Speaking of lies spin . . .

[Updated! See below!] One of my favorite bloggers once noted that part of her M.O. was to flit around blogs from the other side until something made her mad, and then to blog about that. It's not a bad M.O.

I was stuck waiting around for the doctor's office to call me back, not wanting to dig into the pile of rough drafts just yet, when I stumbled across this post from Peter DiGaudio, one of the Usual Suspects. Entitled "Empowering Terrorists," the post begins with that trademarked DiGaudio civility, with his calling the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee "Sen. Arlen 'Magic Bullet' Spector (RINO-Al Qaeda)." DiGaudio is upset that Specter would demand FISA judicial review for the president's program of warrantless and currently un-reviewed wiretaps being conducted on US citizens and other "US persons."

But what got me hopped up enough to blog it was these two paragraphs, which have to be two of the most densely-false paragraphs I've read in a long time:

So why propose anything that will make it even more difficult to track and monitor terrorist operatives? The FISA Act has no relevance in dealing with today's threats. With terrorists communicating via disposable cell phones, the 72 hours it would take to get a FISA court warrant would make it impossible to track and monitor those plotting the next 9/11.

The fact that usually sensible folks like former Rep. Bob Barr are opposed to this reflects poorly on the national media's deliberate misrepresentation of this program. Once again, this is not "domestic spying." My phone calls are not being monitored, nor are my e-mails, nor anything else.

You know, in my last post, I took Fred at RealDebate to task for missing facts and the calling people who opine based on those facts he doesn't have liars. Here, we have a perfect example of someone missing facts and substituting opinion instead. The violations are numerous:

• Specter's bill does not make anything "more difficult." Notice,

  Specter said his proposal would empower the court established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to review the National Security Agency's domestic anti-terrorist surveillance every 45 days to ensure it does not go beyond limits described by the administration. Currently, Bush himself reviews the program and signs off on its continuation every 45 days.

  There is nothing in the bill that requires FISA warrants for these currently warrentless wiretaps; there is nothing in the bill at all, really, except a provision that puts oversight of this program into the judicial branch instead of allowing the executive branch to oversee itself.
  
  
• FISA is not irrelevant, and is in fact quite flexible. It was amended with the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act to make it more responsive to modern telecommunications (see this page, for example). The court itself almost never rejects warrant applications, meaning that they must understand their "relevance." But it's DiGaudio's point here that is irrelevant: Specter's bill requires no warrants.
  
  
• It does not take 72 hours to get a warrant. Either the talk radio is lying to him, or DiGaudio is deliberately misreading the law: The 72 hours is the retroactive limit; the NSA can start spying right away on anyone it suspects, as long as they go to the court with their evidence later. Of course this is also irrelevant: Specter's bill requires no warrants.
  
  
• If I were trying to be funny, I would say that Bob Barr was never sensible . . . but I won't. Instead I will just point out that the last time a president was found to have broken the law (and Bush has admitted to bypassing FISA) Bob Barr led the charge for impeachment. Sounds consistent to me.
  
  
• I'm curious to know how DiGaudio thinks the media has misrepresented the story. If he means that they have presented uncomfortable (for him) facts like the ones I name here, then that's not misrepresentation at all. Clearly, DiGaudio is upset that people are saying things that contradict his world view; the only misrepresentation I see is DiGaudio's distortion of reality.
  
  
• Finally, I love how he asserts that since his calls are not being tapped (that he knows about), the program "is not 'domestic spying.' " Well, I wonder what he would call surveilling US citizens inside the United States? Giving puppies to the poor?

So there you go. Six sentences, six falsehoods.

The last time I noted the factual innacuracies and blatant spin at DiGaudio's place on this very topic, he offered no corrections, no anything. Let us see if this time he cleans up the untruths.

UPDATE: DiGaudio lets his imagination run wild, applying his falsehoods here to the story of three terror suspects in Ohio. He writes,

keep in mind that if Feingold, Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy, Sen. Depends (Patrick "Leaky" Leahy), the ACLU, and now even Arlen "Magic Bullet" Spector had their way, the tools used to capture these traitors plotting attacks inside our borders would not be made available to the fed, and consequently these terrorists would have escaped detection.

That's right: two of the tools used here were the warrantless wiretaps and surveillance and the Patriot Act.

Ahh . . . that DiGaudio civility. But that's not important: What's important is that he claims the feds used the warrantless wiretaps to catch the bad guys. This is not true. From the FOX News story he cites: "One official told FOX News that this investigation used all the tools, including FISA warrants. 'A lot of FISAs,' one source said, referring to the warrants obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." And besides (I say again), Specter's bill requires no warrants.