Health Care Update

Looks like lawmakers are gradually expanding the puny subsidies in the Baucus health care bill:

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, said Monday that he would modify his health care bill to provide more generous assistance to moderate-income Americans, to help them buy insurance.

In addition, Mr. Baucus said he would make changes to reduce the impact of a proposed tax on high-end health insurance policies.

Mr. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, disclosed his plans in an interview a day before the committee is to begin meeting to debate and vote on the sweeping legislation, which is intended to remake the nation’s health care system and guarantee insurance for millions of Americans.

Mr. Baucus said the changes showed that he had heard the criticism of his bill from colleagues, who asserted that many people would be required to buy insurance who could not afford it — even with federal subsidies to help defray the cost of premiums.

“Affordability — that, I think, is the primary concern,” Mr. Baucus said. “We want to make sure that if Americans have to buy insurance, it’s affordable.”

Affordability to Baucus means reducing the limit of policies from 13% of total income to 12% of total income, through subsidies up to 400% of the poverty level. That's at least a start, though still short of what's in the House bills.

As it says above, responding to changes Baucus will reduce the impact of taxing insurance companies, basically by raising the threshold when plans start to hit the tax. But this is paradoxical. Raising the subsidy levels costs money. Raising the tax threshold takes away money. Lawmakers want the bill to protect more people on affordability while taking away some of the money that would pay for those protections. There is a late and familiar entry here, however, and that's Jay Rockefeller's idea to add back in a variation of what the Obama Administration sought all along:

In fairness to Rockefeller, he's got some ideas along those lines.

He's said many times he would be perfectly happy with the sort of financing they have in the House--i.e., a straight-up tax on the rich. And while such a scheme might have trouble in the Senate, Rockefeller is trying gamely to intorduce a more scaled-down version.

Among the amendments he's introduced for this week's Finance Committee hearings is a proposal to cap the deductability of charitable contributions at 35 percent--which would, in effect, reduce the deductability of contributions that very, very wealthy people make to charities. It seems to be a version of what President Obama proposed at the beginning of this process, an idea that still has a lot of merit even though many Senators rejected it out of hand.

Would they reject it again? Maybe not in scaled-back form, which might be enough. In the end, the most likely solution to the funding problem is some sort of combination strategy--a tax that hits expensive health benefits, a tax that hits the wealthy, and, maybe, some sort of tax sugary drinks or tobacco. The new Rockefeller proposal, according to Capitol Hill sources familiar with it, will probably raise about $90 to $100 billion--which is a decent chunk of change and could pay for a lot of new subsidies.

The President wanted to roll the charitable deduction credit back to 28% - exactly where it was during the Reagan Administration, at a savings to the government that could easily top $300 billion over ten years, enough to make the subsidies big enough to make health care truly affordable for everyone. And it would only hit those who make enough money to take advantage of the charitable deduction to begin with. It's really a no-brainer.

Of course, there are more areas of conflict in the bill beyond affordability and financing. There are various amendments in the Senate Finance Committee to add a public option, as well as Olympia Snowe's amendment to add a trigger, and a weak trigger to boot. Obama went on the record saying “I absolutely do not believe that (the public option is) dead," although his close colleague Dick Durbin said today that only a "variation" of it could make it through the Senate. Nancy Pelosi continued her public statements that the public option must be included to pass the House, though House liberals, wary of a bait and switch, asked the Speaker to stand with them when the bill reaches a conference committee. Jerry Nadler reiterated the seriousness of the threat from the progressive side:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Monday he is optimistic that any healthcare bill from the House will include a public (or "government-run") option, and are undertaking a whip count to test lawmakers' commitment to that measure.

"The public option is still very much alive only because the progressives have stood together and held our ground and said that, regardless of what the President or Leadership says, we won't vote for any bill [without] a public option," Nadler said in a chat online hosted by the liberal AMERICAblog.

Nadler told the blog that 60 lawmakers had pledged to vote against any healthcare bill lacking the public plan, and that liberal Democrats are "undertaking a whip count now to see how firm these pledges are."

While affordability and financing may come to some compromise position that is at least passable, the statements above show that there's no such middle ground for the public option. This may vex the White House, but they will eventually have to show their cards.

Requiem For A Dream

White House spinners tried to keep the home fires burning on the public option today, but it's quite clear they're putting a stake in it. They're letting Olympia Snowe, who supports a trigger, where a public option would only be authorized if the insurance industry failed to meet certain benchmarks, basically write the bill. And telegraphing desperation is not exactly the way to hold firm to principle, even if Obama "favors" a competition mechanism for private industry.

“It’s so important to get a deal,” a White House official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid about strategy. “He will do almost anything it takes to get one.”

That's a recipe for success.

The only specifics in the Robert Pear article include the White House following that same tactic of cutting out whatever the small minority of screamers have determined to be outrageous, like the end-of-life care provisions (death panels!), or the health disparity data provisions (taking our personal information!), as if that will somehow placate people who don't want government, let alone reform. And then, since he's telegraphed weakness, there's even down to this:

If Mr. Obama does not gain traction by making these concessions, his allies on Capitol Hill said, they may have to consider bigger changes. For example, they said, rather than requiring all Americans to carry health insurance, Congress might start by requiring coverage of children, or families with children.

Giving up on universal health care? Great, he's bargaining back to John Kerry's 2004 platform. Fantastic.

Quietly, Progressive Caucus members are being told that the public option is a dead letter. But it sounds to me like the whole thing will wither away as well. Olympia Snowe is going to offer a bill with a few insurance reforms, a smaller price tag that would cut either coverage subsidies or Medicaid expansion, and... that's it. Insurance companies, if there's an individual market, would get a bailout, essentially, a license to print money by making refusal to buy their product a crime. Jerry Nadler put it best:

"Without a public option, this bill will do a lot of nice things but only by throwing a couple hundred billion dollars at insurance companies," says Nadler, adding that a public option is necessary to hold down the cost of health insurance. "What is the point of passing a bill that mandates people to buy insurance that is going to be unaffordable?" he says [...]

What of the argument that the House Dems should not permit the perfect to be the enemy of the good? Isn't half a loaf better than none? "I am convinced," Nadler remarks, "that you can't take a loaf without the public option because that's not sustainable, with the costs going up. If we did this, what will we accomplish in the end?"

This is going to start a major split in the party. Just what we need to put things back together!

To Be Fair, The Gun May Have Not Been Loaded

Remember, as long as interrogators didn't cause organ failure or death everything's fine.

CIA interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to try to frighten a captured al-Qaeda commander into giving up information, according to a long-concealed agency report due to be made public next week, former and current U.S. officials who have read the document said Friday.

The tactics -- which one official described Friday as a threatened execution -- were used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the CIA's inspector general's report on the agency's interrogation program. Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA's "black site" prisons, ultimately became one of three al-Qaeda chieftains subjected to a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.

The report also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to one terrorism suspect, according to Newsweek magazine, citing two sources for its information. The magazine was the first to publish details from the report, which it did on its Web site late Friday.

A federal judge in New York has ordered a redacted version of the classified IG report to be publicly released Monday, in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Since June, lawyers for the Justice Department and the CIA have been scrutinizing the document to determine how much of it can be made public. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been weighing the report's findings as part of a broader probe into the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods.

Got the Newsweek story right here. The interrogators of al-Nashiri clearly wanted him to think he would be shot, and in the other case, penetrated with a power drill, if he didn't give up the information they sought. The report also describes mock executions, in other words, gunshots going off in the rooms next door, making the prisoners believe they were killing others and they may be next. And look at this, "A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with imminent death."

Well, since when have federal laws amounted to anything in this crazy world? Especially if you can get some bureaucrat to sign off on it:

Three months before Nashiri's capture, the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel -- Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge -- advised the CIA in an August 2002 memo that threats of "imminent death" were not illegal unless they deliberately produced prolonged mental harm. Independent legal experts have called that interpretation too hedged and thus too lax.

The CIA's excuse, of course, is that they didn't engage in any behavior that "went beyond formal guidance." Which isn't true, according to those familiar with the IG document - there's apparently an entire section listing violations by CIA interrogators. But the formal guidance, from hollowed-out souls like Bybee, was itself illegal. And we have documentary evidence of that beyond this IG report. Al-Nashiri was one of the suspects waterboarded by the CIA, as well as one of those who had his interrogation sessions taped. The CIA destroyed the torture tapes, but at a Netroots Nation panel an ACLU lawyer stated that there are written transcripts of these sessions which have been hidden from the public.

Not only will we get a chance to read all the gory details of this next week, but the "Cheney documents" will be on display as well:

At the same time the administration releases the inspector general's report, it is also expected to release other CIA documents that assert the agency collected valuable intelligence through the interrogation program. For months, former vice president Dick Cheney has called for these documents to be released. However, a person familiar with the contents of the documents says that they contain material that both opponents and supporters of Bush administration tactics can use to bolster their case. The Senate Committee on Intelligence is now conducting what is supposed to be a thorough investigation of the CIA's detention-and-interrogation program. The probe is intended not only to document everything that happened but also to assess whether on balance the program produced major breakthroughs or a deluge of false leads.

So we'll get a back and forth about whether torture saves lives, which each side cherry-picking their own set of facts (incidentally, the IG report concludes that the interrogations were "not effective"). But none of this strikes to the heart of the matter - we tortured. Torture is illegal. The ends don't justify the means in any legal sense. And those who authorized, directed and engaged in torture should be prosecuted. In fact, the current Administration violates the law with each day they fail to do so.

New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, a senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told the Huffington Post that he believed that President Obama would be breaking the law if he decided to oppose launching investigation into the authorization of torture.

"If they follow the law they have no choice," Nadler said in an interview this past weekend.

The logic, for Nadler, is straightforward. As a signatory of the convention against torture, and as a result of the anti-torture act of 1996, the United States government is obligated to investigate accusations of torture when they occur in its jurisdiction.

The alternative, Nadler said, "would be violating the law. They would be not upholding the law; they would be violating it."

This will flare up every few weeks until justice is done. And with each passing day, trust in the President slips.

Update On The Fight To Impeach Jay Bybee And Restore Accountability

Yesterday I kicked off an action item, asking people to call and write the members of the House Judiciary Committee or their California members of Congress, informing them that the largest state Democratic Party in the country has voted to support a Congressional inquiry into Jay Bybee and other lawyers for their actions justifying torture, and that they ought to carry this through. Many people have already contacted their members of Congress and you should do the same. One thing that would help is to get them on the record. If you receive any constituent correspondence from your Congressperson about this issue, please forward it to me at david-dot-dayen-at-gmail-dot-com. We need to build a list of who supports accountability and who does not, of who in the California delegation agrees with their own party and who does not. We're starting to get some on-the-record statements, like this nonsense from Illinois Republican Donald Manzullo, who admits that waterboarding doesn't work, who calls it "more torture than not," as if there's a torture continuum of some sort (the fact that CIA interrogators had to add a tracheotomy kit to the proceedings should tell you what they were up to with waterboarding), but who then says that "no laws were broken" (which is patently false), and that, even if there were, nobody should be prosecuted because the whole thing would get "messy."

MANZULLO: Because then you are going to have to go back and you’re going to have to go through every single interrogation and every single memo and the whole purpose of this is to relive again the fact that somebody made the decision to allow this.

We need on-the-record statements like this for every California Democrat, preferably in writing or on tape.

In other news, John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler announced their support to Attorney General Eric Holder for a special counsel to investigate and prosecute anyone involved in the decision-making process in the Bush Administration that led to illegal torture of detainees. That letter is here.

Finally, I will be on Angie Coiro's show on Green960 AM in San Francisco in the 7:00 hour to talk about the CDP resolution, the need for an inquiry and impeachment of Jay Bybee, and the fight to restore the rule of law with respect to torture. Tune in if you can.

...here's that list of members of the House Judiciary Committee to contact:

House Judiciary Committee
John Conyers, Michigan	Howard Berman, California
Rick Boucher, Virginia	Jerrold Nadler, New York
Robert C. Scott, Virginia	Mel Watt, North Carolina
Zoe Lofgren, California	Sheila Jackson-Lee, Texas
Maxine Waters, California	Bill Delahunt, Massachusetts
Robert Wexler, Florida	Steve Cohen, Tennessee
Hank Johnson, Georgia	Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico
Luis Gutierrez, Illinois	Brad Sherman, California
Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin	Charles Gonzalez, Texas
Anthony Weiner, New York	Adam Schiff, California
Linda Sánchez, California	Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Fl
Dan Maffei, New York	Lamar S. Smith, Texas
Jim Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin	Howard Coble, North Carolina
Elton Gallegly, California	Bob Goodlatte, Virginia
Dan Lungren, California	Darrell Issa, California
Randy Forbes, Virginia	Steve King, Iowa
Trent Franks, Arizona	Louie Gohmert, Texas<
Jim Jordan, Ohio	Ted Poe, Texas
Jason Chaffetz, Utah	Tom Rooney, Florida
Gregg Harper, Mississippi

Lend Already

So the Treasury Department provided capital to top US banks with the understanding that they would unfreeze the credit markets by resuming lending. Only they haven't resumed lending. They have been hoarding the money in the hopes of buying up smaller banks and making nice little conglomerates for themselves. This is despite the fact that, um, PRETTY MUCH ALL A BANK IS SUPPOSED TO DO is lend money. But not these guys. They want the cash without the risk.

When the current President recognizes this, you know the greed has reached beyond the point of return.

An impatient White House prodded banks and other financial companies Tuesday to quit hoarding billions of dollars flowing into their vaults from Washington and start making more loans. Wall Street soared nearly 900 points on bargain-hunting and hopes of a hefty interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve [...]

Hoping to thaw the credit freeze that has chilled the economy, the Bush administration sent banks an unmistakable message to put aside fears and open up loan windows for cash-starved businesses and consumers who have pulled back on spending.

"What we're trying to do is get banks to do what they are supposed to do, which is support the system that we have in America. And banks exist to lend money," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. While there are limits to Washington's power to affect banks' behavior, the White House decided it was time to use its bully pulpit.

"They (regulators) will be watching very closely, and they're working with the banks," Perino said.

Of course, they could use more than the bully pulpit. They could have gotten voting shares on the bank boards in the first place and mandated lending. And today, they could say that the FDIC will take over any bank that refuses to lend. There are options beyond asking really sternly.

From the liberal side, Rep. Jerrold Nadler is asking Treasury to do the same thing:

I am concerned about the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008; specifically, your refusal thus far to require banks to actually lend the money that has been given to them by the federal government.

Although I am gratified that the Treasury Department is using the authority in the Act to funnel capital into the banking system, in return for partial ownership, it is mystifying that the Department is apparently doing nothing to ensure that the banks begin to ease the credit crisis by actually lending out the money.

Unfortunately, despite the Treasury's pleas, it appears that, in fact, the banks are hoarding the cash and not releasing the funds into the economy through new loans. There are even reports that they may use the money for bank mergers and acquisitions rather than for loans.

The British government has mandated lending by banks it is capitalizing. The United States should do the same. In order to get this economy moving again, it is essential that you mandate lending requirements in return for the capital the government is providing to the banks. Banks must now begin to make loans to cover the payrolls of businesses large and small, to allow stores to purchase inventory for the upcoming season, and to help Americans buy the cars and homes that fuel our economy.

Without the banking system lending money to Americans to make this economy grow, we will most certainly fall into a deep depression. We can no longer wait and hope for the banks to do the right thing; we must mandate that they lend the money now.

Please let me know what steps the Treasury is now taking to ensure that the banks actually lend the money they are being given by the government.

This needs to happen today and public pressure isn't going to do it. There need to be policy consequences.

Big Picture On Torture

There's quite a remarkable hearing going on today in a House subcommittee. David Addington and John Yoo are voluntarily testifying about the torture practices of the Bush Administration. Thanks to time zones, I didn't get to tune in until the end of the first round of questioning, but I'm getting the feel of it from reports by Spencer Ackerman and at the liveblog on Daily Kos.

It seems like both of them are being evasive but for completely different reasons. Addington ought to be held in contempt of Congress for just plain contemptuousness. As Scott Horton noted on Pacifica's coverage, he clearly believes himself to be smarter than all the Representatives in the room, and he has no problem bullying them around the way he reportedly bullies everyone in the executive branch. He also doesn't mind lying about his role in designing torture tactics after a personal trip to Guantanamo. He essentially said, according to Horton, that the world is very dangerous and the threat is not yet over, implying that Congress had better back down with all the questioning and recognize that absolutely anything can be done in the name of protecting the country. Here's an example:

Addington, naturally, is being legalistic and careful. Can president violate statutes during wartime? "As a general proposition, no, ... but facts matter for a lawyer." Which facts would justify the president violating such a statute? Addington says he won't answer. He's combative, and good. Could self-defense be such a case? "I haven't expressed an opinion... I haven't researched the statute." Says on FISA, "there is a serious constitutional question that Congress might... try to block the president's power."

The President's power, that is, to allow prisoners to be sodomized with a broomstick. The President's power to murder prisoners in US custody. The President's power to hide prisoners from the Red Cross in violation of international law. The President's power, and the power of those around them, to commit war crimes. For your protection. In your name.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Now Yoo, on the other hand, seems afraid for his life and livelihood. He is trying not to answer any question too fully, is stretching out every answer to run out the clock on the questioners, is debating the meaning of words like "implemented," and is consulting with two lawyers on practically every question. He's trying to explain away the Convention Against Torture and generally throw up enough mud to resist any real answer. He's constantly citing Justice Department guidelines that restrict his testimony, too. Over and over he makes the claim that he was simply a lawyer providing legal advice. Of course, at the Nuremberg trials the precedent was set that lawyers whose advice was used to commit war crimes are culpable in those activities. If the policy is to go to the very limit, and the lawyer sets the limit, then he is creating the policy. Yoo can't wiggle off the hook... at least in an international court of law. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 gave some debatable measure of immunity to most of this crowd for their crimes.

The subcommittee is being very thorough and not taking a lot of bullshit. As the facts about physical and psychological abuse slowly come to light, not only at Abu Ghraib but across all US detention sites, and as we learn more about those who directed the policies that led to this torture, abuse and murder, the policymakers have become more unbridled in investigating these crimes. The grilling of William Haynes - almost made a federal judge for life - at the Senate Armed Services Committee last week showed an unusually strident Carl Levin and his compatriots angered by Haynes' activities. After the Supreme Court asserted in Boumediene that prisoners captured at Guantanamo have the ability to challenge their crimes, we've seen the DC appeals court overrule the Administration on their designation of "enemy combatants," where other prisoners have begun to use their habeas rights to challenge their detentions. The Bush-Cheney policies on interrogation and torture have been discredited by the law and by Congress, and the notion of a "few bad apples" has been totally rejected. As Jerrold Nadler said today:

"It does not go too far to say the reputation of our nation as the leading exponent of human rights and human dignity have been besmirched by this administration [...] I know I speak for many of colleagues when I say that the more we find out about what was done and how it was justified, the more appalled we have become."

None of this, of course, matters to Addington and Yoo, who instead value their radical agenda of executive power and aren't too concerned about the courts and the Congress' opinion. In fact, they're already winning this battle where it counts.

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

The findings of the WorldPublicOpinion.org poll put the United States alongside countries like Russia, Egypt and the Ukraine and lagging far behind allies like Great Britain, Spain and France in how its citizens view torture.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believed all torture should be prohibited; the average in all 19 countries polled was 57 percent.

The Jack Bauer-ization of the torture question, the mainstreaming of cruel and unusual punishment, the ability for the right to demagogue this issue for six years, means that so much of this bipartisan condemnation is coming a little too late. It's nice to hear, but Addington's bullying view has ruled the day for so long that I don't know if we can even get back to a sense of normalcy.

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of 200 former government officials, retired generals and religious leaders plans to issue a statement on Wednesday calling for a presidential order to outlaw some interrogation and detention practices used by the Bush administration over the last six years.

The executive order they seek would commit the government to using only interrogation methods that the United States would find acceptable if used by another country against American soldiers or civilians.

It would also outlaw secret detentions, used since 2001 by the Central Intelligence Agency, and prohibit the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture or cruel treatment. The C.I.A. has allowed terrorism suspects to be taken to such countries.

Among the signers is George P. Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. “It’s a good time to step back, take a deep breath and set a standard,” Mr. Shultz said in an interview.

That would have been a good time in October 2001, before war fever made everybody in Washington a little crazy, and the White House was allowed to take the policies they always wanted to implement off the shelf, using the SERE program designed for our soldiers to resist enemy torture and reverse-engineering it to torture others. We knew in 2001 that torture was ineffective, counter-productive, prone to generating bad intelligence, and would create more terrorists than it would stop terrorist attacks. It's not some grand display of honor to speak out about it now. It's actually more like cowardice.

I appreciate the work of this subcommittee, and after this embarrassment of a President's term ends I would hope that there is a grand inquest into these high crimes. But don't bet on it. And the court of public opinion, the space has already been given to the fearmongers and jingoists to connect torture with saving American lives. The truth, of course, is the opposite.

Don't Mourn, Nothing Died Yet

I know Matt Stoller wants to believe the worst about the coming debate on the FISA bill, but you'd think he'd at least notice that the House Judiciary Committee just rejected retroactive immunity for telecom companies who participated in illegal warrantless surveillance, by a 21-14 vote.

Critics say the program was illegal. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group, sued telephone company AT&T Inc last year and accused it of illegally allowing the government to monitor phone calls and e-mails.

The White House maintains Bush acted within his authority in ordering the program.

Bush said the new bill "must grant liability protection to companies who are facing multibillion dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend our nation following the 9/11 attacks."

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, said the liability issue should be a court matter. "Let the courts decide whether these companies, or some of them, were acting patriotically with nobility and legally, or if they were breaking the law."

Bush can howl all he wants, but Nadler is right. The hope here is that he gets to make such a case in conference committee and fight the potential Senate inclusion of immunity. Steny Hoyer is a snake and needs to be watched, but stalwarts like John Conyers are fighting the good fight on this bill.

To those who would claim that this bill is weak on terrorism, I would say that protecting the civil rights and liberties of Americans does not show our weakness, but our strength. What the terrorists fear most is our constitution and our values, and that is what this bill protects.

To those who say that the bill is too weak on civil liberties, I say that if you trust an independent court and have faith in congressional oversight, those liberties will not be jeopardized. That is the premise our democracy was founded on, and that is exactly what this bill does.

I am concerned, along with the ACLU, about these "basket warrants" that aren't directed at anybody, which would seem to open the door to all kinds of abuse. But there is oversight over them, in the form of a quadrennial review.

Republicans are committed to stringing this out until the day before the August bill expires, and then playing the fear card to force the Democrats into submission. That may work, but the best defense would be a good offense, and the Progressive Caucus is mulling that one over.

According to House Dem aides, House liberals appear to be leaning in the direction of supporting the legislation -- though nothing is at all certain. Earlier today, an aide says, an internal count of House members showed very strong opposition among liberals to the bill unveiled today. But later in the day, some liberals appeared to be privately concluding that many of their demands -- which they unveiled amid last week's revolt in hopes of influencing the process -- had been met, this aide says.

Indeed, one key House liberal who'd taken a stand against earlier manifestations of the measure -- Jerrold Nadler -- announced today that he would support the bill. In a statement his office claimed the bill "reinforces the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in regards to electronic surveillance programs," and "requires that FISA warrants are required when targeting domestic communications," though it doesn't require them for foreign ones.

Still, things are in flux, and the aide cautions that a key sticking point for liberals remains -- the measure's embrace of "basket" wiretapping. House liberals are meeting behind closed doors as we speak to debate what their stance should be on the legislation. The House liberals' efforts are being coordinated by Bill Goold, an aide to Rep. Lynne Woolsey (D-CA), one of the key House libs behind last week's mini-revolt.

I'm hoping for some amendments on the basket warrants issue. At issue also is the privacy of Americans making foreign communications. But on balance, I've yet to see evidence that this is a craven sellout. We should be encouraging it in the right direction, not lamenting a capitulation before one exists.

UPDATE: Jerrold Nadler's full comments from the Judiciary Committee.

Let's Play Hardball

Dick Durbin's Senate Committee refuses to fund Fourthbranch's office until he complies with the rules of the executive branch.

The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act is going to the floor of the Senate with 25 cosponsors.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the latest evidence of him lying to Congress.

The House will vote on an Iraq bill calling for redeployment within 120 days of passage.

I think they got the message. We'll see a stronger Democratic Party for the rest of this Presidency.