Bullets Can’t Stop Beutler From Cracking Wise

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Wed., Jul 2, 2008
Filed under: Media Consortium: journalism project • Blogroll

Funny thing about being a journalist: your job is to write about people and mayhem and trauma, but let any of those touch you directly, and it becomes a different game. With that caveat, allow me to recount my brief visit today with my colleague, Brian Beutler, whose sign-off is a familiar one on this site, and has come to define the reporting of The Media Consortium’s syndicated reporting project.

I was just about to leave the house this morning to meet with Brian when I got word through a mutual colleague of ours that he had been shot in Washington, D.C., in an aborted mugging.

I found him at Washington Hospital Center, where his good friend, Matt Franklin, sat vigil through the night as Brian underwent major surgery. By the time I got there, Brian was in recovery, and Matt and I were shown to his bedside.

Perhaps foremost among the topics about which Brian writes in his coverage of national security and civil liberties issues is FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Bush administration’s circumvention of the original 1978 legislation, and subsequent legislative attempts to widen the powers of the executive branch to spy on U.S. citizens. The entity of choice for such spying by the Bush administration has been the National Security Agency.

This morning, Brian and I had planned to go over the story he had just delivered about efforts by Sen. Russell Feingold to stop the latest version of FISA legislation from getting through the Senate. As his editor, I had promised our members that we would deliver the piece today.

When I stepped up to Brian’s hospital bed, he smiled through the clear, plastic mask covering his mouth, and said in a quiet, hoarse voice, “Sorry. I left you high and dry.”

What could I do but laugh?

After some housekeeping conversation about his level of comfort (not great, as you might imagine), he piped up, “I have a theory about the shooting.” He smiled, impishly.

“Oh, yeah?” I said.

“It was the NSA,” he said, with a deadpan look.

(Actually, it was two teenage boys who thought they wanted Brian’s cell phone.)

Matt laughed.

The good word is that Brian is expected to make a full recovery. Please be patient as we await his return to his beat. Nobody covers FISA and the rest of his beat quite like Brian Beutler. I know that his passion for his work will bring him back to the Hill in good time.

–Adele M. Stan

Live from Main Street/Minneapolis - Today!
Watch Laura Flanders, Amy Goodman and More, Here

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Sun., Jun 8, 2008
Filed under: Media Consortium: journalism project • Uncategorized

At 3:00 EDT, tune in here for live streaming of The Media Consortium’s debut town-hall program,
Live From Main Street, moderated by GritTV’s Laura Flanders and KFAI/Insight News’s Al McFarlane, and featuring:

· Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!
· John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation
· Malkia Cyril, director of the Center for Media Justice
· Colleen Rowley, FBI whistleblower/2006 congressional candidate
· Joel Kramer, founder of the Minneapolis Post
· Paul Schmelzer, managing editor of Minnesota Monitor
· Marlina Gonzalez, program director of the Unconvention/Intermedia Arts

…and more of your Twin Cities favorites!

Inspired by the work of everyday activists, Live From Main Street’s premiere
town hall will explore what it takes to get heard in the era of big media
and diminished civil liberties.

Live Webcast by The Uptake

Senate Leader Reid: No “Mad Rush for Immunity”

by addiestan, The Media Consortium: Mon., May 12, 2008
Filed under: Congressional Oversight

Subscribe Free
Add to my Pageaudio courtesy Talk Radio News ServiceSubscribe Free
Add to my Page

In a meeting this morning with reporters and bloggers, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled that civil libertarians may have less to fear than expected from a surveillance bill currently being negotiated in a conference of House and Senate committees.

Reid made the remarks during a meeting with reporters in the U.S. Capitol building, in answer to my question about current negotiations between House and Senate committees on legislation governing wiretapping in terrorism investigations. The legislation would renew post-9/11 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that expired last year. At issue between the House and Senate bills is the question of retroactive immunity from prosecution for telecom companies who provided customer data to the government, without a court order to do so.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed a version of the legislation, known as the Protect America Act, that provided immunity to the telecoms, effectively shielding from scrutiny government officials who ordered the collection of such data. Critics contend that the immunity provisions in the Senate bill ultimately protects President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard B. Cheney from prosecution for civil rights violations. The House version confers no such immunity. The Senate bill also grants, with little judicial involvement or oversight, for widespread surveillance involving Americans. The conference committee is working to reconcile the two versions.

Even though the Senate version contains the immunity language, Reid’s heart, he says, is in another place. “I personally don’t believe that the phone companies should have immunity,” he told reporters, “and I certainly don’t believe that Bush and Cheney should have immunity.”

When the House passed a version of the bill that failed to include the immunity provisions, President Bush accused House Democrats of leaving the United States vulnerable to attack by terrorists. “Everyone was in a panic,” Reid said. “If we didn’t pass FISA…the world was going to fall apart — and it didn’t.” Because of that, Reid said, “I think the mad rush for immunity is not as intense as it was.”

Critics of the bill, such as leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have suggested that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who leads the negotiations for the Senate bill, was ready to side with the administration on the matter of immunity for telecom companies. Reid appeared to suggest this is not necessarily the case.

Until the legislation is passed, wiretapping on matters concerning foreign intelligence is governed by the FISA law as it was written in 1978.