Blog-breaking News

Big-time kudos to Glenn Greenwald who, as I mirrored yesterday, reported at his Unclaimed Territory on the inconsistencies in the administration’s 2002 stance on FISA and “probable cause” and what they are saying now.

Thursday’s Washington Post, Knight-Ridder, are among the media outlets crediting this blogger with breaking the story.

UPDATE Thurs Afternoon: Greenwald’s got more?

my post from yesterday, bumped up:
General Michael V. Hayden claimed on Monday that the government was forced to circumvent FISA formalities because of the burdensome “probable cause” standard necessary to constitutionally allow for wiretaps/eavesdropping etc.

But as Glenn Greenwald wrote today,when Mike DeWine proposed a 2002 bill that would reduce the standards required for “probable cause,” the Republicans voted it down. Is it because they really do know the fourth amendment, or had Bush and Cheney already decided it would be easier to just carry on spying, tapping into their “mandated” extraordinary power to circumvent Congress, the judiciary, society.

As evidenced by this cutting down of the proposed bill, as stated by James Baker, the DoJ attorney who supervises FISA requests, on behalf of the administration:

thanks to Congress’s passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, we have been able to use our expanded FISA tools more effectively to combat terrorist activities.

Does this insinuate that FISA was all they needed to combat terrorism in 2002, or does it reveal once again that the Bush Administration had taken the PATRIOT Act as a license to do as they please?