Tag: FISAAA

I need your help — NOW — researching FISAAA (especially lawyers)

Hi guys, long time no see.  I’m glad the primaries are over and that my differences with many here over whether to be engaged in the fighting (my stance) or removed from it (my sense of most reactions here) are over.  Bygones, kumbaya.  I’m back because I need your help.

Over on DKos, mcjoan had a story this morning pointing out among other things that the FISAAA — that’s FISA Amendments Act, what we’re actually fighting right now — redefined WMDs to include explosive and incendiary devices capable of inflicting mass casualties like, oh, car bombs.  That’s right — any explosive device becomes a WMD.

I’ve done a bit of work on the interconnectedness of federal statutes.  Change the definition of WMD, and you change all sorts of things in other statutes that rely on the definition being changed.  This got my full attention.

Then I read the bill.  The text is here.

Now my hair is on fire.