Slashdot Mirror
Government Seeks Dismissal of Spy Suit
The Wired blog 27B Stroke 6 is carrying the news that the US has filed a motion to drop the case the ACLU won in lower court against the government's warrantless wiretapping program. The government's appeal of that ruling will be heard on Wednesday, January 31 in front of the Sixth Circuit court of appeals. The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program. Turns out there's a Supreme Court precedent saying that if you were doing something illegal, get taken to court, and then stop the illegal activity, you're not off the hook. The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them. Here is the government's filing (PDF).
Court: You were spying and that's a very bad thing.
Governmnet: Yea but we stopped after we were sued.
Court: Yes, but that doesn't get you off the hook.
Government: Hey look! Behind you! A two headed moose!
Court: *Whrils around* Where? Where? I demand to know where!
Government: *Runs away*
Now IANAL, but that sounds like a reasonable summary to me.
I hate printers.
So, before, it was necessary and legal and there was absolutely nothing wrong with it and whomever leaked the information on it was a traitor.
... now.
Now, it's back to the Court and warrants are being issued and there's no need to take this to the SCOTUS because we're not doing anything illegal
Just for that reason this MUST be seen by the SCOTUS.
This is still a Democracy.
In this type of case the Judicial Branch doesn't really have much teeth. While they can certainly punish individual members of the Executive Branch acting on their own, they can't punish those acting directly under the orders of the President. If they did the President would just pardon them and that would be the end of that. The only way that you can punish the President is to impeach him and then find him guilty of a crime and remove him from office. But Congress certainly doesn't have the votes for that.
For these reasons, this case is dead. Anything else will just be a waste of tax dollars.
Right. So they pointed to the two headed moose and got off scott free?
I hate printers.
being taken to court after you beat wife, but then claim the court case should be thrown out because you haven't beaten her since the court case started.
er, yeah.
It's not done under the FISA program, he's trying to confuse the judge. What they did was they got 1 FISA judge to declare the whole program legal, not case by case with probable cause, not a FISA court ruling, a ruling of a single FISA judge.
An actual legal FISA warrant is done case by case:
Each application
for a surveillance order must include, inter alia:
1) the identity of the federal officer making
the application;
2) the authority conferred on the Attorney
General by the President of the United States
and the approval of the Attorney General to
make the application;
3) the identity, if known, or a description of
the target of the electronic surveillance;
4) a statement of the facts and circumstances
relied upon by the applicant to justify his
belief that . . . the target of the electronic surveillance
is a foreign power or an agent of a
foreign power . . . [and] each of the facilities
or places [to be subjected to the surveillance]
. . . is being used, or is about to be used, by a
foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;
5) a statement of the proposed minimization
procedures;
6) a detailed description of the nature of the
information sought and the type of communications
or activities to be subjected to the surveillance;
[and]
7) a certification [from an appropriate executive
branch official] . . . that the certifying
official deems the information sought to be
foreign intelligence information . . . that the
purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign
intelligence information . . . that such
information cannot reasonably be obtained
by normal investigative techniques . . . .
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/sojudge.pdf
The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them.
I wouldn't expect the feds to argue any different. King George and his regime have been arguing that the Constitution doesn't apply to them and the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to them. How could anyone think they'd accept prior case law as applying to them.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
So you say that because the republican part of your olichargy holds more than 1 third of the seat (one of them always will in your two party system) the president can order the gouvernment all illegal things he likes, because congress could never impeach him.
So how are your militias going? It is time to feed the tree of freedom, and I nominate every congrescritter that opposes impeaching BabyBush.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Really. If I ever get caught in, say, a murder, I just stop killing anyone and I'm free.
Right?
Oh, wait. Doesn't that mean Bush should also stop hunting Bin Laden? I mean, he hasn't crashed any airliners into skycrapers for years now.
The mind boggles trying to follow what passes for "reason" in your government. I once thought Bush is stupid. I don't do that anymore. I think he has some unknown insanity that is contagious.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In BushWorld, only serial killers are murderers. Mass murderers who go straight are OK.
That specific example will probably show up in court. If not in this spy suit, then at the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon war crimes trials.
--
make install -not war
We might yet see that day. Most of the republicans realize that Bush is dragging them down and that it was he who cost many of them their seats last election.
There's still hope. I don't really believe it, but as long as there is at least the option that Bush and his cronies spend a few years in Guatanamo themselves, there is still hope.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
would this mean that all file sharing would be fine, as long you delete your file sharing software and promise to not do it anymore if they try to prosecute you?
This logic is the essence of the Bush Era. The theory is entirely devoted to power. All that matters in life is to whom you defer in power. If Bush acknowledges that a court, a Congress, or a TV audience has any power over him, that's the end of the issue. Only after an apocalyptic fight with every resource possible, including illegal means, torture, spies, assassinations, exposing covert agents, bribes, anything to attack the force asserting power over them. Then, when it looks like the new power will win, they try to bargain for changes to allow them to do what they were doing in exchange for admitting they used to do it, then claim "we were right all along". If they still lose, they take whatever lumps are offered (until now, practically nothing except perhaps purely symbolic, from their Republican Congress), then just do it anyway in secret - or through proxies, either corporate or overseas.
Because all that BushCo has learned from politics is the Nixon philosophy "it's only a crime when you get caught". Because the Bush admin made its bones in the Nixon admin.
These people will do anything for tyrannical powers, including use ones they don't actually have to get them. The Constitution is designed to stop such criminal tyrants: impeachment. It works only while the Constitution still has more power than the tyrants attacking it.
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make install -not war
I take particular conflict with this statement. The fed's continued assertion that the program was lawful without FISA approval shows that they can, and will use this 'constitutional authority' again as the perceived need arises. On that basis alone, the balance of prejudice against state secrets powers, constitutional power of the executive brach during times of war and mootness versus the right of the people to use the last check in the federal system to prevent future harm is highly in favor of letting the case proceed.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Yeah, even without watching the news I know that the Democrats must've won an election somewhere, because all of a sudden I'm seeing that Jefferson "tree of liberty" patriot quote again. Odd that imprisonment without trial+torture+warrantless surveillance=absolute indifference, but now all of a sudden sweet liberty is being gang-raped by a D congress. I know that isn't your point and you were being satirical. just got me thinking about something I haven't seen since Clinton was in office--Republicans saying that government is dangerous to freedom. I know they're lying and they don't actually believe it, but it's funny to hear it again all of a sudden. Brings me back to my days of furiously reading James Bovard and thinking that Randy Weaver and Waco had convinced the Republicans that you shouldn't trust government. Yeah, I was stupid.
Frankly technology will always be able to beat out spying and unfortunately privacy. Using it as an excuse for ex post facto warrants and attempts at all encompssing listening systems should not be tolerated. Either we honor the deaths of all the patriots who died to make us FREE or dishonor them by giving the least liberty for even the most optimal security, it's too high a price. IMO using 9/11 as an excuse to reduce our liberties dishonors everyone who died then. This especially applies to those who had a better idea of what was happening and made their choice, if they did nothing they were going to die, they decided that if they were going to die they would at least die FREE and give others the chance to remain alive and live FREE and thus thanks to patriots, one plane didn't reach its target.
Read the government submission in the story. Section D.
....'
'A judge from the FISA court issued order authorising the government to target for collection international
i.e. a blanket authorization from a single FISA judge, a power the FISA court isn't empowered to grant, let alone an individual judge. It can only grant individual warrants in the circumstances above.
I'm not aware of any power under which a FISA judge can issue a blanket power like that.
This is the same trial, I think, in which one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs said he was studying Kafka as a refresher course on bizarre legal proceedings.
If the only goal of the plaintiffs was to seek an end of the government's wiretapping activities, then the government's request would not be illogical. One of the major disadvantages of the Common Law system is that it is so laborious and costly that only a minority of cases can actually be decided in court. Stopping a procedure to achieve a goal that is already achieved, would save time and money.
Unfortunately for the government, one of the plaintiffs is seeking civil damages, because documents that got accidentally in the "wrong" hands, revealed that it was being illegally spied upon. And this damages part of the trial clearly cannot be avoided by simply stopping the snooping, as it applies to the past. The US government's position on this appears to be that it cannot be prosecuted because all evidence against it is secret (how convenient) and should never have been seen by the plaintiffs, their lawyers, or the court. It did not yet file a formal request to have any memory of it erased from their minds, but I am sure that is only because they lack the technology, not because they have an scruples about it.
This, of course, is only the civil side of the issue. I think possible criminal prosecution is still open regardless of what is decided in this case, although it may have to wait for the end of the Bush administration.
As far as I remember, in some Italian republics of the Renaissance government officials were sent to court automatically after the end of their tenure. They had to account for their actions in office and clear their names of accusations of abuse of power. Maybe that is a system the USA should be considering again.
I love it when accountability works -- you know, checks and balances, blind justice, and so on and so forth.
Do as I say not as I do should be the new motto on the money.
These stories are free but worth money.
I agree that the government doesn't want to get in trouble but I think that they also do not want it banned for the future. This is the old two steps forward and when the people protest you take one step back. I heard Senator Hatch say that the Patriot Act is a good thing as we have had no terrorist attack in the US since. How many terrorist attacks did the USSR and Nazi Germany have that weren't staged?
RIAA: We caught the suspect sharing thousands of songs infringing our copyright. We demand this pirate is made to walk the plank.
JUDGE: How do you plead.
SUSPECT: Guilty, but I stopped doing it.
JUDGE: That is alright then, off you go. RIAA is fined 10.000 dollars for wasting my time.
This defence by the "US" is clearly silly. It would open a whole can of worms if they are allowed to use this as a defence. You would have a free ticket to commit any crime just as long as you stop it when it gets to court.
...if such a power did exist, then it would be unconstitutional. But they're not even trying to put a veneer of legality on it. They're simply alluding to authority of a FISA judge, and redacting the details of what they've actually done. So that the media thinks they're now under FISA and if the judge rules against them, they'll attack his career under the guise of 'activist judge helps terrorists'.
The actual change they've made removes the FBI from the loop, so now a political appointee signs off the warrant, under this blanket authority they assert they have. The involvement of the FBI is no longer needed, since that was only needed to meet the FISA criteria, which they assert they meet by default.
Heh. I've got mod points but I wouldn't waste them on such an eloquent confabulation as Parent. Rather, I'd like to know if you make your own meth or have a particularly good connection?
Can you 'unbreak' the law? Apparently the US government can.
The Feds always drop the case or try and have it thrown out when they know they are going to lose. They do this so a legal precedent isn't set. The BATFE does this kind of thing all the time.
This is a fine story.. but it was on NPR friday. Is this what they call "internet time"?
Maybe they should call it Slowdot.
Guess what, I have mod points available, and rather than spend them modding your posts down (dear god I want to, reading your post history) I find it damn near impossible to do so, when I checked your history, pretty much your entire post career on /. has been modded -1.
/. (I read the thing for 8 months before I made an account, I even remember kicking back and listening to "slashdot radio" from before the word podcast was used) was the same ol'-same ol' aka. a communal blog on "geek interests".
:)
Comparing moderation to what the Nazis did is, and I will be brutally frank, fucking deranged.
Get over it, the original
Back to your regularly scheduled mayhem
ps, a "troll" is someone who partakes of "trolling" ie baiting people to reply (yeah, much as I have done), not some relation to a fictitious creature.
...
The U.S. government is more corrupt now than it has ever been.
I wrote a summary of the corruption: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy. I hope other people will write their own summaries and send them to their elected representatives. I love the U.S. and the corruption is extremely unhappy for me.
--
U.S. government violence in Iraq causes more violence, not peaceful democracy. Violence breeds violence.
Violations of the Constitution and Bill of Rights should not be forgotten, looked over, or ignored.
Business trade secrets are vulnerable to interception and being revealed by the government,
Billions of Dollars of damage may Already have been done to US economic interests.
Where did this information go? Who gets copies of it? How long before someone's customer database ends up on the internet,
all because it was 'intercepted' by wiretapping?
War Crimes are War Crimes, those who commit them in the name of freedom, are still doing wrong to the American people and American economy.
Yes, but Slashdot is a good source for those who don't have the time to read or listen to or watch all the other media.
> Using it as an excuse for ex post facto warrants and attempts at all encompssing listening systems should not be tolerated.
It is my understanding of FISA that getting a warrant after the fact is perfectly legal if the warrant is obtained within 72 hours. The Bush administration refused to even do that! The reason FISA exists is so that someone outside the administration (i.e., at least one federal judge) is aware of who and what is being wiretapped and will hopefully keep them from abusing the power of the intelligence services as had been the case from WWII to Watergate. During the 1960's the government was spying on the likes of Martin Luther King, Vietnam War protesters, and many others who did not warrant it. The government even had the audacity to attempt to use the information gathered about King to coerce him to commit suicide.
and a single stoat.
I wish I were joking.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
then they should insist on the chance to argue it before the Justices.
This pattern of hyping a security threat and forgetting about it when challenged has come up before. Yaser Esam Hamdi was supposedly too dangerous ever to be set free, allowing him to see a lawyer was somehow supposed to endanger our national security, and when he finally did get to meet an attorney the military recorded the entire meeting.
So, when the Supreme Court ruled that a US citizen was entitled to say "put up or shut up" when imprisoned, did the government build up a prosecution based on the Qala-e-Jangi prison riot? No -- they cut him loose and shipped him to Saudi Arabia. Pretty much the last thing anyone who cared about the country would do if they really thought he were a terrorist.
We already knew that it wasn't a national security issue whether a security-cleared patriotic judge saw the wiretap applications beforehand (even after the fact if the government so chose). Now we know that the Administration didn't even think it was a national security issue.
So i guess if i had sent money to Libya or shipped restricted goods to Libya when it WAS under US sanctions, can i claim now that since Libya has been removed list of OFAC nations, what i did was retrospectively right?
What if i shipped PS2 from Amazon.com / elswhere to Afghanistan in 2001 and then retrospectively claim it is to be used by US troops there?
Considering the asshole Gonzales claims that Bush should be protected retrospectively, can i apply for protection under same precendences.
I say a lawyer fighting for a terrorist should claim the same thing.
This congress should vote with their money purse to suspend all funds from Iraq war. Let the oil magnates who caused this war fund this war since they earned trillions in profit.
Secondly, bush should be impeached, and once done, should be charged with manslaughter and crimes against humanity for the atrocities he committed against US citizens and Iraqi innocents who suffered. He always used to claim "the buck stops here. This time the court should take his tough-talk speeches and actually convict him as C-inC and not as president.
Lastly, pardon by VP Cheney(which he is bound to do), should again be overridden by a special session of both houses and and he should be put in the same jail he jailed Noreiga.
But first this congress should stop this petty bills and instead act with some spine.
Lastly Fox news should be fined about $150 million a day for lies about Obama.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
To refer to the executive branch as "the government" is incredibly misleading. Congress is now controlled by the Democrats, which means the president now has to get everything approved by a group with conflicting views. Then there's the judicial branch, which at this point is still trying to hold the NSA responsible. To call one agency of one branch of the government "the government" shows an incredibly poor understanding of hour our government works. For a while we may have been headed down a path where the executive branch was the only one with any authority, but thankfully this is looking to be less and less the case.
A stupid person can't figure out what the truth is.
Both realize that there is such a thing as truth and that it matters.
That realization is so fundamental to a nerd that we are wrong-footed dealing with someone who doesn't think that way. A liar would have had enough respect for truth to have planted WMD in Iraq. Bush didn't because only the decision to invade Iraq mattered. Like a salesman, he started with the conclusion and any argument in support of it was, not true or false, but either useful or not useful to the sales effort. Sales effort it was, and not policy development: Andrew Card admitted that the arguments in favor of the war were timed as they were because "you don't roll out a new product in August".
This just keeps getting worse....
It seems that this administration and the people behind it's policies want to selectively use and selectively abuse the constitution.
They want to disregard, eviscerate and invalidate parts of the constitution which provide protections to the people, checks and balances between the branches of government and state's rights; Bush himself has even, (on one occasion it is reported) referred to it as "just a goddamned piece of paper;"
yet when it suits them they claim that under this same document Bush has absolute power to disregard other protections given to the people, to wage war without oversight or congressional approval, to disregard the rule of law and conventions of war, and to supercede process when it comes to congress.
What really gets me is how oblivious most Americans are to how dangerous this time we are in is; not just to Americans but to the entire planet.
"which means the president now has to get everything approved by a group with conflicting views."
To put the brakes on his power, they have to pass laws. But he can veto those laws, so the true power is still with the President.
Congress didn't vote for warrant less spying on Americans, and this change he's made is cosmetic, yet there is nothing Congress can directly do.
Until they get the 2/3rds majority they can only delay anything that requires extra money, but as Cheney has stated, he will simply dissect bills into small pieces and hide them in the normal budget. So the budget is a weak means to curbing the administrations power grab.
We're not out of the worst of this yet, we have another 2 years of this crap.
"The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them."
Nothing applies to them. They are living in Alternate Reality W.
"You can't take me to court, I did all those things way back when I was President! I'm not President anymore!" - George W. Bush, Feb. 2009.
"You can't take me to court, Nicole isn't dying, she's dead! That's past tense, see. I'm not still killing her!" - OJ Simpson
"Oh, no, no, I stopped mailing out bombs a while ago, thanks anyway! Oh, I have a present for you. Go ahead, open it!" -Theodore Kaczynski
I certainly hope that the judges hearing the appeal (and the Supremes when it gets to them) have the intestinal fortitude to assert their authority. The problem with this whole case is that the Bush administraation does whatever it wants regardless of the law. A President who had any respect for the Constitution and the rule of law would never have started this program in the first place. The fact that Bush and his co-conspirators have decided to stop this program tells me that they have simply started another one somewhere within the government's huge espionage sector. They are indeed trying to remove themselves and their actions from scrutiny so that they can carry on as they want over in the dark corners of the room.
I have no confidence that Bush will obey any adverse ruling that comes out of this case. After all, to do so would undermine the "unitary executive" theory of government upon which he bases his dictatorial actions. I suspect that, in the back of his little twisted mind, he thinks he's immune to actions by the other branches of government. After all, "How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?" In the final analysis it's only the willingness of each branch of government to abide by decisions made by another that makes our form of government work. With his signing statements Bush has repeatedly demonstrated that only he, as the "unitary executive", will make the determination of how a law is to be interpreted or enforced. The Attorney General has recently stated in Senate hearings that the civil liberties embodied in our Constitution do not apply all the time: http://www.lewrockwell.com/eddlem/eddlem14.html. Given that mindset there is nothing to prevent this President from deciding that he is not subject to rulings of the courts and I'm sure that he will have no problem getting a ruling to that effect from his AG and others in his administration.
This country is facing a Constitutional crisis that makes the Watergate affair pale by comparison. Between a President who believes that he is not bound by the rule of law and willingly believes whatever twisted interpretation of same will allow him to achieve his ends while appearing to act within the law and a Congress whose members have, by and large, stood by while he has shredded most of the Consitution we have arrived at this point. President Bush has been allowed to carry out whatever course of action he wants, be it the suspension of habeus corpus, torture, secret imprisonment, warrantless wiretapping, etc. with nothing of substance being done to stop him. Indeed, the Congress has abetted him by passing such legislation as the PATRIOT ACT, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Anti-Torture Act of 2005 (which merely formalized AG Gonzales' interpretation of what constitutes torture, essentially allowing anything short of causing death). All he has had to do is to cloak himself in the flag and claim that Patriotism and a desire to "keep America safe" justify his actions. Congress is as much a part of this travesty as he is and the decision by the new Democratic leadership to "take impeachment off the table" can only have strengthened his view of the correctness of his actions. There is still some hope that our course can be reversed, but doing so will require a concerted effort by the Congress, the Courts, and the People to achieve it. Let's hope that the courts don't let us down and that they allow this suit to go forward. At least it would be a start.
Just my $.02,
Ron
Impeach Barack Obama for violating the Constitutional requirement to be a "natural born" citizen to hold the office of P
they can't punish those acting directly under the orders of the President. If they did the President would just pardon them and that would be the end of that.
That is not as meaningless as you seem to imply. First it still sets a precident, either way. "We will punish you as best we can" or "we will sit quietly and take it". Second, as long as a big deal is made of it by the press, the president will have to further embarass himself by pardoning them. It will keep this issue alive and public, perhaps long enough for people to really demand a return of those freedoms we have lost.
We are all just people.
The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program.
So..their arugment comes down to: we are no longer committing this crime and breaking laws, so therefore you should drop all activity to prevent us from doing so in the future and making us pay the legal penalties for our lawbreaking!!! Hmmmm......is there any half-wit or twit out there or would dare argue that this is even remotely related to jurisprudence????? [Be forewarned, I am a descendant of the Dutch-American reporter who first coined the term shyster to describe corrupt politicians and lawyers. (Shyster: a nickname for individuals in NYC who went behind the horse-drawn carriages and cleaned up the horse poop.)]
An interesting mention about that horrendous FBI op against Reverent King --- as actions have consequences, since those criminal FBI types were never prosecuted (probably promoted like Frasca and Maltbie) I wonder how many other bad types they brought into the Bureau??? Traitors like Hanssen? Criminals who sold out the citizenry and were responsible for murders by supplying criminal organizations with sensitive and confidential data? Those responsible for the attempt extermination of the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge??? (No, I don't hold with such beliefs, but nor does it give certain factions within the US government the right to assassinate members of the electorate.)
And did those bad FBI types eventually bring into the Bureau those clowns who ignored all those detailed tips preceding the attacks of 9/11/01.....
It would be like arguing that you have stopped beating your wife, but you retain the right to resume beating her if she "really needs it".
The governments play here is quite plain and obvious. Getting the case this far has taken a long time. They are seeking a dismissal so that the case will have to be restarted from scratch once they've restarted their wireless wiretaps.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Nothing applies to them. They are living in Alternate Reality W.
Nothing applies to them, because they have the ways and means -- the guns and the spies -- the money and the power -- and becaue they wish to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere.
-kgj
-kgj
I nominate "Original storytelling, updated three times a week." for Bush's assertion of WMDs in Iraq, imminent threats to the US from Iraq, and a 9/11-Iraq connection (which is still heard about 3 times a week).
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
It seems that this administration and the people behind it's policies want to selectively use and selectively abuse the constitution.
Abuse of office -- the roots of imperial Federal power -- old story. Take for example the early twentieth centure --
Palmer Raids, 1918-1921 -- "In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. By October 1919, Hoover's division had collected 150,000 names in a rapidly expanding database. Using the database information, starting on November 7, 1919, BOI agents, together with local police, orchestrated a series of well-publicized raids against apparent radicals and leftists, using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Palmer and his agents were accused of using various controversial methods of obtaining intelligence and collecting evidence on radicals, including harsh interrogation methods, informers, and wiretaps."
COINTELPRO - "COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) was a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (such as the Weathermen) to non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and violent groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders."
- kgj
-kgj
I am so tired of the current administration running roughshod over the rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. The Executive Branch seems at every turn to believe that the law and indeed even the constitution do not apply to them! I suspect that if we were to harness the energy of Jefferson, Franklin, and the other signers of the constitution spinning in their graves we could once and for all solve the energy crisis!
I've noticed that recently this seems to have stopped being a Republican/Democrat thing and seems to have become an Executive Branch vs. Congress sort of thing. Dozens of Republican congressmen are now speaking critically of our president and his cabinet publicly. While I think this is a very good thing, I think it may be too little too late. So much damage has already been done. Laws like the Patriot Act have already been passed and implemented and our President has too much power and momentum going his way.
We have secret prisons and our citizens (and non-citizens alike) can be tried in secret courts. Hell, we don't even have to try them according to the Justice Department, Habeas Corpus is actually not a constitutional right!
Don't forget that our president was elected based on a highly questionable election in 2000. Many people called it a bloodless coup! I have no explanation on how he was re-elected in 2004 and frankly, I fear that the power structure is already in place to make the 2008 election another sham. I suspect that the people that control this administration will stop at nothing to remain in control.
The president and his cronies lied to us about the threat that Iraq represented and they dragged us into an illegal war that has killed thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more. He sent our troops into battle without adequate protection and recently ordered even more in to Iraq despite the fact that we no longer have much of a reason to be there.
Our president is out-of-touch with the citizenry, he is not listening to congress or even to logic. He and his administration are operating not according to law but rather as they wish. The executive branch while part of a democracy is not functioning as if it is a component of a democratic nation but rather as if it were a dictatorship.
I think we need to place our hope in the third triad of our government, the one that is least democratic (it is not elected and its members are appointed for life). We must rely on the Judicial Branch to make the right decisions to keep democracy intact. Court cases like this one, and the one testing Habeas Corpus, are quite literally a test of the mettle of our country. Sadly, we have a (politically) "conservative" court, the majority of which were appointed by Republicans, the same people who are in control of our Executive Branch.
I am worried about what America is letting itself become. I don't think that our
leadership in the Executive Branch any longer has any interest in representing "we the people" and I worry that we may be too late to restore our country to what it was.
Standing and mootness are the highest bars to overcome when appealing constitutional issues. Since the court can only decide an "actual case or controversy," the governments actions here would seem to let them off the hook. Fortunately, voluntary cessation of wrongful action once a case has been brought does not moot the case, since the defendant could simply resume the wrongful behavior once the case was dismissed.
I don't think this argument will go far, but it is standard legal practice to throw everything against the wall, argument wise, to see what sticks.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Exactly - FISA was designed not to harass or reduce the amount of wiretapping, but rather to act as more of a recordkeeper. Our intelligence services were very skilled at not following the rule of law and instead applying thier own justification for doing things as was convenient at the time.
If you or I do this at a job, you have people who oversee you and tell you how to stay in compliance. FISA allows you to get the warrant after the fact to give time-sensitive matters precedent over procedure.
Bush wanted to stay away from FISA because he was doing things that are illegal in his scope of info gathering. If he had actual evidence of wrongdoing, or a true suspicion that could have been substantiated by FISA (which is so broad as to be ridiculous compared to what real police go through for warrants), then he could get every single warrant he wanted.
I think FISA has rarely (if ever?) denied a single warrant.
They are the recordkeeper, and their job is to record who gets tapped, why you think they need to be tapped, and how you are going to wiretap them. The neo-con line was always that laws got in the way of necessary action. Oversight gets in the way of criminal behavior - that's why Walmart has cameras watching the store. The cameras do not impede my shopping in any way, unless I also am stealing or invading Target without a good reason.
Hey, what's up -- the last time I looked, the word "balls" doesn't have a "v" in it.
The Government is basically saying that since they are now in compliance with statutory rules guiding FISA warrants, that the original plaintiffs, who won the suit under appeal, no longer have standing. Yet their pleading arrogantly begs for an appeal determination by denying the original case controls, and that the compliance to FISA warrant rules is not the result of them following the lower Court's determination. From the supplemental submission:
This is an appeal to a lower Court case which determined the the NSA had acted illegally, and any arguments questioning the standing of the original plaintiffs needs to take into account a reasonable expectation that the plaintiffs will be subjected to the same criminal NSA behaviours in the future. Yet this pleading does not even recoginse the lower court's ruling as law, instead conversely states that it is not law, that Mr. Bush's powers as President place him without the very constraints of the document which is the only grounding for the legitimacy of his acts, The US Constitution.
Mr. Bush and his Administration have in the past shown themselves to possess a preponderate predilection to engage in lies and deceptions, attempting to obfuscate many actions it engages and had engaged in. When the continuing facts had become public; the evidence leaving no doubt as to the Bush Administration's blatant dishonesty, and unlawful acts, the Bush administration then attacked the press as sappers of National Security. It is laughable to allege that Mr. Bush will not, as soon as he believes no one is looking, again unconstitutionally authorise unwarranted surveillance.
Mr. Bush is not above the law. The plaintiffs should still have standing in the appeal case, and this sham of a pleading should be denied.
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
More political hand washing. Nothing new here. Different spin on the same old game. Write laws to subvert the limitations of the Constitution and then get the SCOTUS to affirm that the law is good thus pushing the question of legal authority into the closet.
People: "Hey! You can't do that!"
Government: "We wrote a law that said we could."
People: "You don't have the power to write that law."
SCOTUS: "The law is good."
People: "They don't have the power to write that law."
Government: "No soup for you!"
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
"While they can certainly punish individual members of the Executive Branch acting on their own, they can't punish those acting directly under the orders of the President."
Really, after World War II many German generals tried just that defense. "I was only following orders." They were hanged.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The Federal Judiciary should stay out of political battles, as it cheapens their legitimacy in the public eye. It is a shame that they did not heed this, in the election aftermath of 2000. Still, it is not the President, and his unlawful acts which are being appealed. It is the NSA's unlawful acts determined to be unlawful, notwithstanding that they claim were predicated on a presidential finding.
These unlawful acts are surely Constitutional Violations. Whether the Legislature finds the courage to challenge this foul tyranny remains to seen. It seems that the only action which the GOP considers impeachable has not occurred within the last six years, since GW was gelded by Laura in 1984; obviously, there remains nothing to fellate...
Rush Limbaugh is a perfect real world example of an oxycontinmoron
> I certainly hope that the judges hearing the appeal (and the Supremes when it gets to them) have the intestinal fortitude to assert their authority
They'll need it, too. Have you seen the food that outreach programs give to homeless people? Because that's exactly what happens to people who ask too many of the proper questions when the Federal Government starts throwing its weight around willy-nilly.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I CAN'T be alone in thinking:
10 Print "PUT THEM IN JAIL."
20 goto 10
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them...
If there case is moot then so should every other persons case or cases caught in the act of ANY crime. This sets up the precedent of as long as we agree not to get caught again all is good.
Plaintiff: Yes, your honor I downloaded pirated movies, but I from now on I will download them from <insert online movie service>.
Judge: Ok your free to go now that your doing it the proper way...
Or even better...
Plaintiff: Yes, Your honor I know it was wrong to stab those fourteen ppl. I've gone to an anger mgmt class and it wont happen again.
Judge: Well, If you say it wont happen again. Your free to go citizen...
they can't punish those acting directly under the orders of the President.
Turns out there's a precedent for that as well. Everyone in the military is told that they are expected to refuse an unlawful order. Of course, these people aren't even in the military, so their case is even weaker since they could resign at any time.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Nixon was a pardoned criminal. However, he didn't even come close to the enormous, widespread corruption of the G.W. Bush administration.
Of course, G.W. Bush is someone with an alcoholic personality who mostly just reads what is written for him. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are also major abusers of government power.
Because your logical-sounding suggestion, that we put our faith in the un-elected judicial branch of government is futile!
I know this is true, because the judicial branch of government put Bush into power by judicial fiat, without any legitimate reason, but just because they wanted to. One judge's son worked for the Republican National Committee, and the other stated on election night that she hoped Bush won, so she could retire. She did, Sandra Day O'Conner, retire, after she helped to victory the bloodless putsch that put George Bush amd his evil minions into power.
Depending upon them to save us from a madman now is clinging to a very frail reed. The madman appointed two of them, and even before that was inserted into power...no help there, I'm afraid!
Very afraid!
Yes, I am a card carrying member of the ACLU.
Are you? Donate today.
I don't see what the big deal here is.
This reminds me of something that happened to me recently. I decided to go and rob the local bank but I got caught, returned the money and all charges were dropped.
Without disputing what you say about the Bush administration, I would add that the Constitutional crisis we're facing has existed since 1861, when Lincoln used the same excuse (emergency war powers) based on an equally fraudulent war scenario (the enemy attacked our fort which we maintain on their land, the purpose of which is not to protect them from foreign invasion but to collect excise taxes needed to run the national government and fund the military that will ensure that their State may not peacefully secede, irrespective of the right to secession explicitly stated in the Declaration of Independence and implicitly enshrined in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution) to suspend habeaus corpus, imprison dissenters (including Maryland state legislators and a member of the US Congress) without trial, shut down opposition newspapers who refused to submit to censorship, violate historical principles of the conduct of war by use of slash-and-burn tactics and starvation of the civilian population, and hang after mock trial non-US citizens (Native American chiefs) who happened to side with the Confederacy.
It was Lincoln (the first Republican president, now canonized and worshipped by all statists and both major parties, just as the almost equally tyrannical FDR is today) that used his own war to advance the agenda of empire and unchecked presidential powers, the supremacy of the federal government and the destruction of the principle of State's rights, and set the precedent for the wartime suspension of civil liberties, and excuses for war, of all presidents to follow. Even before Lincoln the Constitution was violated many times, even by Founders who became presidents, SC Justices and Congressmen(e.g. the Alien and Sedition Acts, the Louisiana Purchase, and numerous Supreme Court decisions), but Lincoln drove the first nail in its coffin. George Bush is merely the last in a long line of presidents who swore to uphold it, only to trash it the first time it got in his way.
We should always remember: the Executive, the Congress, and the Judiciary are all agents of the government; they have absolutely no incentive to diminish each other's power, and every incentive under our corrupt system to cooperate with each other, so "checks and balances" be damned. The Courts routinely allow the Executive branch's prosecutors to lie amd withhold evidence in order to obtain convictions; the Congress exempts itself and the other Branches, agencies etc. from most of the laws and and regulations it foists on private business and individuals; the Executive assumes powers not in the Constitution without serious opposition from Congress or the courts; the Congress passes Byzantine laws written by unelected bureaucrats that it doesn't even bother to read, and so on ad nauseum. The vast majority of the so-called Free Press is by and large the mouthpiece and cheerleader for one or another Big Government faction, and since almost every honest business depends to some extent on the sanction of goverment to exist, let alone thrive, the private sector has been emasculated and is no longer a force protecting private property rights.
So I would advise not putting any faith or hope into the Courts, or Congress, or any future president doing much of anything to advance anyone's interest but their own, and their interest is to ensure that Uncle Sugar steals the candy from us babies and hands it out to those who will keep them in power. Pelosi, Clinton, Kennedy, Gore, Rockefeller, Kerry -- meet the new boss, same as the old boss, and get wise.
Article 1 Section 3 states "impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from office. . . . but the party convicted shall nevertheless be liable. . ." Clearly, the party impeached, once convicted, shall then face indictment. Only once the party is convicted through impeachment can additional prosecution commence. That's rather apparent from a straight reading of the text, IMO. If the provision were supposed to be interpreted as you wish, it would have omitted the word convicted.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
"It is when a *lead* from a NSA tap on a foreign *target* that the FBI needs to get a warrant. "
No it's when one or both parties are Americans in America that the lawsuit is about.
"the FISA court has agreed to the administration's legal arguments"
1. A judge on the FISA court not the FISA court approved it.
2. Not within the FISA court powers to authorize blanket warrants so irrelevant.
3. Breach of Constitutional rights, so not authorizable, period.
(Score: 5, Funny / Insightful / Sad but True)
There is some precident for limited civil immunity for the president. It essentially keeps them from being kept in depositions for the length of their term. Note that it doesn't prevent the suit from being filed, just that it can't be persued util after they leave office. As for criminal prosecution, I believe that is more of a curtesy than settled law. Criminal acts resulting from his acting 'as the president' seem to be in the domain of congress. However, I have no doubt that the DC police would take custody of him were he caught beating an intern with a candlestick*. * The president, in the oval office, with the candlestick. Whoot, a new version of Clue :)
I read your linked article
I firmly believe there is the potential for greatness in all of us so, the list of people I truly admire is fairly small. Rev. King is one of the very few people on that list. So, intrigued by your article, I went ahead and read it. He makes some strong accusations but, they are unqualified. While that doesn't necessarily mean they are incorrect, that article is insufficient to act as a reference. Furthermore, it contains this statement:
"Hoover even had a personal vendetta against King. Of King's alleged unfaithfulness to his wife, Hoover said, "This is positively nauseating coming from a degenerate like King." However, to say that Hoover's statement about King is hypocritical is an understatement. After all, Hoover's biographers have divulged that the late paranoid FBI director secretly wore wigs and dresses and even covertly bore the name "Mary."
"
As it happens, I have come across some information on that (can't recall the reference, but you might try snopes.com). In any event, a pretty compelling argument can be made that the story of Hoover being a cross-dresser was nothing more than an attempt to attack his credibility. Note this has nothing to do with my personal opinion of him, only that the argument made is pretty compelling. Today, I don't think the attack would be as powerful since, as I understand it, being a cross-dresser does not preclude you from a secret or top-secret rating (at one time the rationale was that this is something that could be used to coerce you into reveiling sensitive data).
Anyway, seeing that paragraph - which I know to be challenged - in his article makes me realize that the whole thing needs to be validated...it may be true, but it falls under the heading of "don't believe everything you read".
A goal is a dream with a deadline
>"How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?"
That's a terrible, horrible, and plainly stupid thing to say the president is thinking. It's ignorant of facts, contrary to any known interpretation of the facts, and requires a completely perverted world-view to work.
Do you HONESTLY think that G. W. knows enough about the military to know what a division is?
It's been a long time.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
The almost total ignorance of U.S. government corruption among its citizens scares me. I love the U.S., and for me that means staying with it when it is in trouble.
Bush administration representatives have not been arrested because the rule of law has been suspended. Here is one of the many, many articles about that: Bush Is Not Above the Law.
GWB is only a figurehead. Yes, he is corrupt, but he mostly enables other corrupt people.