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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."'"
The makers of rules are never motivated to personally abide them. Rules are for you to follow.
Ergo, it is up to us to demand that rulemakers comply at least as well as the rest of us.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
His approval ratings are so low that the Democrats could safely bring impeachment charges without any real damage if they stick to what are the more sober charges:
1) Violating the 4th amendment.
2) Failing to protect the border, which is a legal obligation under Article 4, Section IV of the US Constitution.
3) Lying to Congress about the intelligence that lead us into Iraq.
4) Lying to Congress about the true cost of his medicare expansion.
#2 would go over very well with a lot of the public because in most polls, about 70% of the population, cutting across ideology, firmly opposes Bush's amnesty plan.
Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, and should have been removed. He didn't just lie, he lied while under oath in a court of law, which is a **felony**. Bush did far worse. The case against him should be a lot easier.
I mean, think about it, all Nixon did was send some spooks into the Watergate Hotel to snoop on the Democratic Convention. Suddenly he was Satan incarnate, and the whole country was on him like a cheap suit.
Dubya and his cronies spy on EVERYBODY, brag about it, torture people to death, invade other countries for personal gain, "out" CIA agents, fire U.S. attorneys, get cozy with the commies in China, kidnap people (extraordinary rendition)...
And nothing! Not a whimper! And the Red States think he's a Good Ole' Boy!
Seriously, people -- WTF???
NO CARRIER
Here's an idea. How about suing them and forcing them to stop? They've already demonstrated don't care about the law. They've broken FISA blatantly and repeatedly. And when they were caught they proved shameless enough to openly continue breaking the law. There is no reason to believe they will stop if we write more laws. Impeach them and sue them. Throw them out of office and in jail. It's the only way to restore the rule of law.
Too bad until somebody figures out that they've been spied upon and sues the government we can't get a court ruling either way. But I do look to the Judiciary for help here, because even in todays climate they have handed Bush several major wakeup calls regarding his conception of how the law works.
The most telling thing to answer the question though of "were these wiretaps illegal without any new law needing to be passed making them so?" is the Bush team's defense of the program. They have never argued that they are operating in compliance with FISA, that the program was operating within the written law. They have only argued that Bush, being the President, has the inherent authority to conduct such searches as he deems fit in the interest of national security.
Obviously Bush's administration has been pushing very hard to increase the power of the Executive, and this is part of that. But if there was an actual legal explanation for the program that made it clear that Bush was complying with the law, wouldn't it be better to avoid the scandal and ongoing conflict? He wouldn't have to abandon the stance that he can do whatever he wants. So when his best reply is "yes I ignored the law but I can do that because I'm president", that's pretty much all I need to hear.
I highly doubt that should it come to it that SCOTUS would agree with the President's views.
P.S. I'm sure someone will bring up the "other presidents did warantless taps!" talking point, but if you actually read what all these other presidents did from Carter on it was in compliance with the terms of FISA that allow warrantless tapping. Bush isn't even pretending that he is doing the same thing, which is why it's only conservative talk show hosts and not the White House PR who bring this up.
The enemies of Democracy are
And since NONE of the facts have been released, exactly HOW is it that YOU know who has and has not been tapped?
IF that was the case, THEN it would be EXACTLY the kind of situation that FISA was supposed to handle.
The White House is nothing, if not consistent. It will not give ground on issues it deems important. They are convinced that the only way to catch terrorists on American soil is to tap everyone's phones and read everyone's email. While it may be a laudable idea in theory, the practice is far from certain to net anything useful. This is the information age. The terrorists no doubt know what is being tapped or watched. They haven't exactly proven themselves to be stupid or they would never have been able to pull off 9-11. So while the White House is sure that they'll catch them red-handed, the terrorists are no doubt finding other avenues of communication that the government can't tap into.
Al Qaeda took advantage of our false sense of security, and this is just more of that, only with bells, whistles, and the cry of "See?!? There hasn't been a terrorist attack here lately!". We're no more secure now than we were then, just more aware. What we do with that awareness will count for more than all the tapped phone calls the NSA listens to.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I made another post talking about this at greater length, but the fact is that you're right that without a court ruling we can't say with certainty that this program was illegal. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that Bush has not claimed that he has complied with the law, and rather has argued that he does not need to comply with the law because the Constitution grants him the power to ignore the 4th Ammendment when he wants to, is all I need to know to form an educated layman's opinion that the NSA program was not in compliance with the law, i.e. illegal.
The only real question is whether the court will agree with Bush's interpretation of the Constitution. The question of whether he complied with FISA has already been answered. And somehow I doubt the Judicial branch will agree that the Judicial power of granting warrants is irrelevent to the Executive branch.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
Bear in mind, Republicans supported freeing the slaves, pushed desegregation, formed the ACLU, allowed women to vote; and were fought on each item by Democrats.
Bear in mind that the parties have essentially reversed. In the 1950s/1960s, the Democrats were the party of the South and the Republicans the party of the North. It's backwards now. What happened is complicated, but it includes a number of factors including the decline of unions, the rise of the Religious Right, the general polarization of the parties into a "conservative party" (Republicans) and a "liberal party" (Democrats), the increasing geographical divide between secular and religious values, and a whole host of other issue.
Nothing says 'welcome to the neighborhood' like a gunny sack full of dead squirrels.
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them? (Probably yes in this case)
Please stop referring to this as though it has any impact on the current scandal. Nearly every president fires all of the federal prosecutors and replaces them with their own appointees, INCLUDING Bush. Bush *already* fired all of Clinton's appointees, and nobody complained because that was completely normal, just like when Clinton did it. The Bush Justice Department fired *Bush's* appointees mid-term because they weren't prosecuting according to the political agenda of the President. It is nothing like the previous firings, including the earlier firings by Bush.
The enemies of Democracy are
Actually, in addition to being distasteful and demonstrative of Bush's disrespect for the office, it's quite likely that they were also illegal.
It is illegal under the Hatch Act of 1939 to use political office and federal funds for campaigning for any particular candidates. The 8 fired attorneys all allege that they were fired for refusing to do so. Numerous witnesses so far have supported these claims, including Monica Gooding's recent testimony in which she stated that the Republican party had engaged in vote caging as recently as the 2004 election despite a 1986 supreme court injunction ordering them to stop.
Gonzales has, of course, denied them, but has claimed that beyond very vague "performance reasons" he can't remember why they were fired, or even who fired them.
Of course, what's really scary about this is not that 8 US Attorneys refused abuse their office to promote Republican party political campaigns, but that 85 of them didn't.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
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
I've never considered the pardoning of Nixon a good thing. He we are not even 40 years later with a President condoning far worse crimes such as torture and warrant less wiretapping. Hell, there have even been things considered war crimes committed in the name of the United States which goes against everything the country stands for. At what point do we say stop, you have behaved like a criminal, it is time for us to treat you like one and throw them the hell in jail.
I think that would do far more to actually healing the country versus getting us to start thinking about other problems to tackle. International opinion has never been a concern of the United States and I don't think it should play a part in our decisions now.
I think we need to do something about the wrongs being committed against American citizens as well as the wrongs Americans are committing against others. If we're fighting a war on terror and Americans are now less safe because we can be stripped of our citizenship and shipped to Guantanamo bay where we can be held for more than 5 years without even a hearing then this country has some serious problems that should never have been allowed in the first place. No where in the constitution does is say that the government can torture people, and no where does it say that the government can spy on our own people. If we're going to become a police state then the legislature needs to bring it forward and pass laws to allow this all to happen legally.
In short, Nixon gave America some serious nerve damage, we just stopped more damage from happening and didn't go through any therapy to get back what we lost because we chose to just forget about it. We can't afford to forget about Bush and all the rights that we have lost without a constitutional amendment. That's not supposed to be possible.
Considering Clinton is still treated like the popular Jock of presidents rather than the buffoon who's illegal and immoral activities left a tarnish on the Oval Office.
Yeah, all those balanced budgets, that surplus, the prosperity, the international respect, the peace. I don't know how the country survived.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
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.