Keith’s Head does a 340º on who’s Responsible for FISA

Keith Olbermann recently included a silk glove attack on an Obama administration position regarding wiretapping. Keith got props from many sources for his “willingness to call out Obama” on an issue.

Feh. I’m not impressed. Let’s review, shall we?

Waaaaay back in June, Larry Johnson ripped at KO for his willingness to overlook BO’s wobbly political positions on any number of things, including FISA. Included was a reminder of what Olbermann said about Bush and FISA.

Let’s start with evil Bush man.

On January 31 of this year, Keith Olbermann donned his most serious face and most indignant voice tone to rail against George Bush for supporting telecom immunity and revisions to FISA. In a 10-minute “Special Comment,” the MSNBC star condemned Bush for wanting to “retroactively immunize corporate criminals,” and said that telecom immnity is “an ex post facto law, which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive and blatant collaboration with [Bush's] illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass email.”

Olbermann added that telecom amnesty was a “shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism — the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government.” Noting the numerous telecom lobbyists connected to the Bush administration, Olbermann said:

This is no longer just a farce in which protecting telecoms is dressed up as protecting us from terrorists conference cells. Now it begins to look like the bureaucrats of the Third Reich, trying to protect the Krupp family, the industrial giants, re-writing the laws of Germany for their benefit.

Just a few days after Larry’s post, NQ discussed (see Obama’s Two Faces and Forked Tongue) Obama’s flip-flop on FISA.

The second liberal principal Obama sacrificed in the space of one week is his decision to support a bill that gives the telecoms retroactive immunity. Only last year Obama promised to filibuster the bill but instead, in a stomach-lurching turn to the right, he gave his support to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and climbed in bed with George Bush and company. No doubt Obama is attempting to show some strength regarding national security to those of us who know he has none, but he’s sacrificing the very liberals who fell for his dippy promises of hope and change. . .

Keith, being the ever vigilant “journalist” he is, certainly didn’t let Obama’s flip-flop go unremarked at the time. Keith felt that Obama would have a second chance as a senator to fight the good fight against FISA. Rather than condemn Obama’s vote for FISA, Keith tries to figure out how or why Obama would vote for it and how it might be just a play to later gut the bill by the ever-so-clever Obama. Deb Couples wrote about it in Olbermann Tries But Doesn’t Fully Reverse HImself re: Obama’s FISA reversal. (A great piece, if you’re interested, do go and re-read.)

Keith, as usual, is hard to follow in his “special comment.” His main argument seems to be that Obama should not have voted for FISA because the Republicans (enemies of all that is right and good) will use his vote against him no matter what he did. Not much discussion about what this might mean about Obama himself, of course. He does say, around he half-way mark, that even FISA is not as important as getting rid of any Republican in the WH.

Believe it or not, Keith then goes on (around 6:30) to offer a “solution” to Obama. Seriously. Keith is now uber policy wonk. Heh. Clearly Keith thought it his place to help Obama “revise” his position on FISA, kind of a video advisor. Seriously, this part is unbelievable. I’m sure David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and BO himself were furiously taking notes.

(This is long and painful to watch.)

But, you know how things go. It’s all prelude to what the Obama administration is asserting NOW. And what does Keith think about a new development from Obama’s DOJ?

Glenn Greenwald, at Salon:

When Congress immunized telecoms last August for their illegal participation in Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, Senate Democratic apologists for telecom immunity repeatedly justified that action by pointing out that Bush officials who broke the law were not immunized — only the telecoms.
——-

Taking them at their word, EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation – ed.) which was the lead counsel in the lawsuits against the telecoms — thereafter filed suit, in October, 2008, against the Bush administration and various Bush officials for illegally spying on the communications of Americans. They were seeking to make good on the promise made by Congressional Democrats: namely, that even though lawsuits against telecoms for illegal spying will not be allowed any longer, government officials who broke the law can still be held accountable.

But late Friday afternoon, the Obama DOJ filed the government’s first response to EFF’s lawsuit (.pdf), the first of its kind to seek damages against government officials under FISA, the Wiretap Act and other statutes, arising out of Bush’s NSA program. But the Obama DOJ demanded dismissal of the entire lawsuit based on (1) its Bush-mimicking claim that the “state secrets” privilege bars any lawsuits against the Bush administration for illegal spying, and (2) a brand new “sovereign immunity” claim of breathtaking scope — never before advanced even by the Bush administration — that the Patriot Act bars any lawsuits of any kind for illegal government surveillance unless there is “willful disclosure” of the illegally intercepted communications.

In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad “state secrets” privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they “willfully disclose” to the public what they have learned.

Greenwald kindly posted pdf files just in case readers thought he was overstating. He wasn’t.

The EFF had this to say:

Friday evening, in a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, EFF’s litigation against the National Security Agency for the warrantless wiretapping of countless Americans, the Obama Administration’s made two deeply troubling arguments.

First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They argue that simply allowing the case to continue “would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.

It’s an especially disappointing argument to hear from the Obama Administration. As a candidate, Senator Obama lamented that the Bush Administration “invoked a legal tool known as the ‘state secrets’ privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.” He was right then, and we’re dismayed that he and his team seem to have forgotten.

Sad as that is, it’s the Department Of Justice’s second argument that is the most pernicious. The DOJ claims that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying — that the Government can never be sued for surveillance that violates federal privacy statutes.

This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.

So, how does Keith deal with this? Well, it’s a story on his countdown, but not a special comment.

Keith asks what the political calculation is and “who made it.” Well, he had no trouble before figuring out who to blame. But with BO, well, it’s not so clear. Keith’s guest seems to think BO is trying to accommodate (around 3:50 remaining) the “intelligence community,” suggesting that it’s not at all BO’s decision but the “bureaucracy.” He also suggests it’s understandable that a president doesn’t want to give up any power it has accumulated, even if that power came from a hated predecessor. THAT’s completely understandable, not wanting to give up ill-gotten power, after all.

And Keith’s guest also says we shouldn’t forget that Obama’s administration is now the defendant in lawsuits about FISA (around 5:35) and that justifies their position somewhat. Then he throws out the idea that the BO administration won’t “shine a light” on this but will let Congress do it. Of course, THAT’s gonna happen. And probably BO will blame Congress. (Not that there’s anything wrong with THAT.)

So, it’s understandable that BO might want to continue a practice he ran against because now he owns it; it gives him more power and it’s really the fault of the intelligence community and nasty bureaucrats; and really, Congress should do something anyway.

And if you buy that, you deserve to have a picture taken with BO when he wears a t-shirt saying “I’m with Stupid.”

So, what’s the takeaway? Well, if you’re Keith Olbermann, a soul-destroying act by a Republican can be just a power grab because “somebody made me do it” if you’re a Democrat.

Any chance Keith will call BO a fascist?????