Gosh, I can't recall if anyone could have predicted this...

NYTimes (reg. req'd.)

Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales's case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government's chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.

A longtime loyalist to George W. Bush dating to their years together in Texas, Mr. Gonzales was once widely viewed as a strong candidate to be the first Hispanic-American nominated one day to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he carried an impressive personal story as the child of poor Mexican immigrants.

Despite those credentials, he left office last August with a frayed reputation over his role in the dismissal of several federal prosecutors and the truthfulness of his testimony about a secret eavesdropping program. He has had no full-time job since his resignation, and his principal income has come from giving a handful of talks at colleges and before private business groups.

"Maybe the passage of time will provide some opportunity for him," said one Washington lawyer who was aware of an inquiry to his firm from a Gonzales associate. "I wouldn't say 'rebuffed,' " said the lawyer, who asked his name not be used because the situation being described was uncomfortable for Mr. Gonzales. "I would say 'not taken up.'"

Well, unless he is collecting unemployment, I don't think he needs to worry about skewing his buddy's unemployment figures...

Nice to see karma biting him on the ass, though, isn't it?

In the legislative debate over the RESTORE Act, the administration is focusing much of its attention on immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in Bush's legally dubious schemes. Responding to an argument from Time's Joe Klein, Glenn explains how misguided this really is.

To Klein, telecoms did not act illegally. Not at all. They were simply victims of "the Bush Administration['s] refus[al] to update the law" to make the law consistent with what the telecoms were doing. That would be tantamount to a criminal defendant charged with embezzlement going into court and saying: "Your Honor, I didn't do anything wrong. Why should I be punished just because the Bush administration refused to update the law to make my criminal behavior legal?"

Such an "argument" would trigger judicial laughing fits and probably sanctions. But our Beltway elite is so desperate to defend telcoms (and, more importantly, to close off the sole remaining mechanism for investigating the administration's illegal warrantless eavesdropping and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its illegality) that they will twist themselves into the most inane positions in order to defend something as extraordinary as granting retroactive amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms....

[E]ven more unfathomable is the idea that the Congress would pass a law that has no purpose other than to protect from all legal consequences the largest and most powerful corporations in the event that they are found to have broken our nation's surveillance and privacy laws. What possible justification is there for any of that?

Christy has been working hard on this all week, and has more.

CIFA

Freelance writer Michael Graham emails (I shortened it) and explains why Jim Hightower's piece is required reading:

"I have a special interest in this subject matter because, as some of you know, back in the late sixties I was a military "special agent" of the type to which Mr. Hightower refers. I did this work, in plainclothes. Our target was the anti-Vietnam protest movement--For one thing, I learned how these people think and how they operate -- and the spying technology now is 40 years beyond anything we could have dreamed up.

You really should read up on CIFA. It is more insidious even than the NSA eavesdropping. It's the operational side of counterintelligence. (The very term "counterintelligence" now has a sinister meaning; when I got into it, it was about detecting and catching Soviet spies, a perfectly honorable undertaking. Now it has come to mean dirty tricks aimed at political enemies. Watergate was a counterintelligence operation.)"

Hightower:

"Three years ago, the Pentagon set up a new, ultrasecret agency called CIFA, for Counterintelligence Field Activity. Its initial task was to detect terrorist plots against military installations in the United States, but two years ago, a directive from the Pentagon's top ranks ordered CIFA to broaden its scope by creating and maintaining "a domestic law enforcement database." The agency's motto became "Counterintelligence to the Edge."...read on"

Anything that involves Sen. Pat Roberts is damned to be worthless.

As georgia10 notes:

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted today not to investigate the crimes of President George W. Bush. Instead, it will create a subcommittee for "oversight" of the illegal eavesdropping program....read on

Senator Rockefeller had this to say after the committee's vote:

"This committee is basically under control of the White House,'' Rockefeller told reporters after the two-hour meeting today in Washington. "It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House.''

FDL says that "there is no such thing as a moderate Republican."

...Before he spoke, Bayh told reporters that he does not support efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., another potential 2008 presidential candidate, to censure Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping. Bayh said it's not clear whether the law requiring court approval before surveillance was broken, and he instead favors revisiting and possibly updating the law...read on"

That's so big of him. Bush sticks his thumb in the eye of the FISA laws and Bayh takes the Republican stance instead of being a man of conviction. Nobody knows exactly what Bush and his super-duper-secret wiretapping program has done, but hey, no problem here. Way to go. Time to call his peeps.

Evan Bayh
463 Russell Building
Washington, DC 20510
Washington, DC (202) 224-5623
Indianapolis (317) 554-0750
Evansville (812) 465-6500
Fort Wayne (260) 426-3151
Hammond (219) 852-2763
Jeffersonville (812) 218-2317
South Bend (574) 236-8302

In keeping with Dick Cheney's hunger to increase the power of the executive branch:

"When President Bush signed the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act this month, he included an addendum saying that he did not feel obliged to obey requirements that he inform Congress about how the FBI was using the act's expanded police powers....''On the one hand, they deny that Congress even has the authority to pass laws on these subjects like torture and eavesdropping, and in addition to that, they say that Congress is not even entitled to get information about anything to do with the war on terrorism," Golove said...read on" (h/t Steve)

So how many terrorist plots have they stopped because of this program?

"Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use.

Bush has recently described the warrantless operation as "terrorist surveillance" and summed it up by declaring that "if you're talking to a member of al Qaeda, we want to know why." But officials conversant with the program said a far more common question for eavesdroppers is whether, not why, a terrorist plotter is on either end of the call. The answer, they said, is usually no. Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well....read on

I had to put up this clip because the caller is batshit crazy. Obviously she doesn't understand what the conflict is and why there is a hearing going on, but her rhetoric is fueled by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and much of the hate filled diatribe's from someBush apologists that fuel this sentiment. The hearing is about protecting the rights of Americans from being unlawfully spied on- coupled with a power hungry executive branch-period.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Caller: ...This is about people who support terrorists. You know, the ACLU and all these people are so concerned about the rights of these terrorists-maybe they should have been in the building 9/11, instead of all those decent Americans who were murdered by these people you are so interested in keeping their civil rights--Thank you.

Turner was even stunned.

Turner: Wow....

Glenn discussed the real issue here while taking the partisanship out of the equation:

Glenn: The reality is-is that the scandal is about whether or not we live under the rule of law and that is not a conservative or a liberal debate-that is an American value and for that reason there are numerous conservatives-and I don't mean wishy-washy conservatives. I mean hardcore doctrinaire conservatives from Grover Norquist and Bob Barr...

Nobody is against eavesdropping on the terrorists...

Hardball today used Pat Buchanan's opinion on wiretapping. Oh, wait I mean eavesdropping.

How has "national security" been damaged?"

Atrios asked the question last night:

"Can anyone - anywhere - explain, just a little bit - just one time - how "national security has been damaged" by revelations that the Administration was eavesdropping without FISA-required warrants and judicial oversight rather than with them?"

Glenn Greenwald tries to enlighten.