Spill Dewine
Ouch! That title really hurt…
More news on a topic we’ve been covering at length; that of “Greenwald’s Dewine Postulate”. The always-resourceful Minuteman weighs in here and here and says maybe the administration didn’t want to support the Dewine legislation because they feared it would be found unconstitutional and taint many cases both present and past (a sort of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislative strategy). (Tom also points out, quite reasonably, that at some point administration critics are going to have to answer the question as to why so many people would so willingly engage in an illegal national security practice – with the obvious answer being they didn’t see it as illegal).
But bigger news for Greenwald is the props he gets from the WaPo (nicely done!):
The DeWine amendment — first highlighted this week by Internet blogger Glenn Greenwald and widely publicized yesterday by the Project on Government Secrecy, an arm of the Federation of American Scientists — is the latest point of contention in a fierce political and legal battle over the NSA monitoring program.
The WaPo‘s lead?:
The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.
The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a “reasonable suspicion” they were connected to terrorism — a lower standard than the “probable cause” requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.
Again, let’s point out for special highlighting that phrase non-U.S. citizens…the Bush program can include U.S. citizens, as well.
Finally, Glenn takes the initiative in his moment in the sun to stand up for blogs as a source of news and information (hear, hear!)…
UPDATE 9:02 a.m.: Knight Ridder also gives it up for Glenn:Glenn Greenwald, an Internet blogger, first connected the earlier Justice Department statement to the Bush administration’s current arguments on his Web log, called Unclaimed Territory.
And so does the L.A. Times:The Justice Department’s conflicting statements came to light Wednesday after Glenn Greenwald, a New York lawyer, posted the differing statements on a blog.
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