fernando-poo

Ambassador appointment? lol. That seems to be how it works now.

I'll suggest another possibility...the idea is simply too new for anyone in Washington to have given it serious consideration, even someone on the left like Bernie Sanders. I have yet to hear a single Washington politician discuss the issue of basic income, although there has been increasing interest on the topic lately. This may be yet another case, like drug decriminalization, where voters are ahead of the political class.

BTW, /r/basicincome/ is a good sub for more info on this topic if anyone is interested.

I think the answer is that Boehner is not the guy running the next Republican Presidential campaign so he doesn't care. There really is no "leader" of the party, so all you have are individuals acting in their own short term self-interest.

How would you know that though, having left seven years ago?

But wait, I thought you worked at the NSA from 2002-2006? Didn't the Bush administration claim that they didn't need FISA authority during that time period?

From 2007: Bush Reverses Course, Puts NSA Wiretaps Under FISA

Since the surveillance program was publicly disclosed in December 2005 by The New York Times, the White House has maintained, in scores of court filings, policy papers and press statements, that the president has the inherent power to conduct wiretaps without a court warrant even though a 1978 law put intelligence surveillance under judicial review...The administration continued to assert on Wednesday that the N.S.A. program had operated legally, but it also said the time had come to allow the intelligence surveillance court, known as the FISA court, to review all warrants on all wiretaps in terrorism investigations.

There were actually over 40 lawsuits brought against AT&T, Verizon and other companies, specifically because the NSA didn't obtain court orders when collecting customer data. That's why Bush insisted on granting legal immunity to the telecoms when Congress amended FISA in 2008.

I'm a little confused, because you don't seem to be making any distinction between the way the surveillance program operated seven years ago (when you left NSA) and the way it operates now. You seem to be defending the Bush era surveillance program, which was widely deemed to be unconstitutional and illegal.