Wednesday News Roundup: Warrants Are The New Black

Yes, there was a Republican debate yesterday. Don't worry if you missed it; the candidates were all predictable enough that it doesn't get top billing today. What is on top: House Democrats are trying to fix the Protect America Act and its blanket authorization of warrantless wiretaps on American citizens in two very different ways.

The CNN article above covers in detail the House leadership's RESTORE act, meant to prevent the privacy violations permitted by the controversial FISA court bill passed earlier this year which authorized the Attorney General to issue year-long warrants potentially permitting eavesdropping on phone calls and emails of U.S. citizens without any sort of court oversight or protection. Republicans, of course, howled that the RESTORE act was "helping the terrorists." The reasoning behind which is lost on me, as the loudest complaints about the bill were about surveillance that had already had occurred: the bill requires the White House to release records of all warrantless surveillance it had done since the 9/11 attacks. The bill also requires court approval to wiretap a targeted American citizen, and specifies that the court must review how individuals are targeted and warrants are obtained.

The ACLU isn't happy with the bill, however. They note that Americans can still be targeted by an "umbrella" eavesdropping warrant, as a warrant would not be required to capture communication from a U.S. citizen that wasn't originally specified in the "umbrella" approval — a major sticking point that led to the original outcry over the Protect America Act in the first place.

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, has introduced a second bill, which is being called the FISA Modernization Act of 2007, to address exactly this point. The bill requires individual warrants for any and every U.S. citizen subject to having their phone or email wiretapped, which the ACLU says is "what we want and what the Constitution requires." However, his bill is getting little to no press (as of yet) in the national mainstream media. The great NJ progressive blog Blue Jersey has run information on it, as has Democratic Underground and the ACLU. The differences between the two bills should probably be getting a lot more notice than they have been. You guys know what that means — write your congressman, write your newspaper, write or call or otherwise contact whoever you know that can bring this more attention.

So, of course, yesterday marked a notable day for Republicans as the date of the first Republican debate that Fred Thompson deigned to attend. Just because he was there, however, doesn't mean that he actually had much of an influence. Most print media seemed to be in agreement that "no one dominate[d]" the debate. (A notable exception was the Chron, who called Thompson a "dud" in their headline, but as they just re-titled the McClatchy article above, I take that with a grain of salt.) The attention in the debate was mostly given to the verbal clubbings that Giuliani and Romney were handing each other throughout the course of the debate over who was or wasn't a closet liberal. For my dollar, it seems pretty unlikely that either one gets to wear the mantle of Conservative Hero, so this all smacks of a hard-fought place for "not as lousy an option as the other frontrunner." Whether the Republican base digs this, or whether the appeals to a dark horse candidate are for real, only time will tell.

Another bit of news on Congress, from The Hill: It seems that Democrats may be getting some traction in the message war against the White House on "excessive spending." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stated plans to address the problems with "excessive spending" the White House has so much issue with — by noting how much is being spent on Iraq. Yes, we all know the numbers, and we all know that much of the money is being misused and wasted. But having this message come from the top ranks of Congress gives us a better shot of prominent placement in media outlets, combating the commonly seen Republican arguments against increasing the domestic budget. And to a communications guy like me, that's a good thing.

Poor Farmers Branch just can't seem to shake their negative news image. Their most recent NIMBY attempt to somehow oppress or inconvenience their immigrant population into going elsewhere is by — kid you not — complaining about brightly colored houses. Yes, indeed, their attempts have gone from oppressive to just plain silly. The argument is that the bright colors drop property values in their area. From the article:

But the residents pushing the Farmers Branch paint initiative say their concern is home values and neighborhoods, not ethnicity.

Oh, well, that makes sense, I suppose. So they can cite research showing that house color somehow affects property value, right?

Neely Blackman, president of the Code Enforcement Association of Texas, said he knew of no evidence that house color makes a difference in property values. "Now neighbors make a difference," he said, citing issues such as junk cars.

Oops. That didn't work out quite so well.

Finally today, a story that will be of interest to bloggers and citizen journalists everywhere: the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, which basically establishes a national reporter's shield law. This sort of thing has a lot more traction in the light of the Valerie Plame and Scooter Libby incidents than it has in the past. But perhaps the most interesting thing is who is covered under the law. The law states that anyone "engaged in journalism" is covered, which is defined as "the regular gathering, preparing, collecting, photographing, recording, writing, editing, reporting or publishing of news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public." Yup, that covers bloggers too!

Putting money on the success of a federal shield law has historically never been a wise move. But considering the current atmosphere, and throwing in a little irrational "if wishes were horses" hope on my part, I'm choosing to hold a guarded optimism over the success of this bill.