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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.
A discussion of constitutional limits of power ten years ago? How quaint. In 2015 we pretty much expect the president to do whatever he/she wants without regard to law of any kind.
"The DOJ promises to thoroughly investigate its boss and find no wrongdoing."
When someone we don't like does an evil, it's because they are evil. When someone we do like does an evil, it's okay, because they have goodness in their hearts.
So, Bush actually went full Gestapo, and the Justice Department and Ashcroft Backed it Down a bit?
That's fucking amazing, really. I'm sure this is Bullshit, but I'm not sure which parts, or how much.
Since Cheney isn't implicated as the originator of the Full Gestapo move, I'd be more willing to bet He's the one now trying to throw Bush under a bus for some reason.
I dunno, but, like Obama found out: You can't vote out the Gestapo.
Once they're here, it takes lives to go back.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
One evil doesn't excuse another. But overlooking an evil because it is your kind of evil is the worst kind of evil.
Further, Obama has had six years to fix this "evil" and hasn't. And yet, nobody is blaming him for not doing anything about it ... because he is "your kind of evil" so you overlook it.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Congratulations! It only took a few minutes before someone already brought the ACA into this.
Fuck Ajit Pai
I think there are two permutations of this "worst kind of evil".
1. "My guy is doing it, so I'll look the other way.", and 2."The other guys got away with it, so I might as well use it to my advantage too"
Stop supporting the lessor of two evils .... Cthulhu all the way!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
Never mind that President Obama implemented the Republican agenda — Middle East foreign policy, tax policy and healthcare policy — with the Progressives looking the other way. He's probably the best moderate conservative president since Ronald Reagan.
Either that or it was the invitation to a hunting trip with Dick Cheney...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
There's no truth to that. Ashcroft had been hospitalized with acute pancreatitis. He had surgery the day before Bush and other White House staff members visited him. Bush didn't cause it, but it certainly says something about the legitimacy of the program when Ashcroft's authorization was sought while he was extremely ill and likely quite medicated.
M-I-Z
kU still sucks!
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.
Definitely a wording problem here. The summary makes it sound like he was beat senseless *because* of his disagreement.
How about "I hate Bush for creating this mess, and Obama for continuing it on his watch"
He's had six years in power and hasn't done shit. So he is equal to Bush, no better, no worse.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And what if we don't like either of them?
Then don't post that because fanboys from both parties will mod you down.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Downside is that with no robust public option (a promised lie) the profiteers of healthcare (big insurance, big healthcare, big pharmy) continue to raise costs and premiums. This is what is happening, insurers will have huge rate hikes for 2016.
Obama has increased the violations of privacy started under Bush; he is worse
When a plan or process exists it can be revised. No plan, no process, it's tough to even get the ball rolling.
ACA is a start. It's far from perfect. Its shortcomings hopefully will lead to further revision, now that we have something to actually revise.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's funny.
Reading this just made me realize that Ashcroft took a stronger stand against spying than Obama has, if I judge only actions and not words.
Given that you are raging about Obama and not Bush, you've proven your own statement wrong.
I see that Slashdot is much more anti-Obama than anti-Bush. But then, I was here in the Bush years, and watched the support as he did those things in real time. The same consistent support here has never gone towards Obama.
Learn to love Alaska
When someone we don't like does an evil, it's because they are evil. When someone we do like does an evil, it's okay, because they have goodness in their hearts.
We tend to overlook the evil things done by people we like.
It doesn't mean every controversial thing done by someone we like is actually evil.
To the extent that Obama has "retroactively and unilaterally revising law passed by Congress" with the ACA he's done it to work around things that most here would recognize as bugs, ie words in the law that make the law do things we didn't actually want it to do.
The issue we're talking about with Bush wasn't a bug fix, he added new features to make the law things it was never intended to do.
I stole this Sig
It's funny because it's true. I get modded down all the time, from both sides. I'm a classic liberal, and that makes me hated by both sides, and the anarcho-capitalists who call themselves "libertarian". Though classic liberal is centrist by US political standards, just not the right kind.
Learn to love Alaska
Cheney, on the other hand...
because it doesn't have a fucking thing to do with this topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
i'm the submitter
i wrote
i meant
i didn't mean
apologies, there was no bad intent, i just wrote the summary without being aware that my wording made it possible of someone finding a novel secondary meaning
fuck the english language
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
yup. that was my fault. bad wording, apologies
http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
i agree our government is better than somalia or the philippines. but it's not as good as canada or the nordic countries. we can do better. we have a problem with money corrupting our politics, legally
but you are also correct a lot of americans are whiny and spoiled and can't keep the problems in proportion to the world's other problems. and some are so ignorant and uneducated they actually think no government or weak government, hilariously, is somehow better. when those situations obviously are far far worse than the problems we have now. a lot of americans are very sheltered with very minor, pedestrian problems. everything is a giant temper tantrum and drama, over stupid minor shit compared the kinds of real problems people face elsewhere. spoiled and entitled people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"i knew a guy once who murdered someone and got away with it. therefore we can never criticize any murderer anywhere"
this is your "morality"
when your "morality" means "someone did something bad so someone else should be free of criticism for being bad" (aka, two wrongs make a right) you really don't have any morality at all
it's entirely possible to criticize BOTH bush and obama, for the *separate* things they did wrong. you understand that right? criticizing one does not mean we can't or won't are aren't criticizing the other. what bush did wrong is not linked to what obama did wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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
Oh, I do blame him. It's just that, by itself, it was not enough of a reason to vote for the sorry excuse for a candidate that the Republicans ran against him and there wasn't enough other things to justify electing the Romneytron.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
It's a great language, you just write it shit.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
when being a grammar nazi asshole, you really have to represent with the good grammar. otherwise it kinda makes you look like a dick AND a hypocrite
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The wording in Obamacare was deliberate. Parts were necessary to get it passed; it would not have passed without those "bugs" in place. Other parts were there to punish uncooperative states; that backfired on Obama.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
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.
Mostly because Obamacare is not what we got. we got Romneycare.
Obamacare was going to be single payer free healthcare. We instead got a system to make insurance companies even richer that was penned by the republicans.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So delaying the corporate mandate was a "bug", in that no on really expected ACA to go into effect for *everyone*, even up until this very day?
You're a useful idiot.
It was written for a specific set of conditions, those assumptions were slightly off meaning the original timeline wasn't possible, that's exactly what I'd call a bug since the intended end state is the same. Running the program intelligently (and fixing bugs on the fly) is precisely the role I think the US President is supposed to fulfil on domestic matters.
The alternative is any significant legislation requiring modification by several successive congresses to work properly. Forcing a President to execute a broken law to the letter strikes me as a very dumb way to run a country.
I stole this Sig
If President Obama implemented a Progressive agenda, we would be out of the Middle East and the Guantanamo Bay prison closed, the Bush tax cuts would be repealed and the Clinton budget surpluses restored, and single-payer healthcare would be the law of the land. Bernie Sanders, if elected, will make that happen anyway.
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.
You do realize that the fact that they can't negotiate the prices of pharmaceuticals is due to the republicans and the Bush administration. That occurred before Obama took office with the Medicare part D aspect and now they're cashing in. I just read an article today about how the drug for treating toxoplasmosis went from $13.50/tablet to $750 overnight despite being a 62 year old drug. The drug companies are basically price gouging the US public. In another case they raised the price of Doxycycline, an antibiotic from $20/bottle to $1849/bottle.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
RINO = moderate Republican.
Heck, Reagan was a RINO by modern metrics.
That's pretty much it. He had to water it down so congress would pass it, and in the spirit of bipartisanship he went along with it.
He should have insisted it was done properly, or not at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The number of people believing something to be true has no bearing on whether or not it actually is true.
The biblical claims of godhood/Jesus' supernatural origins and actions are without any historical or scientific evidence, so there's no reason whatsoever for a rational minded individual to take them as anything but fables and allegory, just like any other old myths.
This is not to say one cannot appreciate the teachings of the supposed character of Jesus, but again, just because you have 2 billion people believing that 2000 years ago the supernatural invisible ruler of the universe fathered himself from a virgin and then schemed to have himself executed as a sacrificial gift to himself to save us from the sin he himself implemented to begin with, does not mean any of this is true, empirical, or logical.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead