Lots and lots happening – and no time to blog! (Plus updates imbedded below!) fixed missing link to Senate Report on NSA

Well, let’s just have a quick Fly By of great posts from others with a little more time on their hands. Beginning with my current obsession – the NSA-FISA dust up – there is a lot of information out today. The first is a perfect illustration of the powerful megaphone the administration has during wartime. The pushback by the administration, along with a lot of common-sense blogging that is stripping away the hype, is revealing the essence of the issue: national defense.

Mark Coffey brings us the details on the latest CBS News Poll (a left leaning poll if there ever was one):

A new poll shows 53% of Americans support the president’s eavesdropping program, and 61% believe he is using it to fight terrorism, as opposed to 29% who say he started to program to expand presidential power

That is two to one against the liberal Chicken Littles. If you go back to the reporting on the poll itself, you find in general the poll is a classic CBS News poll full of terrible numbers for Bush. So the results for the NSA subject are probably much worse for the liberals than even these numbers portend. I said it before when the Opinion Dynamics poll came out – this issue is a killer for the Democrats this election year.

UPDATE:

You might want to go see Ed Morrisey’s comments about how skewed the samples are in this poll as well. The country is 33-33-33 at the moment between D’s-I’s-R’s. The only deviations that make sense is when independents take from both Dems and Reps and rise above. But Dems and Reps should be at parity for national polls.

UPDATE II:

More from Powerline on the poll here.

END UPDATE

Claric Feldman has an article on Judge Posner’s views on law, policy and warrants which is worth the read just to understand how all these things play out.

Reader MerryJ1 has an excellent link to information that explains the origins of the NSA and its charter as expressed in a 1976 Senate Report. This information establishes the historic role of the NSA and is probably of great interest to those following this subject. I learned something just from the snippet provided by MerryJ1

Geographic Responsibilities. — Although none of the applicable executive directives explicitly prohibit NSA from intercepting communications which occur wholly within the United States, internal NSA policy has always prohibited such interceptions. In practice, NSA limits itself to communications where at least one of the terminals is in a foreign country. This means that when Americans use a telephone or other communications link between this country and overseas, their words may be intercepted by NSA.

This is even pre-FISA and pre-Gorelick Wall and pre-Church Committee, but it is only a policy, not a law. We felt so secure that we took the risk of not having the NSA not continue to track threats as they come into our country. Once in country and near their objectives, any normal tactic would be to limit communications to only local instances and immediate needs. In the war against terrorists this quaint world view is dangerously nostalgic.

But it also goes to my points from the recent NSA post: it was not new for the NSA to be monitoring ovrseas targets and snaring calls from the US….

Some new perspectives on the Iraq WMD angle as a top general to Saddam has published a book confirming the theory that Hussein moved his WMDs to Syria – where they are now [hat tip to reader Snapple]. My guess is the US has decided it is OK to have some of their key intelligence sources go out and make their millions as we put the screws on Syria for their duplicity. Stephen Hayes has been busting apart the left’s claims Saddam was not connected with Al Qaeda with the news Iraq trained 8,000 terrorists under Saddam. Now we are learning the WMD’s issue is not what it seems as well. Not good for the liberals.

UPDATE:

Don’t miss Rick Moran’s extensive review on earlier stories that Iraq’s WMDs had been moved to Syria.

END UPDATE:

The ACLU is continuing to self destruct as it fights for terrorists and against the public opinion of Americans. Stop The ACLU and the Counter Terrorism Blog both have great posts out on the ACLU pro terrorist activities.

Just a quick comment on the Hammas Election: Careful what you ask for, you just might get it. The Hammas win is not surprising. The Palestinians have been brain washing their people for decades in a manner that would make Joseph Goebbels cry with envy. They are taught violence and hatred towards all who disagree with them. So now they have a elected a government that will be shunned and cut off from the rest of the world. Good. When Hammas cannot make any improvements, and in fact the daily life for the people deteriorates, then the people may finally wake up and see the faux bravado for what it is. The only other possibility is Hammas does something Fatah and Arafat could never do, evolve into statesmen. Since violence is not the basis for statesmanship I doubt this will happen. The odds are probably 80% Hammas fails and 20% it evolves to succeed. But either way the Palestinians are now on their own. And everything they do is now their own choice. And we are free to let them sit behind the Israeli security walls and work out their choices with their Muslim neighbors.

One last item. I attended the Family Research Council’s first annual ‘Blogs for Life; conference last Monday. My old friend Pete Shinn was on the panel and I wanted to go down to see what was going on and provide some support. It was very interesting (my first bloggers conference). What is wild is too see your friend’s 15 minutes of fame in a UPI article! Good job to all who participated and made the event happen. I bet you next year it will at least double in size.

Have a great day!