When Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence presented the final installments of the committee's long-awaited pre-war intelligence investigation to the press earlier this month in the Senate gallery, they demurred when reporters' asked them if they intended to pursue possible charges against Bush administration officials whom the Senators said had exaggerated the case for war based on the intelligence available to them. "Nothing else would get done, on Clean Air, FISA, anything," committee chairman Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller (D-WV) explained why the committee would not pursue such charges. "If we pressed for that, it would be like impeachment."

But there are signs that further federal investigation of at least one aspect of the committee's inquiry may continue.

Mother Jones has learned that one subject of one of the recent Senate Intelligence committee reports has told associates that he has hired a defense attorney in connection to a federal investigation. Pentagon official Harold Rhode, a long-time civilian employee of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessments, who participated in controversial meetings with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar in Rome and Paris, did not respond to messages sent to his home and Pentagon emails inquiring about the Senate's report on the Ghorbanifar channel, and questions over a possible federal investigation involving him and the hiring of an attorney. Calls to his home went to a fax machine and he did not answer his Pentagon office phone over the past several days.

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The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 passed moments ago in the House by a vote of 293-129.

Joining the significant majority were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and House Intelligence Committe Chairman Silveste Reyes. An angry John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, opposed it.

The bill will in practice provide legal immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the President Bush's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) through a provision that will result in the dismissal of lawsuits that might have shined some light on the particulars of the administration's warrantless wiretapping activities. It does mandate an Inspector General report on the particulars of TSP, but whether that mandate survives the president's signing statement pen remains to be seen.

During the floor debate, most of Democrats who supported the legislation pointed to a provision that makes FISA the exclusive arbiter of the nation's wiretapping activities--a provision which will allow the supporters of the bill to express their shock and disappointment when this or any future president decides to ignore the law anyhow.

Now the bill moves over to the Senate where all of these, and other provisions will be debated further.

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While many people are concerned about whether the Bush administration plans to carry out a parting shot strike on Iran's nuclear program before it leaves office, most policy experts in and out of government I've interviewed think that is unlikely, for a lot of reasons. But the U.S., of course, is not the only actor to consider.

Today came reports that Israel carried out a large-scale military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece earlier this month that clearly seemed to have Iran in mind. More than 100 F-16 and F-15 fighter planes and rescue helicopters were involved in the Israeli military exercise, according to Pentagon and other US government officials cited in a report today in the New York Times. "Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military's capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran's nuclear program," the paper reported. The exercise was so large, U.S. officials told the paper, it was implied that Israel wanted not only Iran, but the US and other allies, to be aware of it.

I asked Yossi Melman, intelligence correspondent for Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, and co-author of The Nuclear Sphinx of Iran, how to interpret the reported Israeli military exercise (Israeli officials have not commented on it). I also asked him about Israel's timeline for contemplating a possible go-it-alone strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, should diplomacy, international sanctions and other measures be judged to fail.

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There are so many problems with John McCain's idea that we're going to use offshore drilling to alleviate high gas prices and get us out of our current energy pickle.

First, there isn't all that much oil to be found in the continental United States and sucking it out of the ground won't lower prices substantially. Second, there are no ships available to serve new rigs. Third, oil companies currently have leases for some offshore drilling that they aren't using. Fourth, it will take seven to ten years before we can actually get at the oil off American shores, if we were to start drilling today. Fifth, it presents serious environmental concerns.

It's an ineffective attempt at a quick fix. In so far as it keeps Americans from thinking about and coming to terms with long-term structural changes that will actually solve the energy crisis, it's an incredibly damaging idea.

You don't have to be a Democrat to understand this. Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a Republican, is calling out McCain:

"For anyone to represent that someone drilling off the coast in Florida is going to lower gas prices here or anywhere in this country is disingenuous and a flawed argument," he said. "Oil drilling could take 10 years before any oil is pulled out of the ground, and there are a large number of leases held by oil companies that are not being exploited now. We can't say we need more until we've exploited those."

H/T Think Progress.

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