A Bit of This, a Bit of That

Today was a travel day, so I didn’t see much news. Before heading out to the airport, we heard all the various horror stories about lines backing up and how we should be there two hours early at the very least. Not wanting to jeopardize our chances of getting through security and safely on the plane, we complied with that advice. As we got out of the cab at O’Hare, we stepped into the terminal to a huge line--good thing we had two hours. I did a little bit more checking and discovered this line was for the Continental check-in desk. Fortunately, we weren’t flying Continental--our reservations were for Independence Air. There was no line at the Independence Air desk, so we got right in. Because everybody was on line for Continental, there was no one much at security, either, so that went quickly, too. We walked to our gate and were ready to go about one hour and fifty minutes before the flight was due to go out. Which is definitely better than being late, but that’s a lot of time to hang in an airport terminal. And it’s far better than having been stuck in that Continental line.

One thing I did see, though, was that the FISA court, which generally fell all over itself to give government officials seeking wiretaps the benefit of the doubt, is planning to hold a briefing on Bush’s little NSA flap. One of the judges, James Robertson, has already resigned from the court (he did so without comment, but the timing makes the cause and effect obvious), and the other judges want to know where they stand. Why have an overwhelmingly compliant court (they’ve apparently turned down a fraction of 1 percent of government requests) if you’re just going to ignore it? One of the judges anonymously made the same point to The Washington Post, suggesting that the court may decide to disband if they decided the Prez considered their contribution unnecessary. Bush has already asserted that he doesn’t need the FISA court’s authority to order wiretaps. Why keep wasting their time with this charade?