After telling four million Americans last week that Democrats were coddling terrorists because of the House FISA bill, Joe Klein now tells us about that bill:

I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right [...] about this minor detail of a bill that will never find its way out of the Congress.

Well, perhaps he should've told his readers that from the start, before he accused an entire party of coddling terrorists. It was a BIG ENOUGH DETAIL of a bill that he wrote an entire column on it for Time Magazine. Now, he can't be bothered to figure things out? It's not even that difficult to figure out! Remember, Klein originally based his "Democrats are weak on national security" column on this one sentence:

Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court [...]

So once again, let's look at the text of the legislation that is SO VEXING poor Joe Klein:

'CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE OF NON-UNITED STATES PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES'

Sec. 105A. (a) Foreign to Foreign Communications- (1) IN GENERAL - Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, a court order is not required for electronic surveillance directed at the acquisition of the contents of any communication between persons that are not known to be United States persons and are reasonably believed to be located outside the United States for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence information, without respect to whether the communication passes through the United States or the surveillance device is located within the United States.

To me it's pretty clear, even if I do have a legal background. I'm pretty sure it's pretty clear to you as well -- even if you don't have a law degree. But to Klein?

I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right [...]

An intrepid reporter he's not, even though his entire fucking job is to write one column a week, a few blog posts, and the occasional book review for the New York Times.

Glenn, of course, is all over it:

[F]or now, I just want to ask that everyone ponder the extreme lack of professionalism and corruption required for someone like Klein to write the article that he did accusing Democrats of wanting to give Terrorists the same rights as Americans (therefore showing, as always, that Democrats can't be trusted on national security), and then -- once he is exposed for having spewed outright falsehoods -- he announces that he really isn't interested in bothering to find out (and isn't even capable of determining) if anything he wrote was accurate.

As Glenn points out, this is all par for the course for Time. Wired's Ryan Singel points out that Klein is still getting it wrong, no matter how many times he blogs about the original column (now in its fourth explanation).