because the Supreme Court hangs in the balance and any Democrat is better than any Republican.

Plus, I hate going into the voting booth and holding my nose. That stinks.

The FISA Amendment Will Legalize Data Mining, Part One EW 11/13 07

Aside from telecom immunity, what are the major differences/similarities between the SSCI bill and the SJC bill. Even in Deceember, telecom immunity was the big deal for me. Other than that, what are the big differences? A link would be appreciated. If any of you answer that, pretend I’m Reagan and keep it in small bites.

I’m late to this and haven’t had time to read comments yet, so this may have been answered in a more complete/better fashion.

Other differences are minimization, and basket warrants–limiting the amount of innocent traffic (collateral damage) caught up in foreign surveillence, particularly when the calls go through the domestic US switching stations.

From EW:

Minimization is the word for the procedures the government uses to remove and (eventually) delete any data from US persons collected incidentally in the course of surveilling someone overseas

.

“Basket” warrants (sometimes called “blanket” or “program” warrants). Basket warrants raise major Fourth Amendment concerns as they do not require specific individuals be the targets of suspicion.

You can get some idea of other differences from
Battle over Domestic Wiretap Legislation:

In the next to the last paragraph:

While media attention has focused largely on the question of immunity for telecom firms, the additional limitations on surveillance contained in the Judiciary Committee’s version of the bill are, arguably, at least as significant. That bill would explicitly bar “bulk” or “vacuum cleaner” surveillance of international telecom traffic that is not directed at a particular person or telephone number. It would require individualized FISA court review whenever the collection of an American’s communications became a “significant purpose” of an investigation, whether or not that person was a “target” of the investigation. And it would provide for a congressional audit of past extrajudicial surveillance by the National Security Agency.

Also see this post from EW:

< <strong>a href=”http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/11/the-fisa-amendm.html”>The FISA Amendment Will Legalize Data Mining, Part One EW 11/13/07

“I like it better when she walks away.”

Alas, no tubes.

The Suz knows. *G*

“YOU DON’T NEED IMMUNITY FOR LEGAL BEHAVIOR”.