Liberty City

Dear President Obama,

Please make this stop.

Prosecutors tried to prove that the original seven defendants, a group of laborers from the tough Liberty City neighborhood, provided “material support” to a terrorist organization, and planned to destroy buildings. But they relied mostly on the men’s words, citing their loyalty oath to Al Qaeda and aggressive comments made to two F.B.I. informants.

More concrete evidence did not emerge. Testimony showed that a search by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of what it called the group’s headquarters did not yield guns, explosives or blueprints for an attack. Besides a samurai sword, no weapons were found.

“There was really nothing that indicated that this was a real threat,” said Jeffrey Agron, a lawyer who served as the foreman at the first trial in 2007. “Another thing was the credibility of the confidential informants. The first informant, in the minds of most jurors, had no credibility, and with the second informant, a lot of the jurors felt he was trying to lead these guys on.”

The first trial ended in December 2007 with an acquittal for one of the seven, Lyglenson Lemorin, and a mistrial for the other six: Narseal Batiste, accused of being the ringleader; Patrick Abraham; Burson Augustine; Rotschild Augustine; Naudimar Herrera; and Stanley G. Phanor.

The second trial followed a similar path. Each side laid out many of the same arguments, and another jury deadlocked. On April 16, Judge Joan A. Lenard of Federal District Court ordered a mistrial for the second time. About a week later, prosecutors said they would try again.

Assistant United States Attorney Richard Gregorie, at a hearing where the decision was announced, said another trial was necessary to “safeguard the community.” Mr. Gregorie cited some of the violent comments allegedly made by Mr. Batiste, including a threat to “kill all the devils.”

Mr. Winick said that no new evidence was expected, and that this would probably be the last trial for a case that he, some former jurors and other legal scholars have seen as politically driven. The timing in particular has attracted scrutiny because the arrests came just a few months before the 2006 elections, and they were widely publicized by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who outlined the most sensational evidence at a news conference.

A third time is not the charm.

Blue Monday, Otis Rush edition

I think I've used this one before (YouTube isn't infinite), but what the hell, it's a great performance and this one goes out to Alberto Gonzalez.

Appeasement

George W. Bush is the most unpopular president in more than a generation and yet, at each and every turn, Democrats -- for fear of looking "weak" on terraism or "obstructionist" when bad judicial nominees are named -- give him the political equivalent of "Czechoslovakia" whenever he "demands" it.

As usual, Greenwald gets it exactly right.

The intense rush to amend this legislation means that most of them have no idea what they are actually enacting -- even less of an idea than they typically have. But what they know is that George Bush and Fox News and the Beltway establishment have told them that they would be irresponsible and weak and unserious if they failed to comply with George Bush's instructions, and hence, they comply. In the American political landscape, there have been profound changes in public opinion since September of 2001. But in the Beltway, among our political and media establishment, virtually nothing has changed.

I don't have time this morning to dissect the various excesses and dangers of the new FISA amendments, though Marty Lederman and Steve Benen both do a typically thorough job in that regard. Suffice to say, craven fear, as usual, is the author of this debacle.

There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.

The common, defining political principle here -- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea -- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable. With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who -- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it -- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it.

Senator Webb, who one would have expected to reasonably voting against the amendments, gives a statement.

Has all of Washington has been told that a massive attack is coming this month? Otherwise, how else to explain that Congress just gave Alberto Gonzalez -- the AG who has thoroughly politicized the Justice Dept. -- freedom from accountability?

The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.

The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.

The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.

Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.

To think that the telecommunications behemoths are more concerned (albeit for their own self-interest) about the Constitution than are members of the House of Representatives.