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Subpoenas Issued Over NSA Warrantless Wiretapping
Spamicles writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to subpoena documents from the Bush Administration related to the government's admitted eavesdropping on Americans' overseas emails and phone calls without getting court approval. In a 13-3 vote, the Committee decided to authorize its chairman to issue subpoenas for documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program. Nearly any request is going to be met with tough resistance from the White House, and the confrontation over the documents 'could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.'"
It's certainly a request they can no longer ignore as much - but ultimately, what are the consequences if they don't comply? Will the president or any of his men be lead away in handcuffs, or will we have another 6 months of someone saying they have to do something, then they REALLY have to do something.
When Bush's team mentioned bringing 'ingegrity' back to the White House, they meant the kind of integrity that doesn't waver from their beliefs... at all costs, everyone else be damned. And they meant it.
Ryan Fenton
Yes. The terrorists.
After all, I am strangely colored.
It doesn't mean anything that these documents have been subpoenaed. When the White House refuses to release them, which they will most definitely do, will this Congress have the intestinal fortitude to fight back? Or will they pass more "non-binding" resolutions and whine about it while doing nothing? Judging from the past, I'm going to fully expect them to continue to let the constitution crumble and civil liberties die. I think that the big picture here is that we, as the common people of this country, no longer have anyone fighting for us, whether democrat, republican, third party, or otherwise.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Maybe so (although some of us prefer to think of it as "restoring civil liberties stripped from us in the name of fighting terrorism") but they sure had a lot of tools at their disposal last time around, and that didn't stop 9/11. Didn't even come close to stopping 9/11. You can have all the tools you want: hell, you can have a bloody totalitarian state if it makes you happy. The thing is, that won't matter in the end, no matter how much you spend, if you don't use your capabilities efficiently and well. The problem with the pre-9/11 era was that law enforcement should have been able to do the job, but suffered from severe systemic and organizational failures. By all accounts, they still are. So, it wasn't because they were lacking sufficient authority: they just didn't know what the hell they were doing. The terrorists, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing.
... don't hold your breath. Something else is going to blow up sooner or later, no matter how many telephone calls the NSA monitors. In the meantime, a lot of honest Americans are going to get shafted, one way or another, and a bunch of innocent foreigners are going to get ground up as well. We must accept that we are paying a price for Bush's "War on Terror". The only question is whether or not you believe that it has been worth the cost, that it will continue to be worth it.
Time will tell just how well our government officials use the expanded powers they've arrogated to themselves since the original attack. My feeling is that they'll be just about as successful in preventing future acts of terrorism as they have been at stemming the tide of illicit drugs entering this country. In other words
Fears of terrorism aside, I don't much like the direction this country has taken. Mind you, I'm not just talking about the Bush Administration: we've been off the beam for decades.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I cannot support impeachment. The phrase "President Cheney" scares me too much.
"Hey, the third matrix movie would have been good except for the plot,story, and acting." --AC
Since the late 1700's more people have been killed by a lightning than died due to a terrorist attack. Where is the War on Weather I ask you!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
Everyone knows by now that the Bush administration loses all important documents, and damned if anyone in the administration can remember any event that's occurred at any point since W took office. I'd bet we're in for similar, but consistent, excuses again.
Remember the anthrax mailings?
Did those count as an attack?
What was done? Who was caught?
I'm not American, nor familiar with your laws, but I keep seeing this point(President Cheney) brought up as a reason to not impeach Bush. Sort of a "Hey, he's the lesser of several evils" arguement I suppose.
:P Surely you'd hit a worthy guy eventually.
Is there honestly no method to simultaneously impeach them? Knock off both at once, and then the next guy in the line of succession takes their place. Or are you just worried that one will suceed and the other fail? Is the THIRD guy in line for the presidency ALSO an ass even bigger than Bush? It seems hard to believe that many despicable people would get elected
You may disagree with a lot that Bush has done in office, but to say he has done nothing is wrong. Iraq has been mishandled at times, but the war in Afghanistan was fairly well done and the right decision. The reality is that radical Islam has been at war with the US at least since the first Trade Center bombing. The US government is finally dealing with it.
It's so simple: How do you stop disgruntled morons from hating your country? Invade their country of course! The logic is flawless.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
As for being critical of both administrations: Good. But we're not talking about Clinton's failings here, we're talking about GWB's.
[Side note: To further address your obvious claims to my bias, consider the following: I hated Clinton. I think he was one of the worst presidents we've had. In fact, in the last 25 years, only George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan were worse.] as long as he
No real decision he has made has been the right one - his entire presidency has been one of either doing the obvious, or fucking up. That is worse than nothing in my opinion.
Besides, I was talking about what he did to be considered heroic. People were saying he was being a great, heroic president standing in the face of opposition just days after 9/11. What had he done so far? Press conferences and photo ops. That is what I was talking about - he was being called a hero simply because he was President when a tragedy occurred. but the war in Afghanistan was fairly well done and the right decision. Yeah, too bad Bush decided to pull most of the troops out before the clean-up was done, and more-or-less abandoned the survivors to the whims of rival warlords. Good job! The reality is that radical Islam has been at war with the US at least since the first Trade Center bombing. And radical Christians have been "at war" with the US for much longer than that (since about 1492, if memory serves me right). Hell, radical Zoroastrians have probably been at war with the US as well. Radical {insert religious group here} has always hated the idea of not controlling every government in the world. The US government is finally dealing with it. No, the US government is using it as a scapegoat -- unless by "dealing with it" you mean "making it 100× worse than before".
I don't think you can accurately say that George W. Bush did absolutely nothing about terrorism. In fact, I think George W. Bush has done more to benefit and encourage terrorism than any other world leader. Osama bin Laden only wishes he could inspire the kind of passion that has been produced by the actions and policies of George Bush.
Of course, there haven't been any significant terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11, and George Bush deserves the same credit for that as he deserves for their having been no major cataclysmic meteor strikes or earthquakes. Of course, he can't take credit for preventing hurricanes, but he sure did his part in making the one big hurricane we did have cause maximum damage to human life.
The real shame of it all is that there may well be a terrorist threat in the world today, but the administration of George Bush has dealt with it so poorly that I find myself questioning the very existence of the threat. To so badly damage the confidence of the American people is a very difficult thing to do, considering how much Americans want to believe in their leaders. We're passing the two year mark during which George Bush has had the confidence and support of less than a third of Americans. Even Richard Nixon wasn't so universally discounted. Even though Nixon did manage to hit a low in the polls of 23 percent (only 3 points lower than Bush's most recent showing in Newsweek), and that was only for about 60 days, 7 months before he resigned in disgrace. Fortunately for Bush, his Vice President is so much less trusted that the Democratic majority dare not impeach him.
Today, the headlines included a story of how Vice President Cheney actually tried to shut down the government agency that is responsible for overseeing his use of classified information. According to the story in that notorious liberal rag the Wall Street Journal, Cheney obeyed the law regarding classified info for the first two years of his first term, but has ignored it ever since. His office went so far as to argue that the Vice President wasn't really part of the Executive Branch of government.
The number of presidential signing statements, which are the executive equivalent of making a promise with your fingers crossed behind your back, is not closing in on one thousand. During the eight years of the Clinton Administration AND the Reagan administration together, the number was about fifty.
As hard as George Bush and company have tried to get the American people to fear terrorism, the people of the USA are learning to fear the President and Vice President (along with a cast of characters worthy of a Columbian dictator, like Abu Gonzales) even more. This is the saddest result of all, because as I said, Americans WANT to believe in their President. I know I do.
NSA wiretapping? Since nobody but the Justice Department is going to know the full story, thanks to a level of secrecy not even known during the darkest days of World War II, we'll never know how far it's gone.
The good news, is that within one term of a President who is a decent human being, Americans will regain their confidence in the basic goodness of their leaders. I'm not sure Barack Obama can win, though.
You are welcome on my lawn.
NSA: What NSA. There is no such office or department.
If there were, it's actions would be of the highest national security secret. Highly sensitive. Even admitting there were such a department would subject New York or Washington to a dirty bomb attack. So there is no such agency. Even if there were such an agency, I mean, after all, it's only charged with tracking terrorist. No true citizen worthy of the protections of the constitution is involved. After all, only CITIZENS are afforded the rights granted by the state. And only those we designate are citizens. We can't have just any old Tom, Dick, Harry, Iven, Shamus, Pedro, or Jamal covered by the same rights as some one that "belongs" here is granted. If you aren't white, Anglo-saxson, prodistant, you aren't shit, right? Why the hell do you expect to enjoy "one justice for all"?
You know what? I think America is strong enough to grant the same rights to evey person that is under our control the same rights of a citizen, except the right to vote and hold office. The prisoners at Gitmo and other sites not known should be affored the same rights and protections as someone whose grandparents were born here.
We are all illegal immigrants, unless we have native american blood. Just ask Chief Ten Bears. Oh, wait, we killed him.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
The problem is that the government always had the legal power to wiretap suspected terrorists. The Bush administration is simply trying to do this without oversight. This is strange because from what I gather, when the government is concerned, warrants are little more then a rubber stamp system, and are rarely, if ever denied. This seems terribly similar to the administration's battle to remove paper receipts from electronic voting machines. The only reasonable explanations that I can see for either of these actions are that they are trying to get away with something. But thats just my two cents...
Actually, most of the right-wing nutbags were saying that he should be impeached simply because he got a blowjob from Lewinsky. Their argument was that he was abusing his position, much like a corporate CEO would be abusing his position if he got blown by a secretary. And they also often said that he should be impeached for lying to the American people about it on national television. So, the point still holds. Lie about sex - get you character eviscerated on television. Lie us into a war that has killed thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of civilians - get praised as a hero.
I feel like death on a soda cracker.
Afghanistan was fairly well done and the right decision.
The right decision, yes. But fairly well done? Instead of going in full-force with as many military personnel as we could conjure up, we diddled around with the "Northern Alliance" for awhile, and then got sidetracked by a war in Iraq. Bin Laden still hasn't been captured, and Afghanistan's chief export is now opium. In what way has that war been handled well?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Yeah, he has done a lot. Before 9/11, al qaeda was not trusted and HATED throughout most of the arab world. the shia's (iran) would have NOTHING to do with Al Qaeda. In addition, 6 years ago, he was a fraction of the size that the is now. After we helped tilt afghanastan's civil war, we pretty much withdrew and turned the bulk of the work over to the UN. So, we went and invaded Iraq over nothing. Now, we have 155K troops in Iraq and are about to surge it even higher. All the while, we are LOSING afghanastan. When we first went in to help the "rebels" against the taliban, we put in 13K troops there. Taliban was destroyed there. They were in pakistan. Now, they OWN southern Afghanastan. Worse, the locals are starting to get mad at US, not the taliban. They simply want this to be over. They are approaching the point where they no longer care who is in charge but foreigners (us) are to blame.
In the mean time, back in Iraq, Al Qaeda now has a great deal more than a toe hold. They have a camp. And they probably have 10x the troops that they had just 3 years ago.
Bush is not dealing with it. He has botched it ALL so bad. In the future, this will make 'nam look positively angelic and well executed. As it is, Bush et. al. are absolutely the best tool that Bin Ladin has ever had. Bush has done more for him in 3 years, than he has done his whole life.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They can subpoena anybody they want. Bush & Co. have already decided they answer to no one. Lookit what's going on this week with Cheney's refusal to comply with a long-standing executive order regarding submission of materials to NARA... I think somewhere in the White House someone went down to the mall and got one of those rubber stamps made at Things Remembered, marked "GO POUND SALT." They've worn out several inkpads already, using it.
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Rotate the pod, please, HAL....
It's the AC's comments that are an insult to serious debate. The fact that they were posted AC is entirely beside the point; arguments should be taken on their own merit.
The government needs warrants to spy on Americans by law. If the AC had attempted to explain why these laws should be repealed, or attempted to rationally argue why the government shouldn't be bound by laws, that would have been a real debate. But you can't use bullshit terminology like "defeatocrats" and helping allying with terrorists and expect a real debate.
The same checks on government that protect terrorists protect the rest of us American citizens as well. Having to obtain a warrant is a way to make sure that the government is only spying on people it's supposed to. Allowing wiretapping without a warrant is trusting the government not to secretly abuse this power. If you really trust the government not to abuse this power, you have much more faith in government than I do. And if you don't think the government should have to obey laws, then you have more faith in government than anyone I know.
If granting the government the ability to spy on whomever it wants (ie. not requiring a warrant) doesn't bother you, then I take it you either believe that this is a temporary measure until the war on terror is won, or you don't believe much in privacy. Given advances in technology, the nature of privacy in our society really is in flux, so believing that we need to give up privacy isn't an absurd proposition. But you should say so explicitly: "Warrantless wiretapping is okay because we should no longer have an expectation of privacy." I disagree with this position, but it isn't completely unreasonable, and then we move the debate there instead.
If you think the war on terror is temporary, then we should consider how it might end. Is the government really going to do away with terrorism as a method? I don't think it's likely, any more than ending war or poverty. Will the war on terror end when no significant numbers of Muslim fundamentalists believe that terrorism against Americans is morally justified? Maybe waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay and the occupation of Iraq will hasten the arrival of that day, though I find this unlikely. Will the war on terror end when Osama bin Laden is captured or killed and Al Qaida is destroyed? These are more reasonable goalposts, but then again the government should make them explicit. They haven't. The government declared war on "terror" not on Al Qaida. We're left to trust the government to make the decision that the war on terror is over, and the Bill of Rights can be restored. Again if you really think that government should be trusted to make these decisions in secret, then you have much more faith in government than I.
There. Now that's a real debate.
KTHXBYE
"...Al Franken is not a credible source for content. You wouldn't accept a quote from Rush Limbaugh. The 911 Commission's Report is a better source and it was critical of both administrations...."
I can understand your intention in that argument however only one of those two gentlemen would actually use the 911 Commission's Report in a debate. It's not the pill-popper.
If you think
The real problem came afterwards, when Bush and the administration set their sites on Iraq. Bin Laden had not been caught, and every story about Afghanistan reminded the American public of that fact, so of course Bush did everything he could to get it out of the news -- which for him effectively meant ignoring it completely and hoping it would go away. Mix that with Bush's insane hard-on for Sadam, and we suddenly have a media frenzy pointed elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate US troops, and unfortunate Afghani population, had to make do as best they could in one of the most war-torn countries in the world with no real support. The fact that the entire country hasn't turned into pile of smoking rubble tells me that the people there really wanted this to work; if we had sent in the necessary troops to keep peace (a fraction of what we've sent to Iraq), and used the US's considerable power to build the country back up, we would probably have a working democracy there now, and it could be a near-first-world country.
Even Federally granted phone intercepts can be given on the lightest grounds. I have witnessed first hand what damage to lives and families telephone intercepts can do. I can only imagine what this extreme abuse of power may have these drunkards doing.
Of course it was preventable. A lot of good that did.
It would have done a lot more good if the Republicans hadn't been screaming that Clinton was "wagging the dog" while they were trying to invent a reason to impeach him. It also would have helped if Bush had negotiated with the Taliban when they offered to hand over Bin Laddin.
Yes, but the sleeper cells came to the US under his watch
Sleeper cells! Oh, the drama!
Or you can be honest, and admit that a government that respects people's privacy is not going to be able to prevent every possible attack. Clinton knew this, and Bush may know this although he doesn't act like it, although he's probably just giving in (or taking advantage of) the impossible task that the public is demanding.
Problem: all the successes we've had fighting terrorism have come from the boring, "pre 911 mindset", Constitution-abiding law enforcement. On the other hand, the Administration has it's Patriot Act, waterboarding, NSA wiretapping, kidnappings, endless detention w/o trial, and yet is too fucking incompetent to know when an Arab company is about to take over administration of the largest ports in the U.S.
Fortunately for Bush, his Vice President is so much less trusted that the Democratic majority dare not impeach him.
Easy solution: impeach Cheney first, then Bush.