It turns out Specter is simply a flat out liar

Arlen Specter said his proposed legislation did not grant blanket amnesty to all who have violated the FISA law. Glenn Greenwald finally got his hands on a copy of the proposed legislation and informs us it grants amnest to anyone who violated the law, going all the way back to 1978.

It's just incredible how these guys will lie through their teeth and no one seems to give a damn.

I have now obtained (with the help of the ACLU) a copy of Specter's marked-up proposed legislation (.pdf), which makes quite clear that Specter simply was not telling the truth when he denied proposing amnesty to the administration. The bill in question was one which Specter substituted last week in the Judiciary Committee for the prior legislation he proposed back in March (the reason the new version was not available online was because -- according to the ACLU -- he introduced it only in the Committee, but not yet on the Senate floor).

In sum, Specter's legislation amends the provision of FISA which provides for criminal penalties, and then, astonishingly, makes those revisions retroactive all the way back to 1978 (when FISA was enacted). The effect and almost certainly the intent of those revisions is to immunize the President and anyone acting under his authority from criminal liability for violating FISA -- just as the Post and the ACLU correctly reported, and just as Specter falsely denied.

I'm going to retract my conditional retraction of my rant about Arlen Specter.