The subject of that first post was Frank Gaffney’s daffy take on the . . . → Read More: Happy anniversary to me: BTC News is 7 years old]]> Actually a week or two more than 7 years, because I forgot about it. I published the first of 1,923 posts (quite a few written by others who were gracious enough to help me out) on October 22 of 2003.

The subject of that first post was Frank Gaffney’s daffy take on the Iraq Survey Group’s hapless search for huge stores of unconventional weapons that were bound to turn up aaaaaaaaaaaaany minute now. It was a pretty good effort for an inaugural one, if I do say.

I don’t know what happened to Frank Gaffney. At the time he was a popular lunatic voice. And remember when Andrew Sullivan was among the hyper-articulate morons defending the invasion with hallucinogenic koans? He’s in the post too.

Ah, good times. I think maybe two people saw that one. Things picked up pretty smartly after that. In 2005-2006, a lot of people stopped in, at least by my standards—almost 2 million visitors in those two years. All things pass. Oh well.

I’m pretty happy with what I’ve done with the place. I’ve done some good writing, as have my friends who in addition to being friends and good writers pretty much kept things going when I was homeless or otherwise indisposed.

What I’m most proud of is that BTC was the first blog to have a semi-regular White House correspondent who isn’t a male prostitute (literally, not like the institutional press honchos). Eric Brewer did phenomenal things. He’s a really good writer and was bold enough to go into the White House press room in 2005, not a hospitable environment for administration critics or independent correspondents, and ask tough questions that the sycophants in the front row missed.

You’ll find his work here.

In other news: It took me years to learn how to beg—”Just think of it as your salary!” Yeah, right.—and now I’m sort of out of practice. I have been continually astonished by the generosity of so many people I don’t know and probably won’t ever meet. And of course by that of people whom I do know, some of whom I have met and aren’t related to me. Montfort and Zinya and JackD and others pretty much kept me alive there for a while, along with the aforementioned relatives.

The primary hard drive on my sporty little computer is failing. No Blue Screen of Death: it just hangs. I do almost daily checkups on the poor thing, and watch as the bad sectors metastasize despite my attempts to isolate them from the healthy tissue. And Macs break too, so don’t give me any shit about that. Anyway, if either of the readers who aren’t related to me have a few spare dollars to help out with the medical expenses and funeral costs, I’ll be profoundly grateful if you’ll drop it in the paypal kitty over there.

First, it claimed that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would result in the . . . → Read More: Obama’s fraudulent “sovereign immunity” legal argument]]> On April 3, late on a Friday afternoon, the Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the National Security Administration for unlawfully spying on Americans’ telephone records. In its brief, the Justice Department made two arguments:

First, it claimed that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would result in the disclosure of “state secrets.” This argument was disappointing, although not surprising. The Obama Justice Department had made that claim once before back in February, in response to a suit brought by victims of extraordinary rendition. In doing so, the Obama team was following the lead of the Bush administration, which made so many similar claims that candidate Obama criticized them as evidence of excessive government secrecy.

But its second argument was surprising: the Obama Justice Department argued that the government has “sovereign immunity” when it comes to domestic spying. That’s right, sovereign. Like the guy our founding fathers rebelled against for unreasonable searches and seizure of Americans’ property. In essence, the Justice Department was saying that Americans have no right to sue the government for alleged illegal surveillance.

Huh? What about the Fourth Amendment?

Realizing that the Obama honeymoon was definitely over, I went down to the Brady Briefing Room last Thursday to get some answers. This was my exchange with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs:

ME: Last Friday, the Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege in asking a judge to dismiss a civil suit filed against the National Security Administration regarding its domestic surveillance program. And in its brief, the Justice Department argued that Americans have no right to sue the government for alleged illegal surveillance.

Does the President support the Justice Department’s positions in that case?

MR. GIBBS: Yes, absolutely. It’s the — absolutely does. Obviously, these are programs that have been debated and discussed, but the President does support that viewpoint.

ME: Before he was elected, the President said that the Bush administration had abused the state secrets privilege. Has he changed his mind?

MR. GIBBS: No. I mean, obviously, we’re dealing with some suits, and the President will — and the Justice Department will make determinations based on protecting our national security.

Q So he still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege?

MR. GIBBS: Yes.

The state secrets issue is important, but what’s absolutely mind-blowing here is that, according to Mr. Gibbs, President Obama believes that citizens whose 4th amendment rights have been violated by the government have no legal recourse.

Which is completely wrong, of course.

As George Washington School of Law Professor Orin Kerr pointed out recently at the Volokh Conspiracy, section 2712 of chapter 121 of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 is entitled “Civil actions against the United States.” It states that:

Any person who is aggrieved by any willful violation of this chapter or of chapter 119 of this title…may commence an action in United States District Court against the United States to recover money damages.

It can’t get any clearer than that.

The Justice Department’s completely erroneous argument rests on a quotation taken out of context. The crux of their argument is this:

In the Wiretap Act and ECPA, Congress expressly preserved sovereign immunity against claims for damages and equitable relief, permitting such claims against only a “person or entity, other than the United States.” See 18 U.S.C. § 2520; 18 U.S.C. § 2707.

But if you read section 2520 (in chapter 119) and section 2707 (in chapter 121), it is readily apparent that the phrase “other than the United States” is there only because those sections specify penalties for when the law is violated by someone other than the United States (e.g., a state or local government). Section 2712, on the other hand, specifies penalties for violations of the law by the United States. The penalties are different in the two situations. And section 2712 explicitly applies to both chapters of the ECPA (the ECPA has two parts: chapters 119 and 121 of U.S. Code 18).

Hey Professor Obama. Somebody needs to go back to law school.

[Note: The preceding is the original, "raw" story I wrote and submitted last Thursday to Raw Story, who rewrote it and published it last Friday as White House: Obama 'absolutely' stands behind effort to throw out warrantless wiretapping suit.]

The slain man, Ali Abdul Hussein al-Maliki, was described . . . → Read More: Playing hardball in Iraq: did Bush throw Maliki a brushback pitch?]]> On Monday at the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino declined to answer when I asked her whether the White House would apologize for last Friday’s raid by U.S. forces in Iraq that reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The slain man, Ali Abdul Hussein al-Maliki, was described as the prime minister’s cousin in recent reports by McClatchy and the Washington Post. According to McClatchy, at the time of his death, the man was working as a security guard in a villa owned by the prime minister’s sister in Janaja, a town in Karbala Province. Responsibility for security in Karbala Province was supposedly handed over to the Iraqi government in October 2007, but Iraqi officials have claimed that last Friday’s raid was conducted without their knowledge or approval.

Here is my exchange with Ms. Perino:

Q U.S. forces in Iraq reportedly killed a relative of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during a raid last Friday on a villa belonging to the Prime Minister’s sister. The villa is in Karbala province, which is supposedly under full Iraqi control, and Iraqi officials said they were not informed about the raid in advance. Was that raid a mistake, and will you issue an apology?

MS. PERINO: I think you’ll need to call MNFI [Multi-National Force, Iraq]. I don’t have any information on that.

According to McClatchy, the U.S. military released a statement on Sunday that confirmed that coalition forces had shot and killed a man during what it described as an operation targeting “special groups” (a term it uses for Iranian-backed militant cells), and that the coalition forces learned only later that the man was a security guard. The U.S. statement continued: “Coalition forces deeply regret the loss of life and are conducting an investigation.”

The June 27 raid occurred at a sensitive point in negotiations of a Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq that will define the terms under which U.S. forces will operate in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires in December 2008. Those negotiations, which began last January, have reportedly been deadlocked over disagreements concerning the extent of Iraqi sovereignty. Two weeks prior to the raid, on June 13, Prime Minister Maliki said:

“We have reached an impasse because when we opened these negotiations we did not realize that the US demands would so deeply affect Iraqi sovereignty, and this is something we can never accept. We cannot allow US forces to have the right to jail Iraqis or assume, alone, the responsibility of fighting against terrorism.”

That the U.S. would then proceed to unilaterally conduct a raid aimed at the prime minister’s family doesn’t bode well for the success of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiations. And neither does the fact that the White House won’t apologize.