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White House Derails Attempts to End Illegal Wiretapping
P. Rivacy writes "If you recall, last month we discussed Congress's attempts to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President. The White House is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill. Their tactic is to stall on providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program, despite requests from the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation. '"Another critical priority for congressional oversight is government wiretapping of Americans, conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and, illegally, under the President's warrantless wiretapping program," Senator Russ Feingold said. "When the program was finally placed within the FISA process, an opportunity arose for the Administration and the Congress to move forward, under the law. Unfortunately, the Administration has yet to demonstrate a real interest in doing so."'"
I'd add:
5) Suspending the writ of habeas corpus (a violation of Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution)
6) Subjecting suspects to torture (a violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution, and probably many other laws)
I don't understand why people shy away from addressing these things. The Democratic politicians seem to be afraid to mention them. They are, nonetheless, indisputable acts with overwhelming evidence (which Bush has gone so far as to publicly support in his speeches; he doesn't even try to hide it).
I would suggest removing #2 from your list, because it is a vague accusation that I doubt could be argued legally.
Ahem... It was declared illegal last year by a district court judge.
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http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26489prs20
It is flat-out wrong to call them overtly politically motivated and not to call them illegal.
Incidentally, I am a registered Republican and I am incensed that Bush and Gonzales call themselves Republicans.
Check out http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/16/115444 /263
This is the testimony of James Comey, who was the acting AG while John Ashcroft was in the ICU after surgury. Al Gonzoles and Andrew Card sought to push a sick, bed ridden old man to agree to their illegal program (according to the AG, they guy who's job it was to determine that). It took the FBI (guys with guns) to ensure that the acting AG would NOT get pushed out of the way. Essentially, FBI direct Meuller ordered his men to protect the AG from the White House's representitives.
This is sh!t that's supposed to happen only in 3rd world dictatorships, not the US of A!
The White House went ahead with the illegal program anyway. And yes, according to the TOP guy hired to enforce the LAW of the USA, it was illegal!
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To add to what Jhon said, it was not even Congress that decided to investigate the perjury, it was Janet Reno and the judges overseeing the independent prosecutor. Someone approached Starr with evidence that Clinton lied under oath, he went to Reno and the judges, and they told him to investigate it.
Note that Clinton DID commit perjury, a crime. He was not prosecuted for it while in office because we do not charge the President with crimes. When he left office, he struck a bargain to avoid prosecution.
The grandparent is off in the weeds, but there's a perfectly good basis for impeaching Bush. He has plainly admitted to authorizing 45 wiretaps of domestic telephones without the approval of the FISA court. That is simply illegal. In fact it's a felony and it carries a 5-year jail sentence.
Haven't we ratified the Geneva conventions as well, and ignored that?
The US ratified the first four (through 1949) but not the last two protocols (1977).
They are a treaty. As such they are binding on the several states as long as the federal government considers them to be in force. But the fed (like any other government) abides by them or not as it finds convenient, and can declare them null and void at any time it finds convenient. (Meanwhile, treaties have no direct force within the country except through implementing legislation or executive orders. Such legislation is subject to the usual constitutional limits on congressional power. Congress' powers over the other two branches are severely limited. Executive orders are just the orders of a president to his underlings, automatically superseded by any later orders.)
Further, most of the Geneva Convention protections explicitly are not extended to terrorists and other paramilitary forces that don't themselves obey certain of their provisions - such as identifying themselves, wearing uniforms, not deliberately blowing up non-combatants (who aren't in the way of an attack on a "legitimate" military target), etc. The idea is to encourage everybody else to play by "the rules of civilized warfare".
Which is not to say that what the administration is doing is the right thing to do. Just that an appeal to the Geneva Conventions is not a particularly useful charge to make against a president and his administration. It's an attempt to seize moral high ground but has no force in law.
If you want to mount a binding legal attack on a sitting president it needs to be based on constitutional grounds.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Some of the intelligence reports and letters handed to the President before speaking to Congress have been made public. They're in direct contradiction to his statements. An agency reported that the aluminum tubes which the President claimed in a State of the Union address were evidence of nuclear arms buildup were not of a grade capable of deploying nuclear weapons. The man who investigated and officially reported no requests for uranium were made to an African nation was very surprised to hear the opposite claim by the President and Vice President.
There's plenty of direct evidence.
Lying to the public about a tie between Iraq and 9/11 is also impeachable, by the way.
Developers: We can use your help.
I believe you misunderstand the situation. Almost universally, all federal prosecutors are asked to resign whenever the administration changes - Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Regan, etc.. all replaced their prosecutors. Clinton staggered his over a short period of time after taking office to mitigate the transition effects.
Additionally, prosecutors are (by tradition) almost never, barring exceptional circumstances, replaced mid-term and certainly never for political reasons -- which seems to be reasons of this administration.
While not technically illegal, these actions by the current administration are distasteful and demonstrate Bush's continuing disrespect for the office of the President of the USA.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2007/03/14/AR2007031400462_2.html
Oh noes, the liberal media.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Do not compare what this president is doing to other president. Look at the actions He is doing. Doing anything else is a waste of time and folly.
/mpit/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[im-peech] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
The fact that other presidents may have done something wrong doesn't excuse this one.
"He was charged with purgery for presenting a false document to a grand jury... that is a felony offense. I bet none of you think he should have been impeached."
He was impeached, and he should have been.
"Why should George Bush, who hasn't been charged with a crime let alone convincted of one even be considered for impeachment"
do you know what impeachment means? your post doesn't seem to reflect that if you do. Impeachment does not mean removal from office.
Just in case:
impeach
-verb (used with object)
1. to accuse (a public official) before an appropriate tribunal of misconduct in office.
2. Chiefly Law. to challenge the credibility of: to impeach a witness.
3. to bring an accusation against.
4. to call in question; cast an imputation upon: to impeach a person's motives.
5. to call to account.
So an impeachment would be the finding of misconduct, or not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Wow. You totally drank the kool-ade. That's the most credulous yes-man line of BS I've ever heard, and that goes a ways.
Hmm... Let's take 'em one by one.
Spying on Everybody: How this works is, the NSA sets up filters at choke points in the network (where the majority of packets will pass through on their way somewhere else). They configure their gear to automatically start recording and analysing whenever certain phrases are detected. These phrases can be anything from "Bush sucks" to "bomb" to "protest march". The fact that it's targeted means they can tell the public anything they want about who they're supposedly after, while making it look like they aren't filtering all packets. Look up Echelon sometime. And that's the OLD system everybody knows about.
This is how the "Big Brother" concept works, by the way. It stifles conversations because you know they're listening, and you never know whether they'll take an interest in this particular phone call. This is why the constitution is supposed to ban this sort of thing, by the way.
And why would they do that? BECAUSE THEY CAN. Because it gives them more power than they had before. Because it enables them to crush dissent and remove opponents. Duh.
Next up... The FISA court oversees only what Bush et al allow it to oversee. They're supposed to ASK FISA for permission to do wiretaps. So far they've been IGNORING IT and doing whatever they want, so don't talk to me about FISA.
Next... Who have they tortured to death? Are you serious? THEY ADMITTED THAT THEY'VE DONE THIS. There are photos circulating around the web of bodies of people who've died in interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq. There have been coroners reports stating matter of factly that people have been tortured to death. Don't you read the news? Ok, fine, here's an article. It's from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has a nice interview for you: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1576271.h tm. Ok, here's one more, from Amnesty International: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR5106120 06.
Ok, next up... The paragraph about the justification for Iraq was just dumb, man. All of that has been debunked long ago, and if I gave you a list of articles this post would be a mile long. The fact is, Bush lied about Iraq to trick everybody into the war, and he keeps lying about it. I don't even respect your claim enough to discuss it further. Let's move along.
Next: Scooter's going to jail; that's good enough for me. Of course, Bush will try to pardon him -- no justice for friends of the president, don'cha know! Cronyism at its best. Totally unAmerican. And you know damn well the order to out poor Ms. Plame came down from on high, don't be ridiculous. Her husband outed Bush on the phony yellow cake claims, and the administration wanted to punish him for it. It's telling that they picked on his WIFE, it shows you what juvenile scum they are. These people don't deserve to run a world power.
U.S. Attorneys are NOT supposed to be fired for refusing to act as tools of a political agenda, pal! They're supposed to be civil servants guarding the interests of justice, not the republican party's attack dogs! So your suggestion, here, is crap.
Cozy with the commies in China = allowing China to hold all of our debt, not doing anything about trade imbalances with China, not taking any action to force China to improve its human rights record, not making any effort to force China to throttle back their amazing level of air pollution (which is contributing to global warming and air pollution throughout the region)... Come on, are you serious?
Extraordinary Rendition -- YES, which has been used against several TOTALLY INNOCENT PEOPLE who were torn from their families for a year for torture in a foreign country. Remember that poor Canuck who got yanked out of JFK in NY, s
NO CARRIER
The difference, as has been stated many a time and can be verified via googling at your leisure, is that while en masse firing of the previous administrations' appointed US attorneys is routine once a new resident comes to the White House, cherry picking them for firing years after the administration has settled in isn't common, and removing them because they wouldn't prosecute cases near elections that could possibly sway elections in the favor of GOP candidates (I have heard/read that pressing *new* cases near to elections, where the prosecution could likely be influenced by indictments, is against the professional ethics guidelines for the DOJ), is highly questionable, at the least.
This doesn't even cover how career positions (not appointed positions which tend to be politically motivated, and no one questions that) were vetted with regards to the candidate's political leanings (this was admitted to in the recent senate hearings 2-3 weeks ago), which is clearly against DOJ guidelines, as the DOJ career positions are not supposed to be considered in a political light.
EFF is already suing AT&T, so if anybody ever wanted to support them, now is the perfect time to send in a donation. If there's anybody who even has a chance at winning against the government (or their corprorate slaves) then I think EFF are the ones.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It means I work here.
The standard for libel for journalists is quite high, so it's pretty normal in the US for many journalistic "editorialists" to come from hyper-partisan sides of the political parties, and toss such accusations around with no fear of actual legal repercussions. Freedom of speech and all that...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Members of the United States Senate do not write or negotiate Treaties, their only power is to vote on them. If the United States Senate's only legislative duties for Treaties is to vote for them, did the United States Senate hold session in Cuba in 1975 to vote on a Treaty?
Islam, you mean the religion that preserved the knowledge of the Greeks while the Christians in Europe killed each other? It wasn't until the Mongol attacks and the rise of Saudi Arabia's Wahabi sect that Islam turned into what it is now. And it wasn't until the rise of petroleum(the Black Devil, as I like to call it, as it's the closest thing on this Earth to Satan, as it corrupts anything it touches) that the diplomatic tension started. And just so you know, the fault of Communism wasn't the concept of workers owning the means of production(that concept works just fine when it comes about peacefully) but of armed revolution, a concept which only produced even vaguely successful results once, and even that can be attributed to the fact that the Patriots fought mostly foreign soldiers in the American "Revolution" and that afterwards even the Loyalists were allowed to stay.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Well, to be honest, in the last 30 years we've only had one President impeached, and he wasn't convicted.
What does this mean? Clinton was impeached. Three times. He wasn't removed from office. 'Convicted' means nothing here. He was found guilty. On three counts. Period. There is no conviction. You are either impeached or not. You are either removed from office or not.
People who say 'impeached but not convicted' are displaying an astonishing lack of sense.
The opposite of progress is congress
Uh, no.
c ial/clinton/iguide.htm/ senate.vote/
Impeachment roughly equals an indictment. It has nothing to do with guilt - it is a formal statement of charges. House impeaches, Senate tries and potentially convicts. Only after the Senate convicts an impeached President is that President 'guitly'.
Get your facts straight before challenging others'.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/spe
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12
His record, as president, matches perfectly his business record.
The thing that scares me the most is I vaguely recall him saying something like, "I want to preside over the Rapture prophesied in Revelations" (which of course requires an Armageddon), and forcing Russia to change the direction their nukes are pointing seems like a good first step down the road to Hell for all of us.
I definitely remember him saying, "I want to be a war president."
(Holy fuck, when I started this I didn't realize that I'd find so much evidence to link to. Wow.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Byzantium preserved quite a few Greek sources as well. And Muslims killed each other at the same time they were preserving some Greek writings--read up on the Sunni-Shiite split, and the persecution new faiths like the Druze went through.
No, Muhammed led a number of attacks, and encouraged his followers to do the same. Islam spread over the Byzantine Empire and east into India in a very, very bloody fashion.