I write this for posterity on All Hackett's Day, as it will certainly escape notice.
Here is the latest on the continuing adventures of IOKIYAR (It's OK If You Are Republican):
From Anonymous Liberal, a great underrated blogger, on National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy:
On November 13, 2003, McCarthy had the following to say about FISA in an article he wrote for the National Review:
[I]n 1978, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to clarify the legitimate parameters of such eavesdropping. FISA permits the government to bring information - often classified - to a special federal FISA court, which may then authorize wiretaps for counterintelligence purposes, provided there is probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power. (There is a respectable separation-of-powers argument to be made that Congress had no business giving federal courts a check on the executive branch's conduct of foreign counterintelligence, but the after-clap of the Nixon excesses was no time to make it, and at this point, after a quarter century, FISA is now settled law.)
. . . On January 23, 2006, McCarthy again wrote about FISA on the pages of the National Review. Interestingly, however, his legal opinion seemed to have changed:
Congress had placed itself above the law by ignoring the Constitution's separation of powers. By attempting through legislation to dilute the executive's constitutional power. Congress did so again with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 statute which sought to make judicial approval, on a legal standard of probable
cause, a prerequisite to national-security eavesdropping (and, now, searches). FISA may not be unconstitutional in all its particulars (although it may be - and it certainly needs overhauling if it is to avoid laughingstock status, pitted against 21st-century enemies versed in 21st-century technology). But to the extent FISA limits the power of the
commander-in-chief to conduct warfare, to the extent it would transfer to judges the decision whether an essential incident of warfare may be used, it is no more constitutional - or rational - than if it had purported to put the courts in charge of military target selection, or other battlefield judgments.
What on earth could have happened between November 2003 and January 2006?
What on earth indeed.
More IOKIYAR adventures on the flip.
On John "the President is King" Yoo,
Orin Kerr finds this bit:
Guess Who Wrote This, and About What President:
Here is the quote:
President __ exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height -- in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, President __ has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.
Who do you think wrote the passage above, and who was the President?
Yes, it was John Yoo on Bill Clinton. IOKIYAR really enjoyed that bald faced adventure.
Finally, Glenn Greenwald called for some consistency from the Instahack, who last year attacked Dems for not criticizing Ward Churchill:
Following in the footsteps of other leading Right Wing blogs Powerline and Hugh Hewitt, now Instapundit joins in the practice of making up smears against Democrats and the "Left":
A while back, some people were upset that I identified Ward Churchill with the current state of the Left. But the Left certainly seems to be identifying with Ward Churchill.
Glenn asks the Hack if what is good enough for Churchill is good enough for Coulter. And the Hack takes umbrage:
Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds accuses me today of "degrad(ing) the blogosphere" because I wrote a post at Crooks & Liars observing that Reynolds had done nothing to denounce the violence-advocating and epithet-spewing remarks of Ann Coulter at last week's highly prestigious Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and I encouraged C&L readers to e-mail Reynolds and ask why this was. As I documented here, the CPAC is one of the most important Republican events of the year, and its invited speakers along with Coulter included Dick Cheney, Ken Mehlman, Bill Frist, Newt Gingrich and Reynolds himself.
As I explained in the C&L post, my belief that Reynolds has an obligation to either denounce or defend Coulter's comments is largely based on the fact that Reynolds routinely lectures Democrats on what he claims is their obligation to denounce "extremists on the Left" - even when the extremists in question are totally fringe and inconsequential figures who have nothing to do with Democrats, and - unlike Coulter here - don't have huge throngs of followers and aren't invited to be the featured speaker at the most important political events of the year. I specifically cited this post from Reynolds self-righteously taking Democrats to task for their grave moral failure in remaining silent about that oh-so-significant, long-standing icon of the Democratic Party, Ward Churchill.
Yes, IOKIYAR has a very wild ride this week.