The White House said today it would consider allowing the FISA court to review its warrantless electronic monitoring program. The devil is in the details:

Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations.

Specter said the court would make a one-time review of the program rather than performing ongoing oversight of it.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement.The official said that Bush will submit to the court review as long the bill is not changed, adding that the legislation preserves the right of future presidents to skip the court review.

A one time review is not oversight. Here are the uncontroverted facts (pdf) about the NSA program. More details of the proposed legislation, according to Specter from the Washington Post article.

The last two days have seen the deadliest attacks in 24 years between Israel and its neighbors with Israel bombing Lebanon two days in a row after the kidnapping of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah. Today it bombed the Beirut airport.

President Bush pledged to work with Israel, criticizing Hezbollah for thwarting efforts for peace in the Middle East.

"My attitude is this: there are a group of terrorists who want to stop the advance of peace," he said at a news conference in Germany. "The soldiers need to be returned."

Reactions from other Arab countries:

Moderate Arab governments reacted with relative restraint, apparently reflecting a sentiment in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that Hezbollah - and by implication its top ally, Syria - had started the fight with Israel.

I support Israel in this. I'm sure others will disagree. Have at it, but keep it civil and any anti-semitic comments will be deleted.

by TChris

The Republican-controlled Georgia legislature made its intent clear when it enacted a law that required voters to have a driver's license or to buy a state-issued photo ID. Requiring payment for an ID amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax, so a federal judge struck the law down. Poll taxes don't prevent fraud; they suppress voting. That's the transparent purpose of Georgia's Voter ID law.

Undaunted, the legislature reenacted the law, this time offering the ID for free. In response, both a state judge and a federal judge have issued restraining orders against the law's implementation, concluding that the revised law is still likely to be found unconstitutional.

Judge Murphy decided the law still ran afoul of the federal Constitution. He said it violated the First and 14th Amendments because the severe burden on the right to vote discriminates against disadvantaged groups, those least likely to have a photo ID.

Burdening voting is exactly what the Georgia legislature intends.

Typekey is up and running and comment registration is back. Anonymous comments don't let readers know if they are coming from one person or different people. They are misleading because they give the appearance that multiple people share a position that might only be coming from one individual.

Also, without registration, I can't control the spammers, even with filters. I deleted more than 10 comments selling ringtones yesterday. Deleting comments takes a long time because of the rebuilding infrastructure here.

So, if you'd like to comment, set up a free account at Typekey. It will allow you to post comments at all blogs that use the service.

Update: TPM Muckraker calls out Novak on Waas. Novak said,

"I know that the Murray Waas piece in the National Journal, which interestingly was not picked up by anybody, was totally wrong and a total lie," he said.

In fact, Muckraker says, Bloomberg News and MSNBC confirmed Waas' article using their own sources.

**********
Original Post:

Bob Novak was on Fox News yesterday explaining and defending his involvement in PlameGate. As Crooks and Liars reports, he called Murray Waas a liar on Hannity and Colmes.

He was also on Britt Hume's show. Here's the transcript of his appearance.

With none other than former Solicitor General Ted Olson as his new lawyer, Michael Skakel is asking the Supreme Court to take his case and overturn his conviction for murdering 15 year old Martha Moxley. At the time of the crime in 1975, Connecticut had a 5 year statute of limitations on murders that were not capital murders. It eliminated the statute of limitations on all murders in 1976. But Skakel wasn't charged with capital murder, and he wasn't charged until 2000, by which time the five year period had long expired.

Skakel's trial lawyer, Mickey Sherman, raised the argument in the trial court and was turned down. His brief is here. After Skakel was convicted at trial, his appellate lawyers took the issue up to the Connecticut Supremem Court, where they were turned down. But, in turning Skakel down, the court had to overrule its own precedent -- earlier decisions that would have required them to rule in Skakel's favor.

by TChris

An amusing jab at Vice President Cheney from President Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin lashed out at U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney ahead of this weekend's G8 summit, calling his recent criticisms of Russia "an unsuccessful hunting shot," according to a television interview broadcast Wednesday.

Baghdad Burning is a must-read today. I can't do justice to it by paraphrasing, so please, go read.

I've just been advised people are unable to log in through TypeKey to comment. I've opened up the comments to everyone without registration until it's fixed. I'll clean the threads up tonight if need be.

Update: Typekey is indeed down.

July 12, 2006
TypePad Service

The TypePad application is currently down. We're working to correct the issue as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Update: We're still working on this issue. We appreciate your patience.

On July 8, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was on the Monica Crowley radio show. The Defense Department kindly has put up the transcript. Here's a snippet:

this is not an army fighting an army under the laws of war. This is a world that's confronted by terrorist networks that are -- don't wear uniforms, and they don't carry their weapons publicly, and they kill innocent men, women and children. And their goal is to terrorize people and to alter free people's behavior.

And the idea that we need to treat them as though they're stealing hubcaps off the streets of our cities and then have a jury trial and then send them to jail for a month is certainly not going to work. The people down in Guantanamo Bay are people that have been deeply involved in killing Americans and in threatening to kill people, and they're bad people. This fellow Hamdan was a -- one of the drivers and associates of Osama bin Laden.

by TChris

In 1975, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that Alaskans have a right to privacy in their own homes that is violated by laws criminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use within the home. The state legislature attempted to reinstate a broad marijuana possession prohibition, but a superior court judge struck down the law, ruling this week that criminalizing the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana for personal use within a home was contrary to the state supreme court's precedent.

The state Department of Law argued that new findings of marijuana's increased potency since the 1975 decision justify reconsidering the issue.

The court essentially held that the Department of Law's attempt to demonize "potent" marijuana should be taken to the state supreme court. The superior court's decision is here (pdf). The ACLU of Alaska brought the challenge to the new law; its press release announcing the result is here.

Thanks to Tom Maguire for reminding me of this old post of mine in which I cite Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce's Newsday article of July 22, 2003, 8 days after Novak's column outing Valerie Plame was printed, in which he is quoted as saying,

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." (my emphasis.)

Now he says he got it from Who's Who and no one in the Administration told him her name.