Mickey

It could be a great situation for an asst. looking to get promoted to HC.

As usual, I can't tell if you have an actual position you are arguing or are just bitching. Do you or do you not think it is permissible for the NSA to bug anyone they want, for any reason, anywhere, with no oversight and in violation of law? Why don't you list for me some concrete examples of the "sketchy circles" Christiane Amanpour is close to. Do you think Osama is calling her for dates? Forgive me for being suspicious but I wonder if maybe bugging her home phones might have more to do with the fact that her husband was John Kerry's foreign policy advisor during the election campaign than with any worry that she was going to receive a hot tip on the next terrorist attack. I may not be an expert in surveillance but I am not stupid enough to suspect that I am going to get any useful information from bugging the phones of a network news starlet. Its not like she wears a trench coat and hides in bars herself looking for clues to the latest caper. She goes where her producers send her, complete with her makeup team and wardrobe consultants. If she ever did stumble on anything, she'd do a report on it faster than they could ever type up the intercepts. This isn't about Amanpour, its about what they can bug and what they can't. If your answer is that they can bug anyone, anywhere, for any reason, regardless of any law to the contrary, then say so rather than making a half wit argument that bugging a news diva is just good old fasioned police work so in that limited case it is okay.

The more you read that thing, the more you want to scream. It has been amended by several later pieces of legislation, including the Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act and a few others I believe. You have to read all the definitions of terms like "US Persons", "Foreign agent", "terrorist", etc. They were expanded by the Patriot Act. The gray area is where you have a target that fits the definition of "US Person" and "Foreign Agent" or "Terrorist" (those last two may be interchangeable). I think if a person meets the definition of foreign agent, he can't be a US person or even if he is, you can bug the crap out of him. The AG certification is simply a notification under seal that says the target is a bad guy as far as the AG is concerned. That is all. That is what lets them do that for a whole year with extensions and no court order. On top of that you have the emergency provisions which let you tap for 3 days without an order. And on top of that, the only real penalty is that you can't use the info obtained in court. Since the President has the power to detain anyone he declares an enemy combatant, that isn't really an issue. Then, on top of all that, there is the 99% success rate for warrant requests to the court. They never say no. I may not be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that FISA compliance was always a slam dunk, cake walk 100% of the time but really that is all there is left to argue about. Maybe FISA was actually, once in a blue freaking moon, more than a quick rubber stamp but it was never more than that in terms of being too cumbersome for the administration to obey. We will just have to wait to see what info slowly drips out of the pipes. I think they are in trouble but only if there is a real investigation. If Republicans end up investigating Republicans, I figure it will all eventually go away for most politicians. Libertarians will probably raise hell no matter how it turns out.

Oh please, you were our leader at one point or have you blotted out the IBP from those few remaining brain cells still stubbornly clinging to life in your gin soaked skull?

We need some popcorn for this.

Empty argument. You could say the same thing if people complained about a policy where every passenger on the plane is handcuffed to their seat. First B word about not preventing hijacks, then complain about a procedure that would stop it in its tracks. Obviously, everyone is willing to strike a balance between civil liberties and security and I don't think its is ignorance to discuss what that balance should be. If there is some connection, apart from fantasy and speculation, between spying on Christiane Amanpour and preventing suicide terrorists, it escapes me. Now, if they want to bug Al Jazeera, that makes sense to me. In any event, we aren't even talking about whether they should or should not bug US journalists, they can if they want to. The question is how do they go about it? The answer is FISA, as amended by the Patriot Act, which permits them to do just that. Why they chose to ignore the law when the law itself already gave them a blanck check to tap whoever they want for at least a year is anyone's guess. It might be because they were tapping people for reasons that had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with their domestic political ambitions.

I may be missing something but I don't see anywhere in there an explanation as to why they wouldn't simply follow the FISA procedure that lets them tap anyone for any reason without a warrant for up to one year with the only requirement being that they have to notify, underseal, a FISA judge and a few congressional big shots. That's it. Why could they not just do that? I thought there might be some sort of technical problem where they really aren't tapping a person, just examining mass amounts of traffic between points A and B and drilling down to see who is talking to who. For example, they know there is traffic between suspicious point A and suspicious point B. The examine it call by call, not knowing who is talking to who until they do. How then would you notify FISA that you are tapping person of interest X when you don't know who is talking to who when you start listening. Apart from something like that, I just don't know why they couldn't tap their fannies off for a year (extensions are available) and just notify the court and a congressmen or two.

I am no fan of Sullivan but being critical of him for doing nothing but "..write commentary on what others do" ignores the fact that his job is to do just that. Its what sports writers do. He is not a reporter, relaying the scores, the facts, etc. He is a writer so he writes. What have any of us here ever done that give us the license to criticize? Well, we were born and we were fortunate enough to be born where we are free to be critical of whatever we want, hence, we all have that license.

Maybe so, and without knowing any details or even if it is so, we can only speculate. I will say this though, whatever the reason, if she was bugged, the administration is going to be in very, very hot water. At the same time they are bugging her to see if she is having an affair with Osama, they are also getting a heads up on all her reporting, her sources, her off the record discussions with domestic political opponents, etc., etc. It would certainly explain why they didn't follow FISA's virtually non-existent rules. Bugging Christaine Amanpour. As Lettermen would say, "Honest to Christ".

Blindly repeat=reading transcripts??? blindly repeat=seeing clips from the show??? Wisecrack on talk show=written political debate on site devoted to same????? You really say the silliest things sometimes. Did you really have an expectation that a TV talkshow host would provide an list of sources, complete with links to the information first hand inorder to make a laugh getting wisecrack? Interesting position you are taking, that if I give a comedian a pass for not footnoting a joke, I can't complain about the lack of sources in a factual debate on public policy. Yeah, makes sense. Oh wait, I get it: mickey=bad Okay, I get your point.

Once again, you conservatives have no sense of humor at all. Lettermen "ambush" O'Reilly? I've seen him get rougher with Cher. Besides, O'Reilly by now must expect the looney, mean spirited, self laudatory stuff he says on his show to be brought up whenever he dares to venture out of the Fox womb. If he thought they were just going to share a cigar then he is a bigger idiot than I thought. Poor, poor wittle Billy O'Reilly, let us all weep for the plucky little fellow. If you are going to make a living being a national dick, you can't really complain when you are treated as one.

minor detail, I don't watch O'Reilly either but have read transcripts of his "best moments" from time to time. Anyone who watches the Daily Show certainly has seen plenty of clips of him in action to reach the same conclusion Lettermen did. Neither you nor I are aware of what sources Dave had for reaching that conclusion and in a brief talk show interview, I certainly don't expect a bibliography. What he did say could cover sources from the internet, to transcripts put together by his staff to clips on the Daily Show. In the end, no matter how unsound his sources, he reached the correct conclusion. I like when he said: "60%...I'm just spitballing here". So he was clear that this was just an estimate and on that basis, I withdraw my earlier criticism of Lettermen that a more accurate figure would be well over 60%.

In an interview with James Risen, the reporter who wrote the just released book "State of War" which addresses the NSA wiretapping program we have been discussing over the last week or so, Andrea Mitchell of NBC asked him: This was posted at the networks website but then they pulled it, elimentated the question about Amanpour and then put the edited transcript back up. NBC has since explained: As for the program of bypassing FISA, it just didn't make sense to me since they can bug whoever they want for anyreason under FISA for a whole year without a warrant and all they have to do is to inform, under seal, a FISA judge and a few congressional big shots. There just didn't seem to be a need for it. I asked quite a few times for those defending the program to provide some reason why this FISA procedure which allows civil rights to be freely discarded, was still too cumbersome to compy with. The only answers that emerged were (suggested by bib I think) that there was some technical reason, based on how the data is "mined", that made complying with these minimal FISA provisions impractical. The other reason would be that they were simply bugging people no one in their right mind would see as having anything to do with national security and everything to do with domestic political ambitions. Apparently NBC has some information that Chritiane Amanpour was bugged but not much. Not even enough to leave the question in the transcript. I note this is not presented as proof that we have any evidence at all to believe this actually happened. Please read that again, I am not suggesting there is any reason to beleive Amanpour was bugged. I am posting the info on the incident just to show that the media, NBC in this instance, is starting to look at the possibility that journalists were targeted. Snipe hunt or the first glimpse at the tip of the iceberg? I know, I know. Snipe hunt.

Which legal system is that, the one in Texas, NY, Conn., Az., Fla., NC, etc., etc,. etc.? They are all different.

Nor am I that you thought it went the other way. Don't worry though, with RK on your side, how could you possibly be wrong? "...60% of what you say is crap..." Dead on put down. This wasn't a grade school debate, it was more of a rank fight. I disagree on the percentage, its way over 60, but that would be quibbling.

I am not sure where you are trying to go here. My point is that religion makes it easier to convince people to do and believe in crazy shite. What you are talking about shows just that. Adding in other factors that are bound to be persuasive such as poverty and ethnic conflicts, etc, etc, makes it just that much easier to get them to do crazy things like blowing up buildings.

Gee, I thought Lettermen nailed him. You say potato, I sat pah-tah-to

Avarice is one thing but they could have gone through with that scheme without using disabled kids. They could have called the fake charity "The Human Fund" in George Costanza type fashion or the "Clean Earth Coalition" or whatever. I mean really, "Celebrations for Children, Inc." ?!?!?! The kids were celebrating all right, from the yachts to the suites.

I have always assumed that Washington was seriously corrupt, on both sides of the aisle but really, this one makes me sick. Abramoff funded a charity called Capital Athletic Foundation which claimed on its tax returns that it donated 300k to P'Tach, a charity for disabled jewish children. Problem was, P'tach never received any such donation. Where did that money go? It went to another "charity", this one used by Delay to fund convention partying for wealthy donors during the Republican creep-a-thon that was its convention. It was called "Celebrations for Children, Inc." Donors received brochures setting out the convention benefit packages available depending on how much they donated from yacht cruises to luxury suites. All tax deductible mind you because the money is going to a charity dedicated to helping abused and neglected children. In actuality, all the money went to paying for the yacht cruises, luxury suites and late night parties enjoyed by the wealthy faithful during Creepfest 2004. Essentially, all the money they would have spent on partying anyway was funneled through a fake charity "for children" so that the partyers not only got to enjoy their wingdings, they received a nice tax deduction to boot. Of course, anyone who questioned it would be attacked immediately as being against children, a hater of disabled and neglected kids. Even for Washington, this is a new low. I though Rostenkowski's schemes were clever. He was a rank amateur compared to this bunch of felons.

Actually, the argument was that religion can be used as a key to get people to do anything, even strap on bombs. Adding in other factors, be it poverty, ethnic or religious conflict, etc., etc,. just makes it even easier to pick that lock. Would suicide bombing be as easy to sell if their belief in their faith didn't already convince them that paradise awaits, that their death is not really death but just a ticket to the afterlife? Besides, isn't it possible that well educated and well off persons in the middle east, seeing the poverty of their countrymen around them, the refugees, the wasted lives, might actually care about them? Isn't it possible that they, already programmed to beleive just about anything, having been raised since birth to believe passionately in their faith, could be convinced, using their faith as the key, that the way to save their people is to blow up other people? How hard would it be to combine their sympathy for their fellow muslims, their ethnic loyalties, their faith and easy to paint as anti-muslim actions of western nations and come up with a guy who hates the west enough to become a suicide bomber? Please stop spinning every attempt to understand suicide bombing as a justification for same or a demonstration of sympathy for them. I lost a friend on 9-11 and I don't want to lose another. Seems to me that one way to achieve that is to try and understand the enemy.

I think the democrats have a losing hand that will be hard to play. The issue that will overshadow all others no matter what happens with Abramoff and all these corruption charges is the war. As for the war, what position is a winning one, politically, for the democrats? Any kind of pull out will be easily painted as a surrender, retreat, defeat, whatever. Whether or not it is the wisest course won't really matter, that is what it will be painted as and that is not a winning posture for the democrats at all. They could try and argue that the war is winnable with new leadership, that the Republicans have lied about it and screwed it up, etc., etc. But that argument really ends up being another version of "stay the course", which is the same argument the Republicans are relying on. That will not really offer the voters much of an alternative, certainly not enough for them to toss out their favorite pork barrel carrier. I just don't see a winning position for them on the war and I have my doubts that come November, the election is going to turn on who has been indicted the most on corruption charges as opposed to the war. Its what the democrats have to try and accomplish because if the war is the issue, they don't have a winning card to play. If they can make corruption the issue, which I highly, highly, doubt, they have a chance. I just don't see it happening, the war is the issue.

Do you really think Marv had no say in acquiring players? The first thing he did when he was hired was to nab Tasker off the waiver wires. That staff was a team, they worked together and it showed up on the field. He hasn't taken the cheap way out, he doesn't care about $ anymore. Why would he? The old man wants to win. You can disagree over whether this decision will accomplish that but accusing him of doing it because he is cheap is just an infantile reaction to not getting what you want. I have plenty of questions of my own on this move but doubting Ralph Wilson's committment to winning isn't one of them.

Ted Marchibroda

The guy is on death's door and has more money than he could ever spend. The last thing in the world he cares about is money right now. He wants to win the big one once before he dies. That is his sole motivation. When times are bad, you turn to the people you trust the most and for Ralph, that is Marv Levy. Is that so hard to understand? If there is a guy in the game who could get it done at age 77, its Marv Levy, you over officious jerk.

This only makes sense to me when it comes to hiring a new coach. I think Marv would be an excellent choice to pick out some good coaches. He always hired pretty sharp assisstants in his day. He is a Dean of the coaching fraternity and I think that a lot of coaches out there would like the idea of Marv, another coach, being their boss. It doesn't make sense to me though if we are keeping MM and most or all of the asst.'s. I also think Marv could probably talk guys like Sam Adams and Moulds into staying. One thing is for sure, we will be drafting CB's. That is the Levy way, he can never have enough corners.