Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
If nothing else, this Jane Harmon scandal is going to continue to undermine the USA's credibility as an "impartial" mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Regardless of what Jane Harmon may have done, it's rather shocking that AIPAC has enough pull in congress to be able to hold out committee chairmanships as bribes.
The article doesn't say very clearly where the wiretapped subjects were, but there's this:
From that it sounds like the tapping was entirely domestic, in terms of where the phone lines were located.
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress, which has been under Democratic control for several years. CNN isnt going to report that though, its not favorable to their agenda.
It's not favorable to CNN's agenda, but not for the reason you imply. CNN may lean more left than Fox (though that's not saying much), but what makes news has almost nothing to do with political slant. It's all about ratings, eyeballs, "buzz", and ultimately, advertising dollars.
Reporting the truth, that the Democrats and Republicans acted together to get us into this mess (name your mess, they worked together on it), isn't flashy. It doesn't grab headlines like the Pirates of the Carribean, I mean Somalia. It doesn't turn on the tears like the latest suburban child-killing mom. It doesn't generate tempest-in-a-teapot "controversy" like Lou Dobbs' latest proclamations on border security.
Neither CNN, Fox, nor any of the rest of the corporate media shills will report on what's going on, because they think we're too dumb. And in fact, they have a vested interest in keeping us dumb -- smart people make poor consumers of advertising.
And we're getting screwed by both major parties. It's better now than it was for the previous eight years, but putting on a condom doesn't make it any less a rape. That's why I still couldn't bring myself to vote for a D or an R -- I voted for Cynthia McKinney (even though in Texas, I had to write in her name).
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
If the terrorists wish to disrupt our society, do something nasty towards that end, and the politicians then disrupt things far more than the terrorists in response, they have in that sense given aid to an enemy of the United States.
Given that the Constitution is the law of the land and the foundation of the federal government's right to exist at all, someone who deliberately attempts to subvert it becomes an enemy of the United States. Note that that in no way would apply to someone who attempts to follow the appropriate and well defined procedures to alter the Constitution.
In the linked article, it says "Democrat" or "Democratic" no less than seven times. But it never identifies Gonzales or anyone else as a Republican.
That's the first thing that hit me when I saw this article: BLACKMAIL in bold letters. I always suspected that at least a handfull of neocons (Chenney, Wolfowitz, Gonzales and that ilk) were using the warrantless wiretap program from political ends (to get dirt on Democracts and other opposition leaders). This seems to be pretty strong evidence that it went on in at least one case. Which leads, of course, to the next question, how many MORE Jane Harman's are there out there (that the Bush-era NSA spied on and/or attempted to blackmail with any of the dirt they found)? And what, if anything, is Obama planning to do to stop this in the future?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In which case the American people themselves are guilty of "treason." Seriously, could the government have gotten away with things like warrantless wiretapping without the public's silence and implicit consent?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.