We Read Eschaton For You

Atrios links to an excellent deconstruction by Glenn Greenwald of some conservatarian legal "analysis" currently getting play among the dumber and dumberer wings of the wingnutosphere.

Sez Greenwald...

Defenders of the Bush Administration are resorting to outright distortions and deliberate falsehoods about the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA) in order to argue that the Administration's warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens complies with the mandates of that statute. To do so, they are simply lying -- and that term is used advisedly -- about what FISA says by misquoting the statute in order to make it appear that the Administration’s clearly illegal behavior conforms to the statute.

I recommend reading the whole thing. It's short and it lays out in depressing detail how this lie got planted, how it grew, and how it continues to be defended.

Here at MojoWire, we've seen all this before. We can tell you what will happen next.

These false talking points will be picked up by some chowderhead with an SPJ membership, carried in the Wall Street Journal or repeated on some other "respectable" top-down media network. Next thing you know, people like us will have our hands full debunking a lie rather than actually advancing a narrative about how the Bush Administration never needed to violate the FISA and refuses to explain why the President's order to violate the FISA was necessary.

If anybody tries to tell you that what President Bush did was not a violation of the FISA, don't waste any time on them. Send them straight to that Glenn Greenwald piece. You shouldn't have to put up with this bullshit. (And, yes— I use the word "bullshit" with great care.)