The Second Coming of the FISA Flood

By Farol

The fact that Democratic leaders in Congress are utterly desperate to give amnesty to telecoms that broke the law by spying on Americans without a warrant should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying even the slightest bit of attention to this issue. The only thing that's been preventing them from caving for this long has been intense grassroots activism. And no grassroots activist has pursued this issue with more dedication, passion, and knowledge than Glenn Greenwald.

In an amazingly short amount of time, Greenwald has assembled a diverse group of bloggers and activists to run ad campaigns against "blue dog" Democrats who support amnesty (and other destructive Bush policies). The group's short-term goal is to stop the sham "compromise" bill which the House Democratic leadership is now trying to force through Congress as quickly and quietly as possible (and which would guarantee immunity for the telecoms). The long-term goal is to create an organized, efficient grassroots movement devoted to civil-liberties issues. This is particularly important considering that, as Greenwald notes, Barack Obama has yet to take serious action on these issues. There is no guarantee that he will live up to his rhetoric should he become president.

I encourage everyone to head over to Greenwald's blog now to get all the details. The relevant posts are here, here, here, and here.

Is Asking that You Ask Questions too Much to Ask?

By Quill

Glenn Greenwald has a recent post that questions the Colin Powell-with-the-jar-of-anthrax-like "evidence" behind the Bush administration's latest claim that North Korea is helping Syria to develop a plutonium-producing nuclear facility.

The only scary thing about this news is how eerily similar it sounds to the sketchy arguments made by the same administration five years ago about the relationship between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Furthermore, as Greenwald points out, very, very few media outlets are actually getting a second opinion on the validity of this relationship, and are simply parroting the administration's talking points without questioning them.

Is it too much to ask "respectable" news organizations like the Associated Press, The Washington Post and Reuters to question these claims? It can't be that hard to find critical voices on the subject, as the The New York Times has managed to dig up a few. Instead, they're just giving Bush and his sycophants a free pass to spew highly questionable allegations similar to the ones that led to a disastrous, ongoing war.

My question is, has the press corps simply not learned its lesson, or do they just not give a shit?

Quick Hit: A Brand-Spanking New Blog that is Really, Really Funny

One of Glenn Greenwald's most insightful commentators, a lawyer form the D.C. area, has just started his or her own blog called Inside-Out the Beltway. It should prove worthy of your daily reads. Check it out!