With the economy in the tank and Washington distracted by gazillion-dollar industry bailouts, it seems like forever since that buzz-phrase — ubiquitous earlier in the year — was uttered in this town.

You recall the issue: The White House wanted not only expanded powers to spy on Americans without court oversight, but also demanded across-the-board immunity for the telecom companies that had broken the law by cooperating under the program. After a few months standing up to the administration’s wishes, Democrats caved on the issue. Then it virtually went away.

With the arrival of news that Eric Holder has been picked to be attorney general under the Obama administration, however, the topic has resurfaced. In an interview with MSNBC this afternoon, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), a vocal critic of the warrantless spying program, said he hopes Holder will “re-professionalize” the Justice Dept. in the wake of the Bush administration. That means taking a closer look at the legality of the wiretapping program, he said.

“You have to have law enforcement with adequate tools,” Specter said. “But this business of warrantless wiretapping is not really in accordance with constitutional rights. And where you have the immunity granted to the telephone companies, that is still a festering wound.”

President-elect Barack Obama, of course, angered the left by reversing course to vote in favor of the wiretapping legislation. He’s forgiven Sen. Joe Lieberman. Will his hand of lenience extend to the powerful telecom industry? Time to tell…

Waas uses his scoop to build the case that contrary to the perception of Bush as a detached figure, the president ran the show when it came to the spying program:

According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit….Gonzales has also told Justice Department investigators that President Bush played a more central and active role than was previously known in devising a strategy to have Congress enable the continuation of the surveillance program when questions about its legality were raised by the Justice Department, as well as devising other ways to circumvent the Justice Department’s legal concerns about the program, according to people who have read Gonzales’s interviews with investigators.

The hospital visit revelation adds a new wrinkle to a story now part of Bush administration lore: Gonzales and Card presented an envelope to Ashcroft to sign off on a then-secret spying program the AG found legally suspect. However, Ashcroft’s wife and chief of staff had alerted Deputy Attorney General James Comey what was afoot and Comey raced to the hospital and successfully prevented Ashcroft from re-authorizing the program.

The reason Gonzales is talking to federal investigators is that the Justice Dept. is looking into whether the former AG lied under oath to Congress about the process in approving the spy program.

What Gonzales is saying will surely lead to another explosive inspector general report on Justice Dept. corruption. But by tying himself to the president, Gonzales has increased the possibility of using a presidential claim of executive privilege in order to avoid cooperating with subsequent investigations.

On the other hand, Gonzales’s statements to investigators could mark a breakthrough in probing the White House. “What began as investigations narrowly focused on Gonzales’s conduct,” Waas writes, “could easily morph into broader investigations leading into the White House, and possibly leading into the appointment of a special prosecutor.”

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County, Mich., a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the coming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed…

Carabelli is not the only Republican Party official to suggest the targeting of foreclosed voters. In Ohio, Doug Preisse, director of elections in Franklin County (around the city of Columbus) and the chair of the local GOP, told the Columbus Dispatch that he has not ruled out challenging voters before the election due to foreclosure-related address issues.

However, at least one expert challenges the legality of the plan:

“You can’t challenge people without a factual basis for doing so,” said J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting-rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Dept. who now runs the Campaign Legal Center, a public-interest law firm. “I don’t think a foreclosure notice is sufficient basis for a challenge, because people often remain in their homes after foreclosure begins and sometimes are able to negotiate and refinance.”

Such an effort would by its nature tend to favor Republicans:

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

Melzer also notes that that the McCain campaign’s Michigan headquarters is located in the office buildiing of Trott & Trott, a law firm that specialized in foreclosures, whose founder is a major Republican fund-raiser.

The article raises some interesting questions. Will the strategy be limited to swing counties in certain states? What, if any, preparations being undertaken to counter such efforts in November? Perhaps most important, should you lose your right to vote because you lose your house to foreclosure?

In June, Marc Ambinder reported GOP and McCain campaign officials would scale back efforts to prevent potential “voter fraud.” However, with another close election predicted, a substantial campaign to prevent some voters from casting ballots in a few key counties could easily tip the balance in one direction or another.