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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.
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.
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.
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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.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
As funny as that statement is, how scary is it that now the norm is for the White House to break laws with impunity?
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.