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George W Bush Made Retroactive NSA 'Fix' After Hospital Room Showdown
circletimessquare writes: New details have emerged about the 2004 conflict between George W. Bush and his Attorney General, John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized when he forcefully disagreed with the president's authorization of the NSA's sweeping new collection powers after 9/11. The New York Times has discovered that the conflict was about a retroactive alteration of the President's wording on the legal theory by which the NSA is allowed to siphon up metadata on all Americans, not just certain targets or classes of targets, such as suspected terrorists. 'Mr. Bush, for the first time, explicitly said that his authorizations were "displacing" specific federal statutes, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and criminal wiretapping laws... the president had "made an interpretation of law concerning his authorities" and that the Justice Department could not act in contradiction of Mr. Bush's determinations.' The president faced a severe backlash from the Justice Department, including a threat of mass resignation.
...that the Libs are cool with Obama doing the same stuff now because...Boooosh!
Really, anyone about to post condemnations of Bush should consider the fact that Your Hero as he same policies and have argued in court to keep them.
Another interesting fact is that " The president faced a severe backlash from the Justice Department, including a threat of mass resignation."
Can you imagine anyone Justice now giving a Flying Fuck what Obama does?
I think they are both evil, how about them apples. Am I allowed to criticize them yet, as I have unique criticisms for both of them and would like to share the criticisms without having to list all of my criticisms of the other in the same breath.
Pretty much, yeah. John "No boobs on the statue of Lady Justice" Ashcroft, and even James "No secure crypto for anybody" Comey, for all their faults, still believe(d) in the rule of law.
When it comes to eliminating the rule of law by neutralizing both the legislative and judicial branches in favor of the executive, the same names always come up - Yoo and Addington - as the real powers behind the throne. Were they working for President Cheney, or did it go one level deeper than that -- they were merely Cheney's keepers (in the B5:Shadows sense of the word) whose job it was to whisper the right words into the ears of the powerful, and working constantly to find ways to legalize what was previously illegal? I'm not one for conspiracy theories, and there's insufficient data to speculate about who the real power behind the throne is/was/will be. We don't know and we'll probably never know.
The most interesting revelation is that it made the NSA/Snowden testimony, in which Clapper and Hayden tried to argue that getting all the metadata but not looking at it somehow qualified as not having the metadata in the first place... now makes a lot more sense, from a legalistic point of view. Their bosses really did manage to make, in a twist of Orwellian blackwhite/doublethink, that "obtaining and retaining" was not the same thing as "acquiring." I kinda feel sorry for those goons during the Snowden hearings. They weren't technically lying, and they really couldn't explain that distinction without committing crimes themselves.
Now, for better or worse, we know the legalistic reasoning behind the distinction. Thank you, Edward Snowden.
Will PBS re-make "Spying On The Home Front" in the light of subsequent revelations? The Ashcroft hospital incident is documented.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...
It's still worth watching.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Serious question here - I understand that people love to hate Obamacare/ACA. But I don't understand why. What's bad about federally mandated healthcare that says the health insurance companies must offer all people coverage, cannot drop us after they pay out a certain amount (no lifetime maximums), and in general sets a specific lower rung for basic minimum coverage to maintain quality of life? This is similar to minimum car insurance requirements for all people who drive. Why does everyone hate it so much? I've always had good health insurance through employers, so I'm not aware of any effect it has had on me. But my policies have always had lifetime maximums, and now that is removed. Over time (a decade or so), I would expect that since everyone has insurance, there will be more doctors, likely driving the cost of doctors education down. More people filing insurance claims means a higher number of incidents. All of that works together to lower the actual cost per incident (insurance company paid $5k each for 20,000 procedures, but now they only pay $4k for 30,000 of the same procedure. Where's the downside? End users win with better insurance, doctors win with more patients (more procedures) and hopefully lower educational costs since there will be more medical schools competing for them, insurance companies win both with lower costs and a larger client base. Plenty of other countries already do this. Why is it so bad other than somebody is forcing me to buy something I didn't have to buy before (meaning a lot of times I personally subsidize those un-insured emergency room visits with my own taxes)? I really don't get it, and I'm not looking to start a flame war, so I'm posting as AC on purpose. If you have an intelligent response, I'm very curious as to what you see as the downside. There are specific scenarios for a small percentage of people where costs went up significantly because they make a bit over minimum wage and don't qualify for reduced fees, and maybe they chose not to have good insurance before (see my comment about public subsidized emergency room visits). But for low income, middle, and high I don't see the problem. It's just the extreme lower middle with an issue from what I can figure out.
From TFS:
'Mr. Bush, for the first time, explicitly said that his authorizations were "displacing" specific federal statutes, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and criminal wiretapping laws... the president had "made an interpretation of law concerning his authorities"...
That's the heart of the issue right there. President Bush wrongly believed the threat of terrorism gave him authority to break constitutional law. It actually doesn't, but no one has thus far found a way to correct this mistake. It's absolutely stunning to me after 14 years. The Orwellian-named Patriot Act was supposed to be a temporary measure and yet it's still in place.
Because behinds the scenes, it's the same people running the show.
Do you seriously think a Black Lawyer who had a small time civil rights practice can become president without being bought?
It cost 100's of millions in Americas corrupt political system to become president.
46137
One thing that amazes me about American politics is how they get caught up on certain issues forever, while a lot of other countries seem to just move on to newer problems after making a decision. Abortion is a good example - I could barely believe how Planned Parenthood funding was a core debate subject at the Republican leader debate (sad when that was the most entertaining TV on).
Just in the last year, I've added single payer health care to the list. We had some staff from a subsidiary in the US come up here for a few days (Canada), and how vehemently and confidently they would disparage a health care system clearly so much better than their own.. the cognitive dissonance against their better interest is staggering. Even typical extreme conservatives can't follow the logic of how a single payer can drastically reduce costs, nor understand how they're already funding social health care for the most expensive groups, the poor and elderly. Health care in the US is an ideological issue, and I don't get why.
Which, in turn, makes you a villain in world's story... so why should anyone care?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.