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Rep. Jane Harman Focus In Yet Another Warrantless Wiretap Scandal
Many different sources are talking about the latest scandal surrounding the warrantless wiretapping program. Incriminating evidence against California rep. Jane Harman was apparently captured some time ago on a legal NSA wiretap. However, Attorney General Gonzales supposedly intervened to drop the case against her because (and this is where the irony meter explodes) Bush officials wanted her to be able to publicly defend the warrantless wiretap program. "Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as 'the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee' to repeatedly praise the NSA program as 'essential to US national security' and 'both necessary and legal.'"
The point is that this was NOT illegal. Agents were investigating foreign operatives using warrentless wiretapping. They caught the foreign operatives bribing a congresswoman. The Bush administration declined to press charges because said congresswoman supported warrantless wiretapping.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
no, in fact TFA says that's not the implication at all. Harman has been a long-time supporter of the warrantless wiretapping program.
The (newly revealed) crime is Antonio Gonzalez using his authority to halt a criminal investigation into a key political ally of the Bush administration.
The original crime is Harman offering a quid-pro-quo with a foreign agent. Which, by the way, was captured on a legally requested wiretap.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Who says it was illegal? We may WISH it were illegal, we may get it declared illegal, it may in fact be unconstitutional, but the fact is, the agents performed what was at the time a LEGAL warrantless wiretap against foreign agents and happened to catch them bribing a congresswoman. They tapped FOREIGN AGENTS IN ISRAEL. There is no US law against tapping foreign phone lines.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How exactly does this qualify as treason under the US Constitution?
From the US Constitution Article III Section 3: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
As I understand it they went to FISA to get a retroactive warrant. A nice little provision of the law.
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Thank you. I'm getting sick and tired of hearing people drop the 'T' word without any idea of what it actually means. It's this kind of stupidity that makes me think the Framers were correct to define Treason within the Constitution so it couldn't be used for political purposes.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In this case, the underlying article reports that: "What is new is that Harman is said to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA tap directed at alleged Israel covert action operations in Washington." Key words are "court-approved."
The Fourth Amendment states that:
Once the executive branch has convinced a judge that probably cause exists, and the judge has issued the warrant, there is nothing preventing the executive branch from using that information in court.
Now there is a real question as to whether wire tapping a member of congress (who herself was not under investigation) is a good idea, but that's not really the issue. I'm actually somewhat sad to hear about this as Jane Harmon is/was a very competent and thoughtful member of congress -- particularly on port security issues.
They just offered to lobby Pelosi to give her the seat.
For definitions of "lobby" that include large "campaign contributions".
It would be a substantial understatement to say that an offer from some random guy on the street to "lobby" on Jane Harman's behalf would be enough to convince Jan Harman to intervene in a federal investigation. Clearly, AIPAC (and probably Jane Harman) thought that an offer to "lobby" was a major incentive. That is, either AIPAC was under the delusion that they have major pull in congress or AIPAC actually does have major pull in congress.
I don't remember very many prominent Democrats opposing the NSA's illegal spying program. In fact many prominent Democrats were in favor. I remember a lengthy and uncompromising campaign against these kind of things by Chris Dodd (D-CT), but I also remember that Harry Reid (D-NV) decided to ignore the hold that Dodd placed on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Ignoring holds placed by Senators is not generally done. And then a lot of Democrats voted to end debate on the amendments to the act. I think you're giving the Democratic party too much credit for opposing the lawlessness of the Bush administration. They don't oppose lawlessness per se.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Here's an excellent in-depth article on who did who..er..who did what.
http://static.cqpolitics.com/harman-3098436-page1.html
You don't understand the situation if you think Israel's support in the US is composed solely of Jews. I think they're probably a minority of pro-Israel faction. A huge subset of American Christians are dedicated to helping Israel.
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress, which has been under Democratic control for several years.
If by "several" you mean two. The Republican party took control of Congress in the 1994 election (I think, maybe it was 1996), and kept it until the 2006 election. The Republican-controlled Congress started the vast majority of the actions that we've been complaining about. Unfortunately, the Democrat-controlled Congress hasn't undone nearly as much of it as we had hoped they would.