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They're in Denver.

Well, from the evidence I've seen, whatever may tie Ivins to this crime, I've seen nothing to indicate that Ivins acted alone. The fact that they can't place him in the Princeton, NJ area at the time the letters were mailed is a huge problem in that regard, as is the question of who fed false information suggesting Iraqi involvement to ABC's Brian Ross. These facts are not consistent with the FBI's seeming desire to close this case based upon Ivins being the sole culprit.

They can't place him there because he couldn't have been there. According to the FBI's warrants, etc. the letters were mailed from a specific box in Princeton, NJ after 5 pm on September 17, 2001. Ivins was out of the office in Frederick VA earlier in the day (after coming in briefly in the morning), but was back before 5 pm for a meeting. There is no indication that they have cracked his alibi from 5 on sufficiently to allow him to make the round trip during the time window.

Unless they have a real whopper saved up (he hired his secret twin brother to sleep with his wife that night?) Bruce Ivins could not have done it alone. Which (right on the tail of the Hatfill fiasco and the Siegelman fiasco and all the rest) might lead a reasonable person to wonder if he was involved at all.

--MarkusQ

P.S. The best way I've heard of salvaging their case would be if Ivins drove up in the daytime (he might just barely have had time) and asked someone to mail the letters for him. If they had this (presumably innocent foil) in witness protection or something they might actually have a better case than they've shown. But in any case he would have needed an accomplice of some sort.

I strongly oppose retroactive immunity in the FISA bill. Ever since 9/11, this Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. The FISA court works. The separation of power works. We can trace, track down and take out terrorists while ensuring that our actions are subject to vigorous oversight, and do not undermine the very laws and freedom that we are fighting to defend. No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people - not the President of the United States, and not the telecommunications companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program. We have to make clear the lines that cannot be crossed. That is why I am co-sponsoring Senator Dodd's amendment to remove the immunity provision. Secrecy must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens â" and set an example to the world â" that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient. A grassroots movement of Americans has pushed this issue to the forefront. You have come together across this country. You have called upon our leaders to adhere to the Constitution. You have sent a message to the halls of power that the American people will not permit the abuse of power â" and demanded that we reclaim our core values by restoring the rule of law. It's time for Washington to hear your voices, and to act. I share your commitment to this cause, and will stand with you in the fights to come. And when I am President, the American people will once again be able to trust that their government will stand for justice, and will defend the liberties that we hold so dear as vigorously as we defend our security.

So while you say all he promises are hope and change he actually does take positions on these things. Imagine what you can discover when you do the slightest bit of research. It's his seeming shift to the middle and abandonment of this statement that has people pissed. Not that we misunderstood what he was talking about.

Obama will try to get the immunity provision removed, but failing that will vote for the overhauled wiretapping bill anyway.

This is just another case where multiple issues are stacked into one bill, forcing legislators to either support something they don't want or vote against something they do want.

Bull. We're deep in a game of "I know that you know that I think you think that I know..." but not so deep that we can't follow the clues and, ignoring what people say and watching what they do, see pretty clearly what's going on.

The House Democratic leadership has control of this process, and, through Steny Hoyer pushed this through. They could have played it many ways, and this is the way they chose. They put together this "compromise" and were under no obligation to bring it to the floor unless and until they liked it. Turning around and saying they were foxed into it doesn't wash.

Why would they do this, you ask? The most likely answer is that they wanted to get it out of play before November, and thus were doing it on behalf of Obama.

Or, if you're paranoid, you might note that we already know that some of the illegal wiretaps were done on journalists and politicians. Just as the "anti-racketeering" RICO act was quickly expanded to cover things that weren't previously considered racketeering, even the legally sanctioned the anti-terrorism powers are being used in all sorts of inappropriate ways. Perhaps blocking the immunity provisions would not be healthy for our brave representatives's careers. So in that sense you might argue that they were forced into it.

But, no matter what, our representatives weren't sold a pig in a poke unless they weren't paying any attention at all, and in that case it was their own leadership that did it to them.

--MarkusQ

In case you are missing the context here, the emails in question are interesting for a whole slew of reasons. The probably contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors (most likely by Cheney, but who knows) and pretty much have to contain evidence of perjury (with the morass of statements that have been made under oath, someone is surely lying, we just don't know who). And them there's the Hacth act violations, the Abrimoff issues, the election tampering, and on and on.

These are the missing 18 minutes gone gonzo,

--MarkusQ

`ADDITIONAL PROCEDURE FOR AUTHORIZING CERTAIN ACQUISITIONS CONCERNING PERSONS LOCATED OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES

`Sec. 105B. (a) Notwithstanding any other law, the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, may for periods of up to one year authorize the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States

(c) Sunset- Except as provided in subsection (d), sections 2, 3, 4, and 5 of this Act, and the amendments made by this Act, shall cease to have effect 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.

The House has already indicated that it wants amnesty rejected, by passing their version of the bill without it, even as amnesty faced very vocal (though ultimately failed) opposition in the Senate. And John Conyers (D-MI), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to head White House lawyer Fred Fielding insisting that there's no basis for amnesty. The House Intelligence Committee also rejected amnesty in approving the House bill. The Senate counterpart to Conyers' committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, was the one that produced a Senate bill rejecting amnesty (that failed to pass the Senate); the Senate committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) denounced amnesty as his bill was defeated, in solidarity with the House provisions. House Speaker Pelosi helped rescue the House bill from an October attempt by Republicans to stop it. So I think the House version of this "RESTORE Act" is a serious attempt by the House (its Republican minority notwithstanding) to stop amnesty.

But you're right not to have "faith" in politicians. Faith is a way of knowing something that can't be proven, and no one can know what these liars will do until after the check has cleared. But hope is different. It's a way of wanting something that hasn't been proven, fuel for doing something to get it. Which is why signing the petition to pressure the House to stand by its partial progress against amnesty is worth doing. Because giving up hope means being defeated, and that's how you help the forces against you win. Signing the petition is another small but useful blow against them.

The House of Reps passed their version of this bill without amnesty. When the two bills go into "conference", wherein the two chambers negotiate how to change their versions to come up with the single version that will be voted on in each chamber, the House can insist on no amnesty. Which, since amnesty did not pass in the Senate by an overwhelming (just a large) majority, the House might succeed in getting.

So sign the petition to pressure the House to stand up for keeping amnesty out of the final bill. It's the last chance you have to keep some privacy rights when on the phone (hi, Dick!).

The House of Reps passed their version of this bill without amnesty. When the two bills go into "conference", wherein the two chambers negotiate how to change their versions to come up with the single version that will be voted on in each chamber, the House can insist on no amnesty. Which, since amnesty did not pass in the Senate by an overwhelming (just a large) majority, the House might succeed in getting.

So sign the petition to pressure the House to stand up for keeping amnesty out of the final bill. It's the last chance you have to keep some privacy rights when on the phone (hi, Dick!).

Nobody needs to splice an undersea cable if they can go to AT&T and every other telco company and get what they want by idnetifying thnselves as the government and kindly asking, on dry land. For the US, the telco immunity bill seems to be a done deal: http://firedoglake.com/2008/02/01/dems-capitulate-on-fisa/

It's not really the poor economy, it's the fact Bush has used a bubble instead of actual growth.

We should have had a minor recession in 2001 or 2002, but then it would have been really hard to convince people they needed to funnel huge amounts of money into defense contractors pockets.

Money quote:

The liberal solution would have been to try and find a new tech boom, which in the case of the Gore administration would almost certainly have either been a micro and alternative energy boom or a telecom boom.

The Bush solution was different. The decision was made to base the economy on the real estate market. Record low interest rates flooded money into the mortgage market and the housing market boomed.

A boom sucks, at the end, No matter what you do, people will come in and lose their shirts. But some booms, in the long run, have much better results. The internet boom of the 90s changed the face of the planet. And even if some people lost their shirts in the stock market, well, no one made them invest.

This housing boom, OTOH, everyone did have to play. Even renters pay more when houses prices are up, although at least they won't have to watch the value of their house plummet. And it's left us with no tangible benefits at all except millions of shoddy McMansions.

We could have put that same amount of effort and money in alternate energy, and be in the middle of a nice stock correction now, where alternate energy company stocks are dropping through the floor and being picked up by a few big players which are merging with the big energy suppliers who are just now realizing they need to change their business plan. Which wouldn't hurt John Q. Public at all. John Q. Public, in fact, came out ahead because he got 'sponsored' for solar panels and that company, with a crappy business plan, went out of business, like during the tech crash.

(and let the Republicans finish the contract ON "America".)

Communist Party of The United States Of Alphane FP.

P.S. : Be Patriotic: Buy Oil

Ron Paul is a NUT.

Electoral problems should be scrutinized and fixed based on their severity and merits, not how well they play into some "what if the other guy had won?" scenario.

I agree 100%. As I have said many times, I wouldn't be all that interested in having Kerry as President, though I don't like Bush either. But if we're going to have an election between two worthless shills I'd still insist on having an honest election between them.

Further, we should be (and, thankfully, some of us are) looking at the recent midterms as well. Cases like the guy that got no votes (even though he voted for himself), the close House race where 18000 votes went missing, and so on need to be investigated. Further, we should be paying a lot more attention to things like Rahm Emanuel's involvement in the timing of the Foley scandal, which constitute election rigging of a different sort.

And finally, we need to keep clear that this isn't a partisan issue. I am a registered Republican, but I want nothing to do with cheaters on "my side." This is actually a pretty common reaction at the grass roots level -- for instance, left leaning sites are as annoyed at Rahm as the right leaning sites.

Even in hyper-partisan times, the red team and the blue team (again, almost exclusively at the grass roots) have common ground in wanting a fair system.

--MarkusQ

It isn't that people don't know or care about their civil liberties, it's that they were asked a misleading poll question before most of them had had time to read anything about the subject they were being questioned on. And before you assume that it was an honest mistake, consider that the pollster is a known partisan hack with a history of biased polling.

This poll is nothing short of a brazen public opinion trojan trying to exploit the old "all your friends are doing it" security hole. We're supposed to hear about it and say "Well shucks, if most Americans are in favor of bending over for the soap, why should I be different? After all, they're from the government, and they're here to help us!"

If you've been regularly applying security patches from trusted sources you should be immune to this exploit in any case.

-- MarkusQ