• January 31, 2006 | 12:40 p.m. ET

Setting the stage for State of the Union (David Shuster)

David Shuster MSNBC Correspondent • Profile

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The more you pound a particular issue or particular phrase, that‘s the way you frame the national agenda. 

We‘re going to be looking at a couple keys tonight.  We‘re told the president will focus on health care, energy, Iran.  What‘s so interesting about tracking the number of times the president refers to Iran is when you look at the 2005 State of the Union, the president only mentioned Iran three times.  He talked about Social Security 18 times which was his big domestic agenda. 

This year, being the big agenda, health care, how many times does he talk about health care and how many times does he not talk about Social Security.  That will be fascinating. 

Think about it, the number of times the president can say we need to stay in Iraq because it‘s necessary, we need to keep troops there because it‘s necessary.   He mentioned necessary eight times in the press conference last week.  When the people hear the president say something is necessary, it becomes difficult to argue against. 

Likewise, the president has an opportunity this time in the State of the Union speech to hit themes over and over.  We‘ll be counting how many times he hits the themes.  Remember there won‘t be much of an opposition except in the Democratic response.

It‘s not only going to be was the president factually accurate, and you think the White House is going to be far more careful this time, but when he talks about the Iran, what are the main themes and how often does he repeat those themes?  Does he talk about Iran being a nuclear threat, having weapons we don‘t want them to have, or does he mention Iran in the context of democracy, liberty, three people having more of a vote as far as reformist issues. 

The way he frames that and the number of times he repeats that I think is going to be very telling and our viewers should find very telling.  Was the speech effective?  How many people thought the speech did what it was supposed to do? 

We'll be all over this story both on-air and on-line.  Tonight in Hardball's special State of the Union coverage, we'll go to the Capitol Hill hot spot where Senators, Congressmen, celebrities and powerbrokers gather, the Bistro Bis restaurant.  As legendary House Speaker Tip O'Neill put it, "here in Washington, we're all friends after six o'clock."  We'll see if that still holds, when we bring you live reports on MSNBC TV from Bistro Bis for reaction to the President's State of the Union address. 

I, along with my other Hardblogger All-Stars, will also keep you up-to-date all night right here. 

We'll see you on-line and on-air.

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• January 26, 2006 | 2:50 p.m. ET

Can Hillary win in 2008?  (Chris Matthews)

Chris Matthews vlogs about what recent polls may indicate about Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the White House in '08.

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• January 25, 2006 | 12: 45 p.m. ET

'You get the Democracy you deserve'  (Craig Crawford)

Craig Crawford

If our Democracy really works, Roe v. Wade should be reversed. That’s what the politics of the past couple decades demand, and Samuel Alito seems to be right Supreme Court pick to help do it.

Republicans control the House, Senate and White House for lots of reasons, and promising voters to produce a pro-life Supreme Court ranks high on the list. Alito said nothing in his Judiciary Committee hearing to suggest that as a justice he would veer from his past stands against abortion rights. Most significantly, he refused to clearly say Roe is “settled law,” a legal code phrase that even President Bush’s first pick, John Roberts, agreed to.

While plenty of pro-choice voters backed the President and his party, there is no ambiguity about the GOP’s pro-life position. It’s been in their national platform since Reagan days. That’s why elections matter. As the saying goes, “You get the Democracy you deserve.”

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• January 23, 2006 | 12:27 p.m. ET

Bin Laden emerges from obscurity  (Evan Kohlmann)

Evan Kohlmann MSNBC Terrorism Analyst

After over a year of deafening silence, Al-Qaeda’s top commander Osama Bin Laden has once again emerged from obscurity with a new audio recording broadcast on Al-Jazeera, boasting of Al-Qaeda’s role in recent terrorist bombings in Europe and promising to carry out similar operations in the United States in the coming months.  Though Bin Laden professed to be speaking directly to the American people, it seems more likely that this latest message was directed primarily towards his supporters in the Muslim world.  If this is the case, there is really no need to search for hidden codes or secret messages—the meaning is quite apparent.  Indeed, while Al-Qaeda continues to prosper in certain areas of the Middle East and South Asia, Osama Bin Laden’s personal image has begun to wane slightly as other extremist leaders vying for the throne have achieved equal, if not greater infamy.  In particular, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has presented an unusual dark horse challenge to Bin Laden’s leadership position at the top of Al-Qaeda.  In contrast to Bin Laden, Zarqawi is known for releasing a steady stream of communiqués and audio recordings, keeping in regular contact with his constituents.  It took nearly 18 consecutive months of bloody ambushes and suicide bombings masterminded by Zarqawi to convince Bin Laden to grudgingly unify ranks with him. 

By hiding in the shadows for too long, Bin Laden risks allowing younger and more ruthless competitors like Zarqawi to change the very momentum and direction of Al-Qaeda—similar to the way that a young, fanatical Bin Laden once seized the reigns of the organization from its original founder, Shaykh Abdullah Azzam.  As questions mounted around the world over whether Bin Laden was dead or alive—and as a steady stream of top associates like Abu Faraj al-Liby and Abu Hamza Rabia were reported captured and killed—it became necessary for Bin Laden to personally reassure his stalwart followers that he still “signs the checks” and that Al-Qaeda continues to progress forward in orchestrating terrorist plots inside the continental United States.  Perhaps there is a small minority in the Western world who endorse negotiating with terrorists and they will certainly point to Bin Laden’s farcical suggestion of a “truce” to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan as proof that we should immediately withdraw our military forces there.  Those naïve enough to believe Bin Laden in this regard should be reminded that in April 2004, when Bin Laden issued an audio recording offering the same “truce” to Europe, his organization was simultaneously planning deadly suicide bombing attacks in London and elsewhere.  Bin Laden’s latest audio recording should serve as a warning of how politically and technologically sophisticated Al-Qaeda remains—an organization that is still quite capable of striking devastating blows on its adversaries, including the United States.

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• January 19, 2006 | 10:55 a.m. ET

Proposed Lobbying Reforms Don’t Change the Basic Problem (Hilary Rosen)

Hilary Rosen

How strange to be a former lobbyist sitting back watching the hand wringing debate over lobbying reforms and ethics.  To date nothing I’ve seen from Capitol Hill makes sense to me and the media is too consumed with ethics and revelation to talk about the real problem. 

Damn straight when I gave a $1,000 or $2,000 to a lawmaker I wanted him to listen to my business proposition.  And when I helped organized an event that raised $50,000 or $100,000 you bet I expected their vote.  Why else do it?  Now you can argue that the Member of Congress already took that position and my colleagues and I were just showing our support for their position.  But how can the public really be sure of that?   

The proposed reforms that everyone is talking about limit relationships between lobbyists and lawmakers – no trips, no lunches, no ball games, etc.  EXCEPT FOR ONE THING!  It turns out that when you limit access to lawmakers for all of these things, the only time a lobbyist can talk to a lawmaker is at fundraisers.  Any kind of fundraiser by the way.

A lobbyist friend told me yesterday that enacting these reforms is like creating a “restraint of trade” on behalf of current lobbyists.  Only those who already know members of Congress are sure to succeed.  Anyone else coming in - forget it, no new relationships.  The old school will be raking it in.

Members of Congress are CONSUMED with raising money for their re-elections.  It has become a burden.  And no matter how cavalier they are about it in public, their hand wringing in private is certain.   And anyone, including lobbyists, who lessen that anxiety, is considered a better friend than those that don’t.  It is just a fact.  No lobbying reforms will change that fact.

Corruption is sometimes obvious, like with Jack Abramoff, but just as often in Washington it is a subtle thing that happens to decent people. 

The ONLY answer to all of this is public financing of elections.  Then lobbying becomes genuine “education” and relationships are built on respect and constituent interest.  It seems so obvious.

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• January 17, 2006 | 1:45 p.m. ET

Martin Luther King's legacy in the voting booth (Chris Matthews)

FREE VIDEO Chris Matthews' Vlog Chris Matthews discusses how Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy has - and has not - impacted how people vote. MSNBC

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• January 13, 2006 | 5:00 p.m. ET

Iran: What are our military options?  (Lt. Colonel Rick Francona)

Lt. Colonel Rick Francona MSNBC Military Analyst

Iran's recent restart of its uranium enrichment program again raises the specter of military action, be it American, Israeli, combined American-Israeli, or in the abstract, European. Can a military operation be successful, and who has the capability to execute it? Good questions. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the option of military action has been selected.

First, it is important to define the objective of any military action. That will determine what and how military assets are used. I think it is a fair assumption that no one is seriously considering the actual invasion of Iran to remove the present regime. It is also safe to assume that no one is contemplating the use of large conventional ground force formations to defeat the Iranian military. The goal of this operation would be to cripple Iran's suspected nascent nuclear weapons program. The most viable option is the use of aerial-delivered munitions and possibly the introduction of special operations forces.

Assuming that the goal is to cripple the Iranian nuclear program, I think that will be difficult - not impossible, but certainly difficult. The Iranians are a smart and resourceful people. Like the rest of the world, they saw what the Israeli Air Force did to Iraq's French-supplied Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad at At-Tuwaythah in June 1981. In one air raid, the Israelis virtually brought the Iraqi nuclear program to a halt. It would have taken years for the Iraqis to reconstitute this critical element of their nuclear weapons effort.

Unlike the Iranians, the Iraqis had placed their eggs in one basket - the core part of the Iraqi program was located in one place, above ground, in a lightly defended area. Conversely, the Iranians have dispersed their program facilities over much of the country, mostly underground or least somewhat buried. Many of the facilities are protected by recently-acquired state-of-the-art Russian air defense systems, or at the least, aging Shah-era (but still capable) American-supplied air defense systems.

An air attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would have to strike multiple hardened or semi-hardened targets over a widespread area. Even if we know where the facilities are, getting them all will be difficult. Could we or the Israelis do it? The Israelis have the talent and I am sure at least the same intelligence we have. Of course, in the post Iraq-WMD (weapons of mass destruction) era, that raises the question: is the intelligence accurate?

As a Middle East specialist/intelligence officer, I focused on this area for almost three decades. I am fairly confident that we have adequate imagery intelligence on the facilities we know about. I can't really speak to the signals intelligence - I have been out of that business too long. As for the human intelligence, unless things have changed since I retired, Iran remains one of the most difficult targets, even tougher than the Iraqi target.

For argument's sake, let's assume the intelligence is accurate. How would we cripple the Iranian program most effectively? The usual first answers are "the Israelis will do it" or "the U.S. military would do it, if they were not already fully engaged fighting counterinsurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan."

Let's look at the Israeli options. The option is not a good one. I doubt the Israeli Air Force can project enough power that far from home base. They can certainly project limited power that far (as evidenced by their strike on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis in 1985) or massive power to neighboring countries, but Iran is probably two countries too far for this size of an operation. Israel's best (and only realistic) option is get overflight permission from Turkey, a country with whom they have a long-standing defense cooperation agreement. Given Turkish sensitivity to Iranian, Arab and other Muslim public opinion, I doubt that Turkey would cooperate in this instance. If, and I stress the word, Israel gets overflight permission from Ankara, the complexity of this type of operation will require concentration on limited targets, choosing the most critical piece of the Iranian program and destroying that. It is not a good option, but the leaders in Tel Aviv may regard the Iranian program as a serious enough threat to try it anyway.

As for American capabilities, we come back to the common argument that the U.S. military is already fully engaged, fighting counterinsurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan. On the surface this may be true, but if you consider the different resources of the American armed forces, you will find that the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps are bearing the brunt of the commitment to operations in those two theaters. The two services that that will be the main force behind any operations against Iran, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy, currently are relatively unencumbered and capable of offensive operations on the scale required.

Again, if the intelligence is accurate, the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy have the means to cripple the Iranian program if ordered to do so. Let's examine some of the possibilities. The USAF could use Iraqi air bases, but I doubt we would get permission from the Iraqi government - the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi government is not inclined to antagonize Shi'a Iran. Using air bases in any of the Gulf countries or the central Asian republics (that have supported U.S. operations in Afghanistan) is equally implausible. While these are definite limitations, they are not show-stoppers. Over the years, the Air Force and Navy have developed a family of weapons that do not rely on host nations for support. The Air Force's long-range air launched cruise missiles can be fired from aircraft flying from the United States. The Navy can fire sea launched Tomahawks from international waters. Can these stand-off weapons deliver the punch needed? Probably not alone. However, when combined with stealth-capable bombers delivering precision guided munitions against a series of targets across Iran, the objective of the operation can be achieved. Remember - we are not trying to topple the regime in Tehran, merely cripple its nuclear program. We are not trying to defeat them - we are trying to modify their behavior.

In the best of all worlds, it will not come to this. However, I am certain that somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon, just this kind of planning is already taking place - just in case.

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• January 13, 2006 |  10:30 a.m. ET

Alito: Calm and measured tones (Ben Ginsberg)

Courtesy Ben Ginsberg

Watching the hearings, I couldn’t help but be struck by the contrast between the calm and measured tones of Judge Alito and the, um, not so calm and measured tones of some Democratic Senators.  The Democrats’ approach to the nomination hearings became defined Wednesday by Senator Kennedy’s guilt-by-association questioning and Senator Biden’s endless elocution.  Judge Alito never took the bait.

While those in Washington not personally obsessed with the lobbying scandal paid rapt attention to the hearings, it’s hard to imagine that: (1) many people outside Washington watched for a long time or (2) when they did, felt any warmer and fuzzier about their nation’s Capital.  Here, after all, was an obviously brilliant jurist with a nice family getting hammered for listing on a 20-year-old job application an organization of which he now has no recollection and many of whose positions he repudiated; for an obscure recusal issue involving a mutual fund investment that a series of legal ethics experts found not germane, and for not committing to a liberal Democratic litmus test to secure those Senators’ votes for his confirmation.

It’s enough, I suspect, to make even partisan Democrats who know the man take umbrage.  Look for some of them to want to set the record straight. 

As for the hearings themselves, it’s hard to see how the Democrats succeeded in reliving their judicial Woodstock otherwise known as the Bork hearings.  No issues that would allow them to rationalize the demands of their special interest groups to obfuscate have yet arisen.  While Democratic Senators may stall to appease those special interest groups, it doesn’t look like Samuel Alito’s elevation to the United States Supreme Court is in doubt.

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• January 12, 2006 |  10:15 a.m. ET

And the winner is - Alito (Pat Buchanan)

Pat Buchanan MSNBC Contributor • Profile

After a full day of interrogation by Senate Judiciary, it’s a good bet Sam Alito will be confirmed -- but a better bet Joe Biden is never going to be president.

Lord Almighty, can no one shut this man down?  Friends don’t let friends go on like this.  Biden took thirty minutes to throw five pitches, averaging a six-minute wind-up, then saw Alito slap every one through the infield for a base hit.  Send this boy to the showers and give his time to Schumer.

As of mid-day in the third day of hearings, the winners are Alito, the conservatives who derailed Harriet Miers, and the President who took his rout on Miers like a man and sent back a judge who is everything a Supreme Court nominee should be: a person of character, deep knowledge and judicial temperament whose polestar is the Constitution and now some mushy liberal concept what our world ought to look like.

With Roberts as Chief Justice, Scalia and Thomas likely to be around a decade or more, and the 55-year-old Alito joining them, as Court liberals getting long in the tooth, it looks like the coming Catholic and conservative hour on the Supreme Court.  Aquinas and Natural Law are in; the “living Constitution” of Warren, Brennan, Douglas and Marshall is yesterday.

And though Alito dissented from Bob Bork and said he has an “open mind” on Roe v Wade, he signaled what may be coming when he declared that Roe is not some “super-duper precedent” or “inexorable command.” 

Roe could go, and Schumer & Co. know it, but can do nothing about it.  Unless Democrats have a hole card no one knows about, George W. Bush is one justice away from succeeding where Nixon, Ford, his father and even Ronald Reagan all failed -- in recapturing the United States for constitutionalism for the first time since Earl Warren raised his hand to take the oath and began violating it by imposing a social revolution from above that ignited the conservative backlash that endures to this day.

The dismal performance of Judiciary Committee Democrats may be due not just to their predilection for preening and pontificating, but to the pathetic case they have been given to make against the judge.

Alito only joined Concerned Alumni of Princeton after the ROTC building was firebombed and his unit was booted off campus by snotty students and the customarily cowardly Ivy League administrators.  CAP did not object to blacks on campus, but to affirmative action.  As for “Machine-Gun Sam’s” overturning of a ban on buying automatic weapons, Judge Alito only ruled that the law had been mistakenly grounded in the wrong constitutional principle, as he pointed to the purblind legislators how it might more correctly be done.

As for “strip searches” of girls, let me suggest the Democrats might want to give those questions to someone other than Teddy.  

Democrats are said to be mulling over a filibuster.  A word of advice to my liberal brethren.  Unless you have every Democrat lined up behind you, and six solid Republicans, don’t go there. 

For among the Republican Gang of Seven who agreed not to oppose a filibuster on “extraordinary” grounds are Mike DeWine who seems just wild about Sam and Lindsay Graham who is said to have taken part in the “murder boards.”  As for McCain, do any Democrats really think someone who is looking at the GOP nomination in 2008 is going to support a Harry, Hillary, Teddy and Chuck filibuster to kill the nomination of Sam Alito.

Prediction: If Democrats filibuster, they will get rolled, they will get Alito and they will be stripped of the filibuster weapon forever, which they are going to need when Michael Luttig and Edith Jones arrive for their confirmation cross-examination -- by Joe Biden.  O happy day!

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• January 11, 2006 |  2:13 p.m. ET

American at odds with news out of D.C.  (Chris Matthews)

Check out Chris's lastest vlog.

FREE VIDEO Chris Matthews Vlog Chris Matthews vlogs about how the Amercian people seem to be at odds with the recent headlines out of Washington D.C. MSNBC

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• January 10, 2006 |  4:30 p.m. ET

Alito hearings question morals of nominee  (Bob Shrum)

Bob Shrum

The first day of the Alito hearings were a fascinating exercise in Kabuki theater. Judge Alito sat impassively as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee spoke at him and the cameras, laying the groundwork for the questions to come in subsequent days. Yet everybody realizes that Alito will do his best not to answer the questions that actually matter, including the Senators who promised to ask them. Instead we’ll hear more bromides, as we did when he finally spoke briefly and irrelevantly, about how he played baseball in high school. In any event, why should anyone assume that Alito’s answers are worth the air they’re spoken on? To extricate himself from the embarrassing memo he wrote importuning the Reagan Administration for a promotion—a memo in which, for example, Alito Borked himself by attacking the Supreme Court ruling that elections should be decided by one person, one vote—we’re now told to disregard  his statements because the memo was just a “job application.” Maybe that’s a fitting rationalization from a Republican Party whose poster-boy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, lied on a multi-million dollar loan application, but it raises a fundamental doubt about these hearings. In effect, the hearings are a job application too – and if we are supposed to assume that Alito’s words in 1985 were unreliable, why should we trust what he says now?

So as the Kabuki theater continues, with senators congratulating Alito before trying to pose the question that may nudge him onto the road to defeat, we ought to face the fact that we know more about what Alito will do on the court than we have known about any other first-time Supreme Court nominee since Thurgood Marshall, whose record was unequivocally progressive and who never attempted to hide it. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, the moderate sounding chairman of the Judiciary Committee who always ends up voting with Bush, brought the play-acting to a high (or low) point when he said there were Alito decisions that made the judge look like a flaming liberal.  Specter didn’t cite any in his opening statement; if he searches some out, they’ll be few and far between; and seeing them through Specter’s spectacles would require labored explanation and the suspension of common sense. The problem with Alito isn’t that he isn’t a liberal; Sandra Day O’Connor, the justice he hopes to replace, isn’t one either. The problem is that Sam Alito is a very bright ideologue who’s out of the mainstream, and who was picked by the president precisely because he could pass muster with the neo-cons and far right forces that found Harriet Miers insufficiently and unreliably reactionary.

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• January 4, 2006 |  4:22 p.m. ET

Washington's new gilded age (Craig Crawford)

Craig Crawford

Jack Abramoff opened Pandora's Box. We are about to witness Washington's biggest corruption scandal in decades.

Republicans obviously stand to lose the most as the shocking array of "money-for-favors" revelations from Abramoff almost exclusively involve the GOP. But that is only because Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House. Democrats are too weak to be worth bribing. If they were in power, or if they regain some power in November's fight for control of Congress, a bribery scandal would envelop them too.

All of Washington could and should lose face in this scandal. Money is the dominant political party in the nation's capital. This is an era where the average House incumbent spends $1 million to stay in office, and senators spend far more. Sure, there will be efforts to argue that Abramoff's web of corruption was the exception, an isolated case involving a handful of greedy politicians and their friends. Not true. Washington has become a modern "Gilded Age," the title of Mark Twain's devastating novel about the city's corruption in the 1800's.

A reform era will likely follow this scandal, as voters throw the bums out. But another round of flawed reform laws will not stop the tide of cash from subverting democracy. The only true reform is for voters to stop reflexively electing the candidates who spend the most money. For those candidates are the ones who must grant favors to people like Abramoff in exchange for the flow of cash they desperately need to stay in office. For starters, the electorate should ignore political ads on TV, which is where most of this corrupt money goes. Anyone who bases their vote on TV ads should not vote at all. Electing representatives and senators who spend the least money is the only reform that would prevent another Abramoff scandal.

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• December 29, 2005 |  3:28 p.m. ET

Long-term damage to intelligence
(Roger Cressey, NBC News Terrorism Analyst)

As the uproar continues over revelations that the National Security Agency conducted electronic surveillance against domestic targets, there are many questions that still need answers. What were the procedures involving authorization and oversight? For example, did NSA make the decision in-house on targets, or was there direction from other elements of the intelligence community, the Justice Department or the White House? What were the procedures on data captured as part of the broader surveillance effort? Was data that was not found to be relevant to the terrorism-related nature of the surveillance deleted immediately or stored on NSA's databases? What was the extent of the effort made by the White House to brief Congress and were there any serious discussions about changes to the existing FISA authority to cover the new realities of a post-9/11 world? Are there some members of Congress who were briefed but choose now to have a selective memory as to the extent of the briefings and their own views at the time?

In dealing with the threat to the United States by al-Qaida and the movement it spawned, we are in a daily struggle between security and privacy. One need only look back at polls taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to see that most Americans are willing to accept a very high level of intrusiveness into their daily lives by the Government IF it prevents another terrorist attack inside the United States. Using NSA's unique capability to exploit address books discovered on captured terrorist cell phones and computers is entirely appropriate. What the nation won't accept is a broadening of intelligence action in a manner that is not focused, not limited in scope and not directly tied to disrupting terrorist operations. Right now, the public has the impression that the White House went far beyond what was necessary in war against al-Qaida.

The sad conclusion I draw is that much of this episode could have been avoided if the Administration had taken the time and effort to engage Congress in seeking changes to the existing FISA authorities. The argument that there was no way of doing so without compromising operational security is pure garbage. There are always language workarounds between the Executive and Legislative branches that make clear to the parties involved what is being authorized, but would be too vague to the casual observer. I fear that by choosing not to invest the time and effort to find a solution with Congress, the White House has done far-reaching damage to the intelligence community. Congress will surely take action once their hearings are concluded. This action is bound to have long term, unintentional consequences for NSA and it's ability to support the policy community. At a time when the threat by al-Qaida and the movement it spawned remains, that is not the outcome anyone should hope for.

Roger Cressey is a former deputy National Security Council director and analyst for NBC News.

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• December 28, 2005 |  4:33 p.m. ET

Wiretaps damaging, worrisome (Evan Kohlmann)

In the many troubling months that followed the heartbreak of 9/11, Americans were forced to grapple with a tricky balance between tightening our faltering homeland security and yet, simultaneously, safeguarding the essential civil liberties that define our very national identity. 

When President Bush took the unprecedented step of holding deadly al-Qaida operatives as "enemy combatants" at an extraterritorial facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (and elsewhere), there were precious few complaints -- after all, it was a basic matter of survival and common sense.  Likewise, when the USA Patriot Act was initially presented for consideration by Congress in 2001, politicians from both sides of the aisle clambered over each other to endorse the new legislation.  As someone who monitors raw terrorist communications and propaganda on a daily basis, I count myself among those who strongly endorsed these measures and I continue to vigorously support them.

However, despite all this, I am nonetheless quite uneasy at the revelation that the President has authorized a significant number of NSA wiretaps on suspected terrorists and others without the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.  The President has justified these warrantless wiretaps by suggesting that--for reasons of expediency--they were absolutely necessary to track imminent threats.  Unfortunately, that logic is not sufficiently specific enough to justify such a major expansion of executive power.  Indeed, the principle purpose behind the establishment of a special FISA court in 1978 was to remedy the stunning abuse of intelligence agencies by the office of the President.  The secret court was conceived in order to help better negotiate that very same "tricky balance" -- ensuring that both national security and individual rights were being protected. 

To secure a FISA-approved wiretap, the government must only show "probable cause" exists that the sought-after target is working on behalf of a foreign power and has engaged in activities that "may" abrogate U.S. law.  Over the space of 26 years, the FISA court has approved close to 20,000 government applications and has rejected or deferred a mere six.  FISA applications can be submitted and approved in a matter of only hours (or minutes) so that foreign agents and terrorists are prevented from slipping through gaping legal loopholes.  In extraordinary circumstances, court approval can be obtained even days after the wiretap has already been put in place.  This is precisely why so many eyebrows were raised when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales attempted to justify warrantless wiretaps by suggesting that FISA lacks the "speed and agility" to deal with "this new kind of threat."  Former Secretary of State Colin Powell--who has himself publicly defended the NSA wiretaps--admits being mystified as to why the President did not seek prior FISA approval, suggesting "my own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard... even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it... the law provides for that."

Of course, this is not to say that the FISA court system is perfect -- far from it.  In serving as a consultant and expert witness on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department in terrorism cases, I have personally witnessed the bitter frustration of federal prosecutors caught in the seemingly endless red tape of FISA declassification.  But these problems primarily relate to subsequent criminal prosecutions -- not intelligence gathering and certainly not the interdiction of potential "ticking bombs."  The Bush administration has complained of a prickly relationship with the FISA court in recent years, but this close scrutiny is exactly what is expected from FISA, even in times of national emergency.  We have courts and judges in America for a reason -- to protect against unreasonable searches and seizures -- and the notion that the Bush administration can simply sidestep the authority of the courts whenever it sees fit is extremely questionable.  If there are such fundamental problems with the FISA system, one wonders why the White House has waited until now to voice these concerns.  If there are such fundamental problems with the FISA system, it is the primary responsibility of said White House to aggressively push for immediate legislative reforms, rather than simply adopting unilateral executive authority. 

The most unfortunate aspect of the NSA wiretap controversy is how significantly it has damaged congressional efforts to extend critically important provisions contained in the 2001 Patriot Act.  This damage is most clearly documented in recent comments by Senator Chuck Schumer who quipped to his colleagues, "I went to bed undecided, but [the] revelation that the government has listened in on thousands of phone conversations is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote."  No doubt, Senator Schumer and other politicians who profess to support the war on terrorism--yet still refuse to endorse the Patriot Act extension--have grievously let down their own constituents and the American public by confusing these two distinct issues.  Ironically, by allowing the Patriot Act to potentially lapse, such partisan pundits only further undermine the usefulness and efficiency of the FISA court.  But such irrational recalcitrance can almost seem justified to an uninformed observer, especially in the context of an executive who has demonstrated scant personal regard for judicial authority in the war on terror.

Evan Kohlmann is an MSNBC terrorism analyst and author of 'Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: the Afghan-Bosnian Network' (Berg, 2004).

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• December 27, 2005 | 3:43 p.m. ET

The "Jack Bauer" President (Craig Crawford)

Craig Crawford

I have been watching dozens of back episodes of Fox Broadcasting's "24" over the holidays, and so far I haven't seen rogue U.S. anti-terrorism agent Jack Bauer stop once for a court warrant -- not even when he sawed off the head of an informant he was interrogating. Come to think of it, I haven't heard the Constitution mentioned a single time as Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, repeatedly breaks the rules to thwart terrorist plots.

This is how the President wants us to see the real world. Indeed, George Bush is the Jack Bauer of presidential power. There are no rules in Bush's world when it comes to the War on Terror -- only wimps like the whining bureaucrats on "24" balk at torture, spying, propaganda, whatever it takes.

I guess I am one of those constitutional wimps. Even the reality cop shows get me riled, as we watch the police routinely trample the individual rights of hapless suspects. Maybe we do live in a Jack Bauer world where constitutional liberties take a back seat to stopping killers. But I'd rather live in Patrick Henry's world: Give me liberty or give me death.

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• December 21, 2005 | 3:00 p.m. ET

U.S. Army in Iraq let down by media & politicians: by Colonel Ken Allard

Colonel Ken Allard MSNBC Military Analyst

The Army that I saw last week in Iraq is a superbly competent, disciplined and overwhelmingly lethal force. While undergoing undeniable strains from four years of combat, it is far from the breaking point: but it is being badly let down by both the media and politicians back home.

First the media: The most frequent complaint I heard from the troops is that the war they are fighting in Iraq is not the one they see being reported on TV - and yes, those extensive base-camps are as fully "wired" as most American cities. The only casualties usually reported by the media are our own - but never the extensive destruction being visited upon the insurgent infrastructure. The only real question - are we winning? - is the only one not being analyzed.

The Politicians: Sometimes it's hard to know who's on your side. The Bush administration is belatedly engaging the war of ideas yet is also to blame for the chronic manpower shortages (active and reserve) that have bedeviled the ground forces ever since 9/11. Meanwhile, both Ted Kennedy and Jack Murtha seem oddly intent on doing what Zarkawi and Bin Laden have thus far been unable to do - breaking the will of the American people to sustain this fight.

Our forces may be stretched thin but if you really want to break them, just try bringing them home short of accomplishing their mission. We could get away with thinly disguised retreats in places like Vietnam and Somalia, which were strategic backwaters. But if we manage to rescue defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq - the Schwerpunkt of the fight with radical Islam - then our grandchildren will arise and curse our memories.

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• December 20, 2005 | 5:01 p.m. ET

Bush leans on old arguments (Bob Shrum)

Bob Shrum

Forty years ago Wednesday - Dec. 21, 1965 -- on CBS's "Town Meeting of the World," a live satellite link up between New York and London featured a debate between Harvard and Oxford on the Vietnam War. It was relatively early in the escalation of that conflict; hardly anyone in this country was against the war yet, including Eugene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy, and virtually no one was in favor of immediate withdraw. So contrary to the received stereotypes about the sixties, the Harvard team was defending American military intervention in Vietnam it was lively, sometimes biting even bitter exchange. The Harvard debaters -- then modestly known professor named Henry Kissinger the two students, Larry Tribe and Bob Shrum -- evoked the cause of freedom and the threat of encouraging aggression elsewhere if the United States failed to stay the course.

Professor Kissinger went on to become Secretary of State and the architect of a protracted war in Vietnam, while Larry and I moved by 1967 -- into the anti-war opposition. In fact, neither of us has talked much about that Harvard-Oxford debate since then. But I thought of it again Sunday night as I listened to President Bush defend the Iraq war with the recycled, post-Cold War versions of arguments that were as wrong forty years ago as they are today.

The first is that an election is the political elixir that will extricate us from a military quagmire (though this time, maybe it would have if Kerry had won in 2004; allies who have become bystanders or adversaries might have agreed to help in Iraq, so we could draw down the U.S. troop presence which our military leaders now say fuels rather than suppresses the insurgency). We saw election after election in Vietnam and, as is now the case in Iraq, they were all successfully hailed as "turning points," so many in fact that we just found ourselves trapped in a circle of self-delusion.

Now the preliminary results of the Iraqi election appear to confound the Presidents assurance that while he -- belatedly -- recognizes where we went wrong in this war, we're finally on the right track. We've turned the corner: just look at all those happy voters with purple ink of their fingers. Well, it actually looks like they voted in not the secular but the religious Shiites, who have fundamental differences with the once dominant Sunni minority about regional power and oil revenues (the Sunni's maybe left with almost none). The Pentagon's pet candidate, the secular Shiite Ahmad Chalabi, got less than one half of one percent of the in Baghdad.

At the same time, the Sunni Party that is leading represents the extremists who support violence against our forces that demand U.S. withdraw. The administration celebrated the Sunni's for not boycotting the election this time. But it turns out that the extremist maybe the Sunni mainstream. They voted, but it was tactical voting, aimed not at ending the insurgency but at advancing its objectives. The US favored among the secular Sunni's, former Prime Minister Allawi, the man we virtually installed in that office, is running so far behind, even where he was favored to do well, that his party is crying electoral fraud and asking the United States to intervene. Unfortunately, Jeb Bush isn't available to rig the results. Maybe the Bush Administration should have run General Thieu. But Allawi, like Chalabi -- and Thieu, was a bad bet precisely because he was seen as the American choice.

Not long from now, the memory although not the consequences of this month's election will have faded. What will matter is the level of violence next month and next year. In fact, the suicide bombings resume the next day, a continuation of the rising violence of the past eighteen months, which is likely to be intensified by the election results. So the Administration recycles another argument from the Vietnam era: despite what the media are reporting, despite the explosions you see on the evening news with your own lying eyes, we really are making progress on the ground. To drive home the point, the Administration excused Dick Cheney from seclusion and flew him to Baghdad for a photo-op Q & A with the troops. This time, the misuse of the military agitprop visual flopped. One of the soldiers told Cheney what Bush's advisors apparently never tell the President: things aren't getting better in Iraq. The Vice President promptly scampered off to Afghanistan -- the war we should have fought, where the Taliban are regaining ground while we're bogged down in Iraq -- to applaud the installation of the new Parliament there. Thus the pattern repeats itself in Iraq as in Vietnam: administration officials offer selective "facts" about an improving situation and the belatedly alert news media then reports the omissions and errors.

To overcome this, Bush, once more repeating Vietnam pattern, adopts the tactic of bypassing the media with a series of speeches direct to the American people that has supposedly raised his approval rating to about... 40 percent. Watching the Bush partisan spin it, you would think this was astronomically high. In plain truth, it is no basis for sustaining a war. The frequency of Bush's speeches is a sign of weakness, not strength. When John Kennedy was urged to go directly to the country far more often, he responded that "FDR's Fireside Chats" were relatively rare; but if a President went to the country more and more, the effect would be less and less. That's what's happening to Bush. Reality is a stubborn thing and eventually rhetoric fails.

So the real General in the Iraq war may now be Karl Rove -- his strategy to withdraw some U.S. forces, just enough to get by the next election where the Administration really does seem headed for defeat, the 2006 mid-terms here at home. But that won't redeem a conflict of choice that was fought on false pretenses; it may not even reduce American causalities if a somewhat smaller U.S. force faces escalating attacks. John Murtha, John Kerry, Russ Feingold and Joe Biden --not to mention Ted Kennedy, who was right on Iraq from the beginning -- have proposed alternative policies. Whatever their differences, they all begin with the truth that an indefinite U.S. military presences, with no benchmarks to measure progress or no target date for withdraw, will bring the final failure of a failed policy by prolonging not preventing the insurgency. As in Vietnam, the present U.S. policy in Iraq is a triumph of hope over experience.

There are some Democrats, a dimensioning number, who believe it is dangerous to dissent; last week Al From of the triangulating Democratic Leadership Council and Clinton pollster Mark Penn wrote a memo arguing that the party had to be cautious about "reinforcing" an image that Democrats are weak on defense. How can you justify loosing more American and Iraqi lives to sure up a party's image? And Democrats would have been stronger in 2002, for example, if they had forthrightly opposed what was wrong with the Bush policy instead of crouching down in political fear and coming across as a pale carbon copy of the Republicans. I don't think Mark Penn, who is the new CEO of Burson-Marsteller, could sell the Iraq war to Democratic primary voters. Instead there is a powerful case to be made that perpetuating this mistake and war actually weakens our national security.

Forty years ago today, I argued the wrong side of the Vietnam War. Now I hear the same flawed arguments trotted out to justify what's happening in Iraq. We are even hearing that old Nixonian standby: the disaster should be blamed on those who criticized the conflict, not those who created and continue it. In our hearts, we all know how this story ends; we just don't yet know when.

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• December 20, 2005 |  12:35 p.m. ET

Presidential subway series? (Chris Matthews)

So, what is the possibility that 2008 could see a new kind of subway series?  Chris Matthews vlogs about a possible presidential subway series pitting Rudy Giuliani against Hillary Clinton.

FREE VIDEO Subway series Dec. 19: Chris Matthews Vlogs about the possibility of a presidential subway series between Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. MSNBC

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• December 19, 2005 | 3:18 p.m. ET

NSA - Spying on Americans? (Lt. Col. Rick Francona)

Lt. Colonel Rick Francona MSNBC Military Analyst

A Dec. 16 New York Times article, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts" has caused an uproar around the country.  Perhaps some background is in order.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest agency in the U.S. intelligence community. Although nominally part of the Department of Defense, its operations are closely supervised by the Director of National Intelligence and support the entire executive branch.  From its headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., it oversees a worldwide network of intercept stations operated by "the Fort" (as it is known in the business) and the military services, using the latest technologies to access communications of all types.  You name it -- telephone, radio, fax, email -- NSA intercepts it.

NSA's primary focus is on the collection of foreign communications in response to intelligence requirements, be they for military commanders deployed to combat zones, diplomats negotiating on behalf of the United States, etc.  Generally, the communications intercepted by NSA take place outside the United States.  And generally, NSA is prohibited from the intercept of communications between "U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations."

That is not to say that internal communications, or communications originating or terminating in the United States involving a U.S. person or entity cannot be collected by NSA.  Collection of these communications, or those foreign communications involving U.S. persons (a much broader category than a U.S. citizen), entities, corporations or organizations abroad requires either a federal warrant or authorization from the Attorney General.

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