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Court Orders White House to Disclose Telecom Ties
rgiskard01 writes "Glenn Greenwald is reporting at Salon.com on a win for the EFF, in the battle for clarity regarding the telecom surveillance scandal. A federal judge ordered the Bush administration yesterday to accede to the EFF's Freedom of Information Act request. Assuming the White House follows the court order, they would have to make public their lobbying ties to the telecoms industry. 'These disclosures will reveal ... which members of Congress McConnell and other Bush officials privately lobbied. As an argument of last resort, the administration even proposed disclosing these documents on December 31 so that -- as EFF pointed out -- the information would be available only after Congress passed the new FISA bill. The court rejected every administration claim as to why it should not have to disclose these records.'" Greenwald goes on to argue that the order should be leveled against Senators as well, to get a sense of who else is in Ma Bell's pocket.
The article is a bit dense, but those documents don't relate to the spying, only the the telecom immunity bill which was proposed.
Nature journal lied in Britannica vs Wikipedia Ask to retrac
Has anyone else noticed how much that tag is used?
If it is used every day on a different issue, it seems that common sense isn't as rare of an asset as was once believed.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
The FCC and SEC are all filled with Bush Appointees.
He did this with knowledge and aforethought. Bush is
really a traitor to the American people.
My bet: They won't ignore it. They'll use the national security ploy to deny the order or delay compliance until they can get legislation passed to make it a non-issue. It's not like Congress has the guts to oppose anything that purports to protect us from terrorists.
This space intentionally left blank.
And what's more, the EFF would need to conjure up someone worth voting for. As it currently stands, the Democrats control both houses of Congress and are poised to pass a telecom-immunity bill. So voting to maintain Democratic control is not going to do anything there. Voting to switch control to the Republicans, meanwhile, will probably also not improve matters (if anything they'd pass the same telecom immunity bill, only with more enthusiasm).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What does the lame duck atmosphere, approval ratings, or economy have to do with anything? This administration has already accomplished most of their goals and will suffer no consequences for any actions. The president doesn't care at all about his approval ratings or changing the economy. Everything has gone pretty much according to plan, so why would they not ignore this court order?
Developers: We can use your help.
The justification for not releasing the names of Cheney's Energy Policy group members was that the Administration didn't think they had to, even though the FACA has been on the books since 1972. However the court ruled that they did in April 2004, so we expect those names any day now.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
As funny as that statement is, how scary is it that now the norm is for the White House to break laws with impunity?
Ah, I see some cowardly conservative mod has used the (-1, Overrated) ploy.
Taco, it'd sure be nice if you'd make overrated and underrated meta-moddable or just do away with them entirely.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That's a pretty good guess as to how the initial release will work. Then the EFF will have to file a lawsuit or something arguing that the documents are too redacted and don't fulfill the request. Then we're back in a long, protracted court case.
Sorry guys. Your system of Government has been up for sale for a long time now. The highest bidders are just sorting themselves out now. Democracy has ended in the US, is it now an oligarchy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligarchy or a Plutocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy ?
I'm not sure if are joking or not, but this is a real issue.
In politics, what you describe is called "bullring tactics". It is a very well known and effective way to keep the population under control, by diverting their attention toward an outside "enemy". An enemy that threatens the very thing that makes us human, perhaps (Nazi). Or someone that threatens our way of life (Terrorists). Or someone who corrupts our children (Commies).
This happened and still happens on many countries, not just USA. The USA is just the more obvious one. Maybe because they have such much presence on the media. Actually, you can see it happening everywhere if you study the history of any country. Sometimes the enemy is fabricated. Sometimes the enemy is real (ie: the politics got lucky and didn't have to create one). The tactics is always the same.
This is so widely known and used that you can even read about it on books (1984, Chapterhouse Dune etc). You can see it in your own country (doesn't matter where you live). You can see it in your church (in case you belong to one).
The saddest thing of all, even if you and everybody else can see plainly what these leaders are doing, 99% of the population accept it. I don't know why. Maybe people just don't want the responsibility. Maybe they like to be tricked. Maybe it is because a leader is that makes us a people (don't laugh, it is a verifiable historical truth). Maybe they just don't care. It usually takes things getting pretty serious on a personal level (something like the great depression or even worst) for they to do something.
Enters Caesar. Bullrings tactics, add some breads and circus, and you have a very simple recipe for keeping the population under control. How simple ? Take a look at the presidents of countries like Venezuela and Brazil. I'm mentioning those just to take a bit of the "anti-Bush" flavor out of this post.
Let the USA government continue to waste the country's money on all these wars for a decade or two more, and suddenly Iran and North Korea are no longer the real problem anymore.
Even if you agree with what your government is doing, don't simply accept it. Ask yourself also WHY they are doing it. Do actions and words agree ?
This EFF court case is a very good way to find out real motivations. I, for one, praise them, and hope they can manage to get the information. If the government tries to hide it, thats ok too. That by itself is enough of a message, telling us, again, what the real motivations are.
morcego
You do realize that the founding fathers also said how the checks and balances were to be made right?
They didn't give all out authority of one branch to interfere or "express oversight" with the another. It has to be done within the context of the constitution. This is something that makes me believe this would be overturned in future appeals.
At the risk of being read sockpuppetty, "nut job" is a hatchet job. From Bill Maher to Sean Hannity, everyone on TV is a jerk -- yes? -- supporting one party's lizard so the other party's lizard won't win. I don't hear crazy from Ron Paul. I hear it from them.
Drugs, taxes, and Iraq are all in the Ron Paul platform, aren't they? Questioning the system? Right? And from a guy genuinely more interested in policy than his political career?
Can I ask why your image of the ideal presidential candidate, then, is a guy who (1) found celebrity lifting weights, (2) has conventional ties to a "side you're fed up with," (3) isn't running and (4) legally can't?
Directly: which Republican candidate do you want on the ballot? It's not an abstract choice.
I did process of elimination, and once I crossed out guys who remind me of Bush and guys who deny evolution, the guy left was the one whose contrasts I like. That Fox News seems to hate him is gravy.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Yes, and this is not an accident; it's an unusually good example of Newspeak. The word didn't just gradually evolve its meaning over time, but instead it took on its completely opposite meaning in less than a decade. This is what happens when masses of people identify with a term without knowing anything about its history. The people who identify with a party or a label simply because their parents did are not doing themselves or their parents any favor. You need neither a conspiracy nor a coincidence to explain this. As politicians and others with a media presence continued to call themselves "conservative" the former meaning simply became less and less true. So long as the change isn't too sudden, those who use the term will continue to receive the backing and political support of those to whom the term appeals. This works so well because party affiliation is best understood as a poor substitute for thinking for yourself.
The practical effect this has had is that there is no longer a choice about whether state power and size should continue to increase. You may elect either a Democrat or a Republican and in either case this will be the result; all of the arguments in the mainstream media are about how and why it should be done. Whether it's for the war effort, for senior citizen prescription drug entitlements, for a public health care system, or to bail out irresponsible home buyers who signed the dotted line on a loan they couldn't afford -- and of all of these, only the military action is a legitimate power of government -- there is always some justification being sold to us as to why government should be expanded with little attention paid to the full consequences of doing so.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
They will loudly denounce all the very things they considered so vital. The 180-degree turn will be fun to watch, but also sad, in that I know now that they're all lying would-be totalitarians who only distrust government because they don't happen to like who's in charge that week.