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.

Comments

They'll ignore the court order...

[SeaFox]

They think they are above the law already.

Re:They'll ignore the court order...

[FatMacDaddy]

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.

Re:They'll ignore the court order...

[Nimey]

The Bush admin are masters of stonewalling and delaying tactics. I'd be pleasantly stunned if this happens.

You *know* they're going to appeal this to the federal appeals court, and if they lose that one the Supreme Court will take quite a while to make a ruling, and there's a certain chance that the Supremes will make some bullshit ruling about how the EFF doesn't have standing rather than rule on the actual crime.

Re:They'll ignore the court order...

[truthsearch]

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?

Re:They'll ignore the court order...

[SeaFox]

What happens when they do ignore the court order? Nothing?

Pretty much. Undoing things and removing people in power is incredibly difficult in Government, not necessarily because the procedures are long winded, but because its a representative democracy so the people can't do it themselves.

If someone commits a crime against you, you can't put them in jail yourself, you can't seek charges against them yourself, ect. You have to have the police arrest them, but there's no rule saying the police have to arrest someone, either. So you really have to find a cop who's willing to go to the trouble to arrest them, and a prosecutor who will attempt to prosecute them. Of course, these are these people's jobs, but the fact remains they don't always do them.

It's the same with government. Even if there's an overwhelming amount of evidence the president did this or did that, and those things are illegal, they don't automatically get in trouble for it. Congress has to agree that the action was serious enough to warrant them getting off their asses to do something. And with party politics you'll have a bunch of people who will agree with the president and therefore feel he's doing nothing wrong, even if law books say he is. So they wont want to do anything, and without the needed majority agreement nothing will.

And the crook gets away with it.

Re:They'll ignore the court order...

[MillionthMonkey]

Repeat after me: Bush != conservative.

But he calls himself one, and so do all his fans.

I would consider myself a "conservative" because I'm generally comfortable with things working the way they did most of my life as I was growing up. Unfortunately the people now usually referred to as "conservatives" want to restore the world to the way it was a hundred years before any of us were born (according to a grotesque understanding of history which considers the Founding Fathers as Christian ayatollahs with beliefs that apparently contradicted all the writings they left behind). These people are "conservatives" in the same way that the "National Socialists" were "socialists". So I don't call myself a conservative, and I pay no attention to the "true" meaning of the word since it's commonly understood as meaning its antonym. The meanings of words change over time, and when the meaning of my self-description changes, I start describing myself differently.

Sudden outbreak of common sense...

[Glowing Fish]

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.

If I am not mistaken

[zoomshorts]

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.

Re:If I am not mistaken

[noidentity]

Yes, but Bush didn't some chick a blowjob, so he's clearly still a good president.

Re:If I am not mistaken

[Shadowlore]

You know what is really funny. A group of people saying Bush is stupid, dumb as a box of rocks, and a dunce all while claiming he masterminded a grand conspiracy and is pulling it off.

Even funnier:
They don't see the contradiction.

If you s/funny/sad/ or s/funni/sadd/ it holds just as well.

But here is a newsflash for the poster:
a decade ago the SEC and FCC were filled with Clinton appointees. And *he* did that with knowledge and forethought.
a decade before that, the FCC and SEC were filled with Reagan appointees; *he* did that with knowledge and forethought.

Are we seeing a pattern here? G
uess what, 5 years from now the SEC and FCC will be filled with appointees of the next president who will do with knowledge and forethought.

Can you see the pattern yet?

Furthermore, do you want a President appointing people to the SEC and FCC without knowledge and forethought? Wouldn't you think about putting people into those posts? While it can be argued these posts should be eliminated, I hold it rational to assume that if they are going to exist that qualified individuals should hold those positions.

That's one of the differences, IMO, between a mere malcontent[1] and a genuine dissident. A malcontent will just make thing sup that sound important or impressive, and label his or her target with whatever epithet sounds denigrating at the time. If it suits a malcontent's argument to say the target (in this case the POTUS) is stupid, he or she will do so. The next day if it suits the malcontent to say the target is a criminal mastermind, he or she will do so. Why? The point is not discussion and resolution. It is about bitching, whining, or an agenda to make oneself (or political allies) feel or look better. And for some it is about blog ad revenue.

A dissident however, has no need to make such contradictory claims. A dissident doesn't care whether he or she likes the POTUS, he or she knows the POTUS gets neither blame nor credit for the economy by right (for example), or can see good and bad, agreeable and disagreeable in, for example, the POTUS regardless of party, state of origin, campaign contributor beliefs, sex, or whatever else.

And finally, there is no "The American People". We are a very diverse bunch. We do not all agree on pretty much any given political or social matter. Malcontents like to portray this fiction because it lets them imply or claim that their target is not among the group. It's a form of the logical fallacy known as appeal to popularity. It is particularly popular for nationalist malcontents to portray a country's population as a people; and for the same reasons.

1: malcontent (a person who is discontented or disgusted); not the Shakespearean/English theater Malcontent.

Well, if it's required by law

[roystgnr]

Then I'm sure the White House will get right on that.

Re:Well, if it's required by law

[purpledinoz]

As funny as that statement is, how scary is it that now the norm is for the White House to break laws with impunity?

Re:This will be fun to watch...

[spun]

Scurrying for cover isn't their style. More like, switching on the light in a run down crack house and seeing the rats and roaches invade Iran.

Re:constituents

[Trepidity]

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).

Re:Why isn't this done allready?

[Intron]

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.

US Govt

[youngone]

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 ?

Re:constituents

[FunWithKnives]

Hillary Clinton is about as far from a socialist as possible. I have no idea why people trumpet this baseless notion. She is part of the capitalist status-quo, just as the rest of the "popular" candidates are. Her proposed "health care" plan, which is the only part of her platform that I imagine one could even attempt to call "socialistic" (though all of the main candidates have or will have something similar), would do absolutely nothing to combat the broken private system. True socialist change would involve placing the health insurance and pharmaceutical giants under public ownership, where they would be conducted as a public trust under democratic control of the workers. That is socialism. Creating a "safety net" or a "welfare state" is not socialism. Those are simply policies meant to keep the populace complacent, nothing more.

Also, I believe that if she were truly socialist, she would receive much less than she does in "campaign contributions" (read: legalized bribes) from corporations. Anecdotally, regarding her "health care" plan, if it would really make any profound difference in the current system, then why is she currently the number one recipient of contributions from both the HMO Industry and the Health Professionals Industry for the 2007-2008 election cycle?