"If You Really Want to Know What's Going on, I Recommend Sticking to the Blogs"

Wow. Orin Kerr says it: "If you really want to know what is going on, I recommend sticking to the blogs."

The Volokh Conspiracy - - FISA, the NSA, and the Specter Bill: In the last 24 hours, there have been some important developments concerning legislation to address the NSA domestic surveillance program. The White House and Senator Specter have agreed to a bill, although the MSM is doing a pretty bad job (at least so far) of reporting what is actually in it. If you really want to know what is going on, I recommend sticking to the blogs. I have posted a few things at my solo blog, including this recent post: The Specter Bill's Major Shift in Constitutional Authority to Conduct Monitoring. Balkinization has several very critical posts, including Jack's post Specter Gives Up The Game -- The Sham NSA Bill and Marty's The Specter Monstrosity. Over at Prawfsblawg, Steve Vladeck has a post entitled The Specter Bill, the TSP, and the FISA Court: Some Thoughts.

This is, I think, a watershed--we have climbed the mountain, and are now coming down on the reality-based side. It's not the best world, this world in which, as Matthew Yglesias put it:

The Social Security Debate Once Again: The New York Times just managed to completely misrepresent the Sununu plan. It's really just a more intense version of the Bush plan.... Still a bad ide... but not orders of magnitude more lunatic as Richard Stevenson described it. It would be nice to get accurate information from the newspapers and not need to rely on the blogosphere to find solid reporting.

But this is the world in which we live in: respected weblogs run by intelligent commentators with good track records and strong senses of honor are our best information sources these days.