Sexy distraction

The media calls her the D.C. Madam; her clients use the pseudonym “Miz Julia”: she’s poised, provocative, mysterious, and oh so metropolitan. Sexy, savvy, and just a little dangerous, she’s the hottest little thang to come out of Washington since, well, Valerie Plame, really. Known to her friends, family and government prosecutors as Deborah Jeane Palfrey, she is accused of operating a $300-an-hour prostitution ring under the guise of a legal escort and massage service to the District’s movers and shakers.\n According to phone records subpoenaed by the federal court, and offered freely to ABC News, some 10,000 to 15,000 clients from D.C., Maryland and Virginia used Palfrey’s network over the last 13 years. When Palfrey announced she would release her entire Rolodex before going to prison on racketeering charges, Washington news junkies quivered in anticipation. Which lonely, or desperate, White House official was sneaking behind his wife? Whose long, celebrated career would come to a sexy halt?\nI’m all pins and needles!\nNeedless to say, covering such seductively juicy beats is a full-time operation for the media. Stories like this come around once in a lifetime – well, once in a month anyway. There’s simply no time to follow up on the Bush Administration’s illegal wiretapping scheme. Remember that one? Boy, was that exciting. \nUpon closer inspection, it appears that of the 2,181 warrant requests submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court last year, 2,176 were accepted. Oops. \nIn January, after the president had been caught red-handed spying on American citizens, he agreed to stop circumventing the FISA court. Since then, 99.77 percent of warrant requests were granted by a court whose supposed purpose is to check unrestricted abuse by the executive branch. In actuality, the court is a rubber stamp that institutionalizes policies that are in direct violation of the words and spirit of the Constitution.\nThough it’s impossible to know which, if any, wiretaps yielded promising leads (primarily because CNN’s level of investigative journalism rivals that of a glazed doughnut), there’s no way that all 42 wiretaps each week provided information relevant to terrorist plots. By allowing the administration to cast such a wide net, the FISA court essentially gives the executive branch a free pass to ignore the Fourth Amendment. \nNow the president wants to expand the FISA court’s jurisdiction to include all types of electronic communication, and extending to seven days (from three) the length of time the administration may wiretap a suspected terrorist before obtaining a warrant. These and other changes would almost entirely invalidate the FISA court, returning the judiciary’s remaining .03 percent of discretion to President Bush.\nIf the media didn’t need a Ritalin injection every morning to keep them from covering clowns on tricycles, Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) might have found the court’s wanton disregard of their duties more than merely “objectionable.” After all, what could be better for the senator and the Democrats than Bush Scandal No. 5,472? Apparently, making sure Ted Kennedy isn’t fooling around with a Naval Academy instructor, courtesy of Miz Julia.