Glenn Greenwald, kos, Matt Stoller, and I don't know who else have done an admirable job of skewering Joe Klein and the subsequent "correction."
Rush Holt, one of the RESTORE Act's authors, has a piece up at HuffPo:
In his original column, Mr. Klein incorrectly wrote, "Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that - Limbaugh is salivating - would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only." It contains no such provision.
Rep. Holt gives a nice synopsis:
Let me repeat: our bill gives the intelligence community the tools and flexibility it needs to listen to the conversations between those who wish to do us harm. This bill provides exactly what the Director of National Intelligence asked for earlier this year: it explicitly states that no court order is required to listen to the conversations of foreigners that happen to pass through the U.S. telecommunications system. It does not grant Constitutional rights to foreign terrorists.
What we have not agreed to do is give this or any other President a permanent blank check to spy on you, your family, the members of your congregation, or any other American citizen without any judicial oversight - a position shared by an overwhelming majority of Americans according to the latest public opinion surveys on the topic.
Nothing we don't know, but it's good to hear that a respected legislator is not taking Klein's nonsense either. Let Holt know you appreciate him turn the tide against both power grabs in the name of fighting terrorism, and propaganda stenography in the place of journalism.