Siva Vaidhyanathan of Sivacracy is guest posting at Altercation today. One of the issues the NYU prof and media scholar tackles today is feds demanding records of google searches and data-mining.

As many of us have been saying for years, there is real danger in Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, Amazon.com, etc.) collecting dossiers on our Internet habits. While these companies might annoy us with targeted ads and please us with customized service, they collect all sorts of information that might or might nor accurately reflect our relative danger to society.

While Republicans would have you believe the majority of Americans trust Bush to make appropriate decisions on his own to eavesdrop on our fellow citizens, the latest Zogby poll disagrees.

a poll released last week by Zogby International showed 52 percent of American adults thought Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he wiretapped U.S. citizens without court approval, including 59 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans. (The survey had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.)

Given those numbers, impeachment could become an issue in this fall's congressional elections, and dramatically raise the stakes. If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, a leading proponent of starting an official impeachment inquiry, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would become chairman of the House committee that could pursue it.

The Boston Globe today reports on a footnote in Alberto Gonzales' speech:

A footnote in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's 42-page legal memo defending President Bush's domestic spying program appears to argue that the administration does not need Congress to extend the USA Patriot Act in order to keep using the law's investigative powers against terror suspects.

The memo states that Congress gave Bush the power to investigate terror suspects using whatever tactics he deemed necessary when it authorized him to use force against Al Qaeda. When Congress later passed the Patriot Act, Bush already had the power to use enhanced surveillance techniques against Al Qaeda, according to the footnote. Thus, legal specialists say, the administration is asserting that Bush would be able to keep using the powers outlined in the Patriot Act for Al Qaeda investigations, regardless of whether Congress reauthorizes the law.

Arianna skewers Scotty and his brother pretty good.

First, Mark, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rolled out the president's Medicare prescription drug program -- which, right out of the gate, is being regarded as one of this administration's biggest debacles (and that's saying something!).

And while Mark was busy fending off angry senior citizens who want their drugs, brother Scottie has had his hands full fending off angry reporters who want to learn how well the president knew Abramoff.

Keep reading. It's an "ouch" type post.

[graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL.]

David Corn wrote this post yesterday about Bush's proclamation (as if we didnt' know it) that he is not a lawyer. Bush said:

I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means. It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics. It's an--you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how. And one of the ways to protect the American people is to understand the intentions of the enemy. I told you it's a different kind of war with a different kind of enemy. If they're making phone calls into the United States, we need to know why -- to protect you.

Our Army is stretched past capacity. I'd like to think that this is just a numbers-crunching problem for Iraq.

But the way Bush is going, Iran and North Korea are also on the radar. What if troops are needed in those locations as well?

How will they do it without a draft? For those 21 - 25 year-olds who read TalkLet, I'm curious, would you go?

When it comes to the TL kid, I would say, "'over my dead body you'll take him." The greatest horror show I can remember was back in 1970 when there was a draft lottery to decide who would have to go into the service and presumably to Vietnam. The night of the lottery, I watched tv in Ann Arbor, MI with my male friends, who like me, had just taken our LSAT's and were planning on going to law school. I'll never forget the looks on the faces of those who were dealt early numbers. They just walked out of the room, when their numbers were called. And they didn't come back.

Now, as a parent of a kid in law school, who also is opposed to Bush and to war, I can't even imagine him in that situation. If it happens, I bet I won't be the only parent who says, "Hell, No, We Wont' Go." We'll play Arlo Guthrie's song, Alices Restaurant and find another place to live.

Great catch by Think Progress.

Over the weekend, Time magazine and the Washingtonian both reported on five photos of President Bush with Jack Abramoff, but neither publication revealed its source.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress laid out the case for why the source for the photos was likely Abramoff himself. Last night, our hunch was confirmed.

Appearing on MSNBC, Newsweek correspondent Michael Isikoff reported that it was indeed Abramoff who floated the photographs to Washingtonian.

Watch the video.

Thanks to Glenn Greenwald for pointing out that in 2002, Republican Mike DeWine proposed amending FISA to reduce the probable cause standard for foreigners to one of "reasonable suspicion" and his bill was defeated.

There was good reason for rejecting DeWine's bill. It's called the Fourth Amendment. From an AP article on June 26, 2002 (available on Lexis):

Stephen Saltzburg, a George Washington University law professor, questioned whether courts would view DeWine's proposal as violating Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

"Any departure from probable cause when dealing with electronic surveillance warrants will be dealt with extreme skepticism by the judiciary," he said.

The ACLU noted:

....the lower standard would make it too easy for the FBI "to break into a non-citizen's home, download everything in his computer and rifle through everything in his bedroom."

Is the military gearing up to execute prisoners? The BBC reports it has changed it's rules on implementing death sentences. There are six prisoners currently on death row after courts-martial proceedings.

One of the changes pertains to where executions take place. Previoiusly, the rules specified Ft. Leavenworth, KS as the place of execution.

The revision also makes it possible for executions to take place at any military prison, not just Fort Leavenworth. This, according to anti-death penalty protesters, means it would be technically legal for executions to take place at Guantanamo Bay.

[Via Raw Story.]

Not surprisingly, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed Judge Sam Alito on for a vote in the full Senate. All Democrats voted against him.The make-up of the Committee, with 10 Republicans and 8 Democratics assured this would be the outcome. Here are excerpts from the hearing this morning at which the vote was taken. The full transcript (html) is here.

Will it be any different in the full Senate? Raw Story reports today that Florida Senator, Democrat Bill Nelson announced he will vote against Alito.

The Council of Europe's interim report on U.S. secret prisons in Europe is out. The report says there is evidence that the U.S. outsourced torture and European Governments likely were aware of it.

"There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of "relocation" or "outsourcing" of torture," Marty said in the report to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog on whose behalf he is investigating.

"Acts of torture or severe violation of detainees' dignity through the administration of inhuman or degrading treatment are carried outside national territory and beyond the authority of national intelligence services," Marty said. He added that more than 100 suspects may have been transferred to countries where they faced torture or ill treatment in recent years.

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