Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr has taken on Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the chief political targets of president Donald Trump, in a five-page letter the commissioner tweeted out.

[embed]https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/1238250816382910465[/embed]

Schiff led the ultimately unsuccessful effort to convict Trump of articles of impeachment and remove him from office. 

In the letter, the FCC commissioner accused the committee of collecting protected and confidential call records in a "secret and partisan" process that violates citizens' rights to ask a court to keep those sensitive call records confidential.

Related: Schiff Presents Articles of Impeachment

The commissioner pointed to the publication of call records in the Impeachment Report as evidence of the collections and pointed to reports such collection might be continuing. 

Carr said the process the committee uses to obtain the records and release them, including of an investigative journalist, government officials, and members of Congress, "raised a number of serious questions." He said those include "whether Americans are comfortable with one political party in Congress having the power to secretly obtain and expose the call records of any private citizen, journalist or government official." 

Carr said the supbpoenas "effectively evade even the potential for Americans to vindicate their legal rights." 

At a few minutes after noon, Jan. 16, the House impeachment managers read out the articles of impeachment of President Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors.  

Broadcast and cable outlets dropped regular programming to carry the reading of the charges live and were likely to do so at 2 p.m. when Chief Justice John Roberts is sworn in (he will preside over the trail) and then swears the Senators in. 

They did so the in the Senate chamber, with an audience warned solemnly that they must keep quite "on pain of imprisonment." 

During the reading of the first article--abuse of power--chief manager Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the President had used the power of his office to solicit the interference of Ukraine in the 2020 presidential election by publicly announcing investigations that would help his re-election. Schiff said the President used his powers corruptly for his own benefit, and in the process undermined the democratic process and injured the interests of the nation. 

Schiff said the President would be a threat to national security if allowed to continue as President.  

During the reading of article two--obstruction of Congress--Schiff said the President had directed the categorical denial of congressional subpoenas in subversion of the Constitution and had directed that potential witnesses not testify, thus interfering with Congress' investigation. 

The Senate trial will begin next Tuesday (Jan. 21).

The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday (Jan. 16) on S.139, the Senate version of the House bill reauthorizing key provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

In advance of that, privacy advocates were pledging to target Democrats who support the bill, and wanted their supporters to do so, literally.

Fight for the Future, which sees the bill as allowing "mass government spying" on the communications--phone calls, e-mails, texts--of U.S. citizens, planned to crowdfund billboards ahead of the midterm elections calling out Democratic senators if they vote to reauthorize.

As an example, they pointed to Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who they say opposed reinstating warrant protections, and circulated a mock-up of what the billboard could look like (see picture).

“The power to turn the Internet into a weapon for mass surveillance is too dangerous for any government to have, but it’s unthinkable in the hands of the Trump administration, which has clearly shown it will use these powers to target the most vulnerable people in our country,” said a representative of the group. “Any lawmaker who votes to reauthorize and expand these unconstitutional spying powers is standing on the wrong side of history while enabling totalitarianism and mass discrimination. Constituents deserve to know when their lawmakers are not fighting for their rights but, rather, obstructing them.”

The House last week voted to renew FISA provisions without an amendment that would have added protections for the private communications of U.S. citizens from government surveillance.

FISA allows for the accessing of communications with foreign entities, but legislators from both parties have been looking to rein in warrantless searches of the communications of U.S. residents (when they are on the other end of those communications). It is just the latest attempt to address that issue.

The White House had opposed the amendment, and supported the bill as passed.

The amendment that was defeated would have ended warrantless backdoor searches of Americans' calls, emails, texts and other communications.

The bill does require, for the first time according to Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), that the government obtain a warrant to access data on U.S. persons in criminal investigations and will prevent the FBI from using information collected incidentally from such communications in criminal investigations. Goodlatte said the bill does have meaningful reforms, and he would have preferred more, but that the option was not between a perfect bill and letting the FISA section sunset.

Also defeated was an amendment that would have prevented using a term related to a U.S. person in searches of FBI databases of communications of foreign entities obtained under FISA. Goodlatte said law enforcement should be able to perform such searches, which might have revealed whether someone was taking flying lessons without wanting to know how to land the plane.

President Donald Trump has downgraded Washington from a swamp, and placed the news media squarely in the center.

In a tweet early Monday (July 24), the President said:

Drain the Swamp should be changed to Drain the Sewer - it's actually much worse than anyone ever thought, and it begins with the Fake News!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017

The reference harkened to the days when Washington Post cartoonist Herblock (the pen name for Herbert Block) used to depict then-Republican Senator and VP candidate Richard Nixon coming out of a manhole to suggest the level of his political dealings and character.

That Trump downgrade followed a tweet Sunday about the "failing New York Times," POTUS' favorite description of the newspaper to which he recently granted an interview, and "Amazon Washington Post," a reference to its ownership by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, saying it was hard to read because all the stories that should be positive are "bad."

Those comments came amid tweets about "crooked" Hillary Clinton and calling Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, "sleazy" for appearing on TV -- he is a frequent face on CNN, for example, another news outlets the president regularly attacks, talking about concerns with possible Trump administration ties to Russia.