US Senate Asks for National Security Letter Explanation

A group of U.S. Senators are asking the FBI to explain a recent controversial National Security Letter sent to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive was able to defeat the request with help from the EFF and the ACLU this past April. "The Internet Archive's case is only the third known legal challenge to NSLs, despite the fact that the the FBI issues tens of thousands a year -- more than 100,000 such letters were issued in 2004 and 2005 combined. But despite the lack of legal challenges from recipients at ISPs, telephone companies and credit bureaus, successive scathing reports from the Justice Department's Inspector General have found illegal letters and a willy-nilly culture within the bureau towards tracking their usage."

Comments

Re:Penalties

[sumdumass]

I find it interesting that only 3 of them were involved with an investigation into the party. It always interests me when people start fishing around for accusations and when they don't stick, they throw another out there. You see, at first, the accusations were that All of the attorneys were not prosecuting illegals (immigrants). Then when we realized that this actually meant that they weren't doing their jobs and probably deserved to be fired for ignoring laws being broken and presented to them for prosecution. So now it is because a couple of the attorneys were investigating the party. Not all of them, just a couple of them.

I wonder what all the accusations were when Clinton fired all the US attorneys?

Re:Obligatory Strawman (I'm being ironic here)

[sumdumass]

Oh, you gutless little bitch, trying to play the victim. Read back. Who started this by responding to my original post calling me an idiot at least half a dozen times and ending with "you should be executed or at least castrated and forbidden to speak to children to remove the extreme stupidity you present from the gene pool." Now you are going to get all whiny on me and pretend to be so high minded and, boo hoo, you simply disagree with me. PISS OFF.

Actually, I started off by calling candidates who would support your ideas idiots. So you can cut your half a dozen times down quite a bit.

When did Bush explain to the American public why he lied to Congress? I definitely missed that. (And don't try to weasel with that "we had bad intelligence" crap. Even you aren't stupid enough to swallow that.)

Well, first off what did he lie to congress about? Are you talking about the state of the union address that was corrected the very next day and anyone with access to a radio, TV, or newspaper would have known that. Or are you talking about the WMDs that there was specific inteligence to support. Hell, All during the Clinton years, the idea was the same and then all the after 2 years in office we are supposed to ignore all that because france said it wasn't true. well, here's a hint. France hasn't won a war in so long, nobody trusts their positions because they know it leads to defeat.

When did he say he would no longer use signing statements as an attempt to (unconstitutionally) evade enforcing laws he didn't like? Missed that too.

How it is unconstitutional to use signing statements of the law can't be passed to cover him in the first place. You see, here is where the problems arise, You don't know what all of his signing statements are and you just assum that congress has the ultimate authority over the other branches by passing a law. Well, here is a hint for you. The roles and positions the different branches play can't be don't by another branch because the constitution gives each of those branches the power have. Congress certainly coudln't pass a law saying it is illegal for the supreme court to find any law they pass unconstitutional and then start passing unconstitutional laws. The signing statements refer only to the the executive branch and how it will be run. as preposterous as it sounds, you are sitting here coming off like they can stop another branch of the government from doing what the constitution tells them they can do. Why hasn't congress challenged these signing statements? Is it because they know their limits in power but want to incite you so you will be a tool for their agenda?

No, it is claimed that water torture has been stopped. Stress positions, isolation, temperature extremes, sleep deprivation, humiliation, etc., remain as popular as ever with your crowd.

And you consider that as torture. I don't and I'm wondering why you would. BTW, we already passed a pretty comprehensive law covering most of that so I'm not sure what the problem is. Do you know this first hand or are you just repeating whatever the conspiracy kooks website told you?

It has nothing to do with me or where I (or anyone else) is sitting. The vast majority of experts agree that torture is pointless and counter-productive. The military, given the chance to decide on their own, doesn't want anything to do with it. It is only the arm chair pussies like Rumsfeld and Cheney who wanted it. The new president, be it Obama or (especially) McCain isn't going to spend a split second even considering it, no less six months. That's "getting real".

The problem with torture is that there is no definition for it that doesn't involve an interpretation of some kind at some point. All of the torture methods you listed above sound like a college kids life in a northern state. How long before the kid is guilty of torturing hi

Re:Obligatory Strawman (I'm being ironic here)

[sumdumass]

Your better defense would have been to admit that you don't write well enough for anyone to discern precisely who you are insulting. Given that you have spewed insults on a couple of continents of people it is pretty clear you aren't that discriminating anyway. It could be possible that my writing isn't clear. But that wasn't a defense, it was just a clarification. You see, I started off by calling any candidate that would seriously look into doing the things mentioned, especially within 30 days of taking office would be an idiot. However, I then started getting pissed at the type of person dumb enough to think that would be proper.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that 2nd sentence was a question. It's as good a place to start as any because it is utter nonsense and fiction, as usual.

No, it was a full sentence, and it wasn't a question, it was a question that answered itself.

Ignoring the significant evidence otherwise, let's assume the Niger uranium story made its way into the speech "by accident". You would be the only person to remember such an immediate correction. I refuse to play the game where you pull something out of your ass and I spend time proving you're lying. So show me the proof. Give me a traceable citation from January 29, 2003 to prove what you say. It should be easy, right?

Ok. lol. It wasn't jan 29th, it was more like feb 13 less then 2 weeks later with the Joe wilson editorial that started the entire plame deal. In march (7th), Mohamed El Baradei the IAEA director general tells the UN that they are a forgery. On march 9th, Powell acknowledges that the Niger uranium might be a forgery and congress had access to all that material we actually went to war. Of course all that doesn't matter because congress passed the resolution allowing the US to invade Iraq well before the state of the union speech in 2003. The congressional authority was given in October of 2002.

Wow, right out of the right wing lunatic play book. Never admit mistakes. Blame Clinton and the French, instead. Keep running that play for another election cycle or two, please!

Wow, You sure are confused about things. First, I didn't blame anyone. I said that it had them buffaloed too. Can you understand why people still call pluto a planet? I mean things were a way for so long, it is assumed to be true and understandable when someone else interprets things the same exact ways. I mean it would take a moron to include all that they know after the fact when interpreting the synopsis of the facts at the time of the fact. Oh well, what ever serves your agenda I guess.

Yup, a brilliant Bush move. Ignore the French. So what if they had much better contacts within the Hussein government than the US? They eat cheese! And ignore the Germans. And the UN. And even the British who wanted to wait on the UN. And, god forbid, don't wait for the UN inspectors to finish their work - they might report there was nothing to find and we would be denied shock and awe!

Well, actually as it turns out, they did have much better contacts with Husein. It seems that they were manipulating the oil for food programs and making secrete oil deals with Iraq that made the UN sanctions ineffective. They in essence cause the war to be inevitable in two ways. The first was to defeat international efforts at using sanctions to force compliance by their secrete and illegal oil deals and the second was by declaring a veto on the use of force in the UN when we were attempting to pressure Iraq into compliance with the threat of violence. People who claim it is a war over oil probably don't know how true that are(it sure isn't being pumped into America). France's pursuit of oil turned Iraq into a situation where war was inevitable. There, Now I blames france good and proper.

And all that "intelligence". You know, the plagiarized s