Webmaster Mike Ditto and I are almost done with TalkLeft's redesign which we have spent dozens of hours on this past week. I'm hoping it will be finished tonight. It really looks good. But, as with any major site overhaul, and this one has turned out to be really major, there are tests and retests and kinks to iron out.

While I continue to work on that, here's an open thread for you.

Time Magazine has chosen U-2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates as persons of the year:

For being shrewd about doing good, for rewiring politics and re-engineering justice, for making mercy smarter and hope strategic and then daring the rest of us to follow, Bill and Melinda Gates and Bono are TIME's Persons of the Year.

Michelle Malkin thinks it's a lame choice.

And, sorry, but Melinda Gates? She marries the software mogul after he has done his greatest work...and that makes her a co-person of the year.

How mean-spirited to suggest that Melinda Gates is being honored for being married to her husband as opposed to the thousands of hours she spends working on the Foundation. Michelle needs to do a little research on Melinda Gates' contributions in creating and co-running the largest philanthropic organization in America, one that is dedicated to reducing world poverty, saving lives by discovering global health cures and providing educational opportunities for children in our own country.

What greater work could there be?

The New York Times has a good editorial today on Bush's insistence that his executive orders allowing domestic warrantless monitoring of conversations was in accord with the Constitution and our nation's laws.

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of the law, much less respect them.

Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it. Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could get the ball rolling.

What section of FISA do the Bush advisors not understand? Glenn Greenewald makes his case here .

The only way to argue that the Bush Administration’s warrantless eavesdropping on suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, complied with the law is by misquoting the law in order to change its requirements.

As to the credibility of Bush officials on this issue, Think Progress points out:

Senator Russ Feingold has issued a response to President Bush's admissions during his radio address today that he authorized domestic intelligence wiretaps without a warrant or court order. It is available as a radio actuality at the following number: 800-511-0763, Code 4945:

"The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king."

Here is a fact sheet I received from Sen. Feingold's office on domestic intelligence wiretaps:

by TChris

The Bush administration has rewritten the nation's first principles. No man is above the law, except the president. Ours is a government of men (gathered in the White House) and not of laws. Separation of powers gives way to a concentration of power in an omnipotent executive. The president's power must be unchecked, even if the president is unbalanced.

The federal legislature enacted laws that prohibit the executive branch from electronically eavesdropping on private communications without the approval of the judicial branch. The law authorizes the president to apply to a special court for easily-obtained permission to intercept telephone calls of persons suspected of supporting terrorism or of working on behalf of a foreign government. Nothing in the Constitution gives the president greater power than that bestowed by Congress to listen to private conversations, and the Fourth Amendment requires the executive branch to obtain a warrant before it does so.

Like a rebellious child who continues to stick out his tongue after being told to behave, President Bush today acknowledged that he has authorized wiretaps and insisted that he will continue to do everything in his power to protect Americans. While the president contended that he is acting "under our laws and Constitution," his understanding of the law -- detention without trial or counsel, torture, secret renditions to foreign prisons, all deemed appropriate exercises of presidential power -- is untrustworthy.

A president who lies about a private sexual encounter is impeached. A president who defies the law and, when exposed, arrogantly proclaims his right to do so, will never stand trial.

Update: Webmaster Mike Ditto and I spent 8 hours implementing the new design today. We're not quite done. Hopefully, it will be finished tomorrow night. It's looking really good, but I don't want to republish the 13,000 entries and 180,000 comments until it's close to perfect. We expect that to be tomorrow night.

Update: The upgrade to MT 3.2 is mostly done. There are some kinks in the search results, comment preview layout and a few other pages, which we are working on. But you can go ahead and comment.

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Webmaster Mike Ditto is about to upgrade TalkLeft to MT 3.2. This means comments will not be available for an hour or so.

Sometime tonight, we will be converting to our first new design since June, 2002, with a new graphic by Monk. Every template of TalkLeft needs to be changed over, which Mike is handling.

I'll update here when comments are back and again when the new design is implemented.

Here is the entire FISA Act. Section 1802 covers electronic surveillance under the Act without a court order. You may have to check the GAO database to make sure none have been updated recently. I will be posting another version from Lexis later, but since readers can't access it without paying, I thought this publicly available version would be helpful to get you started.

Section 1811 of the act pertaining to surveillance during wartime states:

Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.

Section 1805 of the Act covers emergency situations where a court order cannot be obtained in advance. Such surveillance can only last 72 hours before an Order is applied for.

President Bush today admitted he ordered National Security wiretaps without a warrant more than 30 times since 2001. He says he has the power to do it. You can watch his statement here.

From the Washington Post:

Bush said that he authorized the program "using constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief." He argued that the program is consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, and used "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

You had to know it was too good to be true. Don't praise John McCain's torture amendment too soon. The Levin-Graham Amendment passed along with it, and it amounts to a license to use coercive techniques, particularly on detainees at Guantanamo:

House and Senate negotiators agreed Friday to a measure that would enable the government to keep prisoners at Guantánamo Bay indefinitely on the basis of evidence obtained by coercive interrogations.

The provision, which has been a subject of extensive bargaining with the Bush administration, could allow evidence that would not be permitted in civilian courts to be admissable in deciding whether to hold detainees at the American military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In recent days, the Congressional negotiators quietly eliminated an explicit ban on the use of such material in an earlier version of the legislation.

Human Rights Watch explains:

Alex White Plume and his family are members of the Lakota Nation who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation. The DEA sued to stop them from growing industrial hemp. The White Plumes planted and grew the hemp for three seasons, and then the DEA cut it down and took it.

The case reached the 8th Circuit where oral arguments were held this week.

During the oral arguments it became clear that Judge Kermit Bye and Judge Arlen Beam were focused on two issues: (1) the irrationality of allowing the exempt parts of the plant to be imported into the U.S. but not allowing industrial hemp to be grown in the U.S. and (2) the lack of any rational permitting process by the DEA.

While the Government's case was made, Judge Beam commented, "It seems asinine to me that they can bring in the Canadian stuff and use it but can't grow it." Beam also suggested that it did not make sense that Congress would try to make the economy of Native American tribes more enhanced by casino gambling but not allow industrial hemp cultivation.

Update: Rep. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), leading Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee (press release):

'This Bill is so Ridiculous that, According to the Republicans, Santa Claus Himself Would be a Criminal for Trekking from The North Pole to Deliver Holiday Gifts Without a Visa.'

The bill passed the House today, by a vote of 239-to-182. See Sensenbrenner gloat.

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Original Post

The National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights wrote to Congress yesterday asking it to defeat H.R. 4437, the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act sponsored by Rep. James Sensenbrenner. I detailed the worst provisions of the bill here. Here's NIRR's webpage on the bill. From today's letter, received by e-mail:

Was Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle unlawfully present during the second grand jury's deliberations on Tom DeLay? DeLay's defense team thinks so - it has subpoenaed grand jurors to a Dec. 27 hearing on its motion to dismiss for prosecutorial misconduct:

State law prohibits prosecutors from attending grand jury deliberations, but the defense alleges that Earle unlawfully participated in the second grand jury's deliberations and tried to force those grand jurors to indict DeLay. Earle denies the allegations. Grand jury testimony is secret and Earle does not have to release transcripts unless he's ordered to by a court, so the defense has asked Senior Judge Pat Priest to allow the grand jurors to testify.

DeLay's lawyer, Dick Deguerin said he has other evidence and the grand jurors' testimony doesn't make or break the case, but it's very significant.

[Hat tip to Tom at Opinions You Should Have]