round and round we go

This is a fun blast from the past -

An article that describes Republican congressional efforts to pass law that would make (then) President Bush's warrentless evesdropping of US citizens (which the White House was already allowing the NSA to do) Legal. Now here we are 7 years later and it's the Republicans who suddenly hate that sort of Presidential power and some of the Dems who support it.

Round and round and round we go.
It's funny, given how this country tends to go for Presidential political parties in two term increments, you'd think the Republicans might do some forward thinking and actually support giving all kinds of spying powers to the president ... knowing that statistics are on their party's side for being the next guys who would get to use that power and that it is easier to get the power now while they aren't in charge.

Oh well. Here's a flash back to share with all who think that NSA's "warrentless wiretapping" was invented by the current administration.

GOP Senators Near Deal on Eavesdropping

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
3-8-06

After weeks of negotiations and closed door meetings, moderate Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee will propose legislation giving President Bush's controversial surveillance program the force of law.

Support was building Tuesday among Republicans and the White House for the proposal to craft eavesdropping legislation and conduct additional oversight more than four years after Bush secretly initiated the program. The move also blunted Democratic calls for an investigation of the U.S.-based monitoring operations in the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the legislation proposed by several moderate Republicans was "certainly a good foundation to start with" — a sentiment shared by the Senate's Republican leadership and the White House, he said.

Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, said he would soon introduce the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 with three other moderates who have helped shaped the debate on intelligence issues: Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Roberts said he believed that Bush would sign surveillance legislation after "Congress worked its will." But he said there may still be changes ahead on the proposal now under consideration. "I don't see every 't' crossed and 'i' dotted," Roberts said.

It's also unclear if the House will consider a similar measure. House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., has not yet taken up legislation.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee expressed outrage after a meeting Tuesday that senators voted — along party lines — to reject an investigation of the surveillance proposed by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat.

"The committee — to put it bluntly — basically is in the control of the White House," a visibly angry Rockefeller said.

Roberts balked at Rockefeller's suggestion. Roberts told reporters that he asked the committee to reject confrontation and accommodate an agreement with the White House to create a subcommittee of seven senators with broad oversight of the National Security Agency's terrorist monitoring.

"We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other," Roberts said.

The 15-member panel agreed, over strong Democratic objections that the limited size of the group means Congress will be writing laws in the dark. "Our committee has to be fully informed if we are to guide the legislative debate on this program that is fast approaching," Rockefeller said.

The growing call for legislation has added pressure on the Bush administration to go along, and the White House indicated a broad approval for DeWine's bill.

"We think it is a generally sound measure," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We have said we are committed to working with Congress on legislation that would further codify into law the president's authority to detect and prevent potential attacks."

Yet even as legislation is drafted, lawmakers are pressing for more details about the surveillance.

Rockefeller said he spent all of Friday at the NSA, seeking answers to more than 400 questions. He said it would take several visits to have a full understanding of the program, which allowed the administration to eavesdrop on international calls and e-mails of U.S. residents when terrorism is suspected.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., also threatened to write legislation to limit funding for the program if he can't get more information about it. "If we cannot find some political solution to the disagreement with the executive branch, our ultimate power is the power of the purse," Specter said.

Rivaling the DeWine approach, Specter is writing a separate bill that would allow the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to give the program a broad constitutional blessing every 45 days. Specter's support remains unclear.

DeWine's bill would — for a time — exempt the president's surveillance program from a 1978 law aimed at governing electronic intelligence collection inside the United States.

The proposal, now being circulated on Capitol Hill, would allow the government to monitor suspected terrorists for up to 45 days without first seeking approval from the federal intelligence court. The government would then have three options: stop the surveillance, seek a warrant from the court, or come to Congress to explain why a warrant isn't possible.

DeWine said his approach would create a subcommittee to consider those requests and conduct in-depth oversight of the monitoring on a case-by-case basis.

Like the president's program, his bill covers only communications where one party is overseas and one is inside the United States.

The White House has said that Bush acted lawfully when he ordered the warrantless surveillance because he had the inherent authority as president and under a September 2001 resolution to use force in the war on terror. Although initially reluctant to work with Congress on a bill, the White House has come around in recent weeks as lawmakers threatened investigations.

Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., both indicated their support for the concept drafted by the moderate senators. But in a sign of how carefully lawmakers must handle the debate, Frist sought to make clear the president's actions are legal now, noting that he believes Bush already "has the constitutional authority to conduct this program."

Brewing Tips!!

Some quick tips.

The first is to brew on your back porch or in the garage or someplace that you can hose down afterwards. You cannot believe how quickly your wort can boil over and given that most of it is a sugar based liquid, it creates a nasty sticky mess.  A camp stove can be good for this. My brewing buddy and I use the propane burner off of an old gas grill. As an added benefit ... it is more fun to sit around a boiling pot sipping at an ale and occasionally stirring than it is to stand in front of a stove.

Next tip is actually several tips but they are based around water volumes.
When your wort is all in the fermentation bucket you should have about 5 gallons of liquid ... but you don't start out with 5 gallons. For one thing, your brew pot will only hold so much. The other factor is that it takes (roughly speaking) FOREVER to bring that much water to a boil!

So ... maybe 2 gallons of liquid to start with. Once it has been brought to a boil and you add your Malt Extract (NOTE: FOR SOME REASON BOIL OVER MOST OFTEN OCCURS WHEN YOU ADD STUFF TO YOUR BOILING WORT! ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ADD THE HOPS! THE WORT BEGINS TO BUBBLE UP RATHER FURIOUSLY! For that reason I recommend removing the wort from the heat as you add stuff, then putting it back on the fire once you have finished.)
The Malt is a very thick syrup so after you poor it in, add a little bit of hot water (from the tap) to the malt container and slosh it around to try and get ALL of the malty goodness out of the can/jug and into your wort! This will also add a little more volume to your wort so you need to keep that in mind when you start with your initial volume of wort.

Next water tip. Most recipe call for you to poor your finished wort into the fermentation bucket and then add sterile water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. Then you have to wait for the temperature of your wort to come down to like 90 degrees before you can add your yeast. You will KILL your yeast if it goes into too hot a wort. So you wait. and wait and wait and wait.
NOT ME!
Some time before Brew day, we fill sanitized Tupperware containers with previously boiled water and make sterile blocks of ice! So when the wort is finished its boil, the first thing we put in the fermentation bucket is a several blocks of ice (about a gallon or so ... your mileage may very). Then you poor your boiling hot wort over that and stir. The ice melts in about 5 minutes and you got cooled wort, ready for the addition of yeast! You will still probably need to add a little water so if you got it too cold you can add a bit of warm water. I know some directions say NO ICE but we have done this for years and our beer taste GREAT if I do say so myself!

Another thing ... your finished wort will have a lot of sedimentary material in it (the hops). If you leave this in your fermentation bucket, when fermentation starts to get really going and foams up, this stuff can clog up your airlock. The result is that it can blow out the air lock. This might allow bacteria into your beer (which would ruin it) and also make a localized mess in what ever closet your bucket was sitting in.  The way we have avoided this was to strain our wort as we poured it over the ice. My buddy has this very fine, mesh bag (nylon I think) that we pour the wort through. Works like a charm but it takes one guy to poor while the other makes sure the bag doesn't get pulled into the bucket.
It is not only more fun to brew with a buddy ... it's also quite helpful!

Finally - just a bit on sanitation/sterilization/cleanliness. Most everyone places a REAL high premium on this. We've all seen what happens if you brew a mug of tea and then forget and let it sit out for a few days. Well this is like brewing tea ... but your going to let it sit out for a month! So yes, try to keep everything clean and contaminant free. HOWEVER ... keep in mind that in Inn keepers who couldn't read and rarely bathed, brewed up large batches of this stuff in open buckets in the cellars of their taverns. Sawdust and who knows what else fell through the cracks of the floors down into the stuff and yet ... they still ended up with beer!
If 14th century plague victims could brew beer, you probably don't have to worry too much about trying to maintain sterile, laboratory conditions!