This really perplexes me. What's the outrage amongst the geek population? You know we'll just wipe and reinstall. No more Windows update, big deal. Apply SP2 and wait out the Vista release. Steal Vista and continue, business as usual.:P
Kelo wasn't repealed, you can't "repeal" a court decision.
The Supreme Court in Kelo set the Constitutional minimum, stinky as it was. Legislatures are then free to set higher bars than the Constitutional minimum. 31 state legislatures (and counting) have done so. The President's Executive Order only orders the federal executive agencies to limit eminent domain proceedings to the "public use" as defined by either law (Congress) or the Executive Order.
Am I in a mirror world? This is probably the first time I've seen the idea presented that the there is a concerted conspiracy keeping the potential supporters of the oil industry down
Given how you worded the above - Yes, you do live in a mirror world. Time to leave the echo chamber and listen to people with whom you disagree, and try to avoid ad hominems. I mean gosh, could it possibly be that someone might disagree with you and NOT give a damn about the oil industry?
Well, of course there are newspapers which are explicitely representing certain positions or even political parties
And they are mainstream publications. There is no such phenomenon here in the States released as a daily periodical. We don't have such a cozy relationship between State and media. You cannot find a newspaper in the States that is an open, avowed mouthpiece of the State. As a matter of fact, though the allusion is silly, the American media considers itself a self-appointed "Fifth Estate" whose job is to keep government honest. After the 60's and 70's, and most especially after the Washington Post destroyed a Presidency, they are even over-zealous in their self-appointed duties in my opinion. They believe their own arrogance.
Hardly the "lie-infested, one-sided, governmental news". Lie-infested yes. One-sided, yes. As long as it is sensational, as long as it is a chance for some barely-passed-college-journalist to "speak truth to power", as long as it speaks ill of any Republican - YES.
Russia, instead of "outspending" the USA, developed a warhead that evades the interceptors [missilethreat.com]. The link was written before 2004; the warhead had been tested already. This is a low-cost, distributed response to ABM
Absolutely. Bravo, Russia.
This misses the point - we are not in an arms race with Russia and China, and even if we were we'd out-research them. We will never field enough interceptors to significantly effect Russia's deterent. China only has a few ICBMs (less than 100, IIRC), and the ABM systems we are deploying won't effect their deterent either. It isn't meant to.
U.S. papers do just that - pretend. European papers are generally open about their bias from the start. If only American papers would shed their false cloak of objective reporting I'd put more stock in them.
I agree. The "objective journalism" cloak is a sham. US journalism is overwhelmingly liberal in its politics. It is just hilarious when someone on Slashdot inevitably tries to pull the European snobbery bit, as if European journalists and editors are so much less influenced by their own personal beliefs. Quite the contrary, they revel in their biases and are open in their affiliations.
Fox News gets lambasted here regularly. Yet they are open about their perpective. You know when you watch Fox that you are getting the "conservative" viewpoint. When you read the networks or CNN, or read the NYT, you are getting the liberal view, masquarading as objective news. That is a sham.
Interesting. Do you actually live in Europe, or are you at least reading some of our newspapers? If not, you're totally uninformed, or you got this opinion by reading one of YOUR newspapers. Anyway, as a European citizen, I can't approve your statement, and rest assured, others won't too.
Does Le Monde, the Nation, the Telegraph, or Der Spiegel, amongst others, count? If you think that Americans can't/won't/don't access European journalism, you have fallen for the "American ignoramus" tripe. Your papers are as available to us as they are to you, my friend.
If you think that Le Monde, Le Figaro, or the Nation do not have an open political bias, you are not reading closely. Since you imply that you are European, you obviously know that some papers are "the Establishment" papers, some are the "Communist" papers, some "the Liberal" papers, etc.
Re:Flight 93 was headed for Washington
on
Back to the Bunker
·
· Score: 1
That trick, I hope, can't work again. But if a clever enemy thinks up an equallly damaging attack, then it does make sense to plan for keeping our command and control intact
What is very instructive is that there was no mention about the Toronto 17 that were arrested yesterday with 3x the explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Even though the perps were caught using Internet surveillance.
News for Nerds, as long as it reinforces my pre-conceived, pre-received beliefs.
Slide to SlashKos? Slashdot hit bottom a long time ago and kept digging.
The real danger is the US developing a missile defense system is that Russia and China will kick into an arms race with the US to develop missiles that can penetrate the missile defense system and develop their own missile shield
Good for them. The missile shield isn't designed with them in mind. And if anemic Russia and inefficient China want to get into a spending race with the US and repeat the 80's, more power to them. The US government can outspend both combined for a much smaller proportion of national GDP than they.
Or better yet, buy some European newspapers, we got a quite more balanced view of the world (which btw. does not only consist of the US, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Iran!)
Are you kidding me? European newspapers don't even try to pretend to be objective and non-partisan. Either you are a total dupe that swallows the Kool-Aid because it conveniently fits your worldview, or you are a total ass.
The T-space consortium already proposed this in their bid for the CEV program. NASA should concentrate on ideas that haven't already been given to them.
Wait, you are blaming the DHS on the Democrats who hold a minority in the House and the Senate and no power in the Executive?
The Democrats still had a majority of one in the Senate in 2001. It was Joe Lieberman that proposed formation of the full cabinet level department. Pelosi and other ranking Democrats pushed the idea. The Bush Administration only wanted a sub-cabinet level position.
Saying "its Bush's Department" when the Democrats pushed it, and both parties voted for it over Bush's objections is both false and asinine.
Securing the border is about controlled growth, making folks respect the law, and equal opportunity for all who want to come here
Exactly. Millions of people from all over the planet want to come to the US. The economy cannot absorb them all at once. There has to be a system to determine who gets a visa or green card - economists know that you ration a good either by price, or by queue. We choose not to ration by price - if you want a visa, you wait in line. Although the wait is long and the process is not simple (there are alot of people that want to come here, natch) everyone has shot at getting a visa.
Now the question: why should latinos be given preferential treatment in that process just because they only have to swim the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo instead of the Atlantic or Pacific?
If you are worried about deficits, talk to George W. about his new, very expensive, Department of Homeland Security
I think you mean the Congressional Democrat's new, very expensive, Department of Homeland Security, because it was Congress (and mostly Democrats) that demanded the Department be formed after Sept 11, over the Bush Administration's objections.
Doubly irrelevant. We're talking about the specific powers Bush claims, not vague general "powers of the Presidency", and we're talking about explicit in the text of the Constitution, not "explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court". No one is arguing that there are not powers of the Presidency
You are arguing that the President's claimed powers do not exist, which is patently false because they are within the powers of the President. All the powers granted in Articles I-III are broad "general" powers. Anything falling within those grants of powers are Constitutional. The unenumerated powers are not a laundry list of narrowly construed restrictions like you claim. The President has broad war powers. Surveilling the enemy is inherent in conducting war and falls squarely within the Presidential powers to conduct war. It is absurd to argue otherwise. The fact that you are arguing otherwise shows you don't know a lick about Constitutional law.
The Necessary and Propery Clause applies to Congress, and only applies to give it power necessary and proper to the more specific powers granted to Congress in Article I. Given the various powers to govern the military, it actually works against the claims of Presidential powers Bush makes, not for them.
Again, wrong. The Necessary and Proper clause broadens further the broad grants of Constitutional power. I wasn't arguing that the elastic clause modifies Article II. It makes a Congressional statute authorizing the use of force even broader scope. The President is authorized, through the AUF passed after Sept 11, to take extraordinary measures to defeat AQ. The President is at his Constitutionally maximal power.
And was explicitly given the power to make regulatory, rather than command, decisions -- to set policy which constrains command decisions.
Congress's power over the military is limited to regulatory matters such as the composition and size of the armed forces, the Codes of military justice and discipline, and the power of the purse. Congress cannot pass legislation that impinges on the President's inherent powers. Once deployed, the only power Congress has over the military is the power to withhold funding.
False. The President does not gain totalitarian powers to do without constraint whatever he believes is "prudent" with any of the resources of the United States by waving around the excuse "conduct in war".
You're just plain wrong. The President's war powers are virtually unlimited as far as they are incident to the war. This has been repeatedly confirmed, notably in the Truman Steel Seizure case decided by the US Supreme Court. The Congressional AUF in 2001 granted the President his maximal power against AQ. They aren't totalitarian powers, they are the broad war powers grants of the Constitution, as construed by 200 years of judicial review. The Slashdot crowd is too young, and too ignorant of law and history, to recall a time when the President was at his maximal Executive power, and it is their problem.
Your affection for dictatorship is clearly strong, your understanding of the Constitutional order of the US government is much weaker
Your understanding of Constitutional law is non-existent, and your desire to hobble the President in conducting war against those who would kill both of us is detestable at best.
Keep an eye on the news. Let it go to court. Let there be Congressional hearings. After the grandstanding in the Senate is over, it will disappear with a whimper, because the NSA programs are perfectly legal.
It is not explicit, and its rather dubious that it exists at all
Wrong. The powers of the Presidency have been explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court since the Blockade Cases during the Civil War.
but the mere designation of the executive as executive is not an explicit grant of any particular power. Similarly, the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the US military is not a grant of power, rather, it is a limitation on the explicit Article I, Sec. 8 power of Congress to govern the military, specifically, it prevents the Congress from devising a command structure which puts someone else at the pinnacle of the military chain of command
This is laughably false. All of the powers listed in the first three Articles of the Constitution are specific grants of power. Those grants of power are further enhanced by the Necessary and Proper clause. It is from that specific grant of authority to the President, as chief of the Executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, and the explicit authorization in Article II granting the President power to repel invasions or suppress insurrections WITHOUT grant of Congress, that gives the Presidency broad War Powers. Congress only has the power to authorize and fund the creation of an Army and Navy, but was explicitly excluded by the Framers from making command decisions. That power, and the power to decide what is the most prudent course of conduct in war, is the province of the President alone.
False, many of the briefed members of Congress expressed their belief that the program outlined to them was either contrary to the statute law, or even outside of the Constitutional power of the government
You mean Rockefeller "I wrote a letter of objection, but kept it to myself in case I might need it later"? The NSA foreign surveillance program was constituted immediately after 9/11. Senators and Congressmen had 5 years to make their objections known, none did.
No, actually, I, based on the administration's own statements, and a review of the applicable law, have deemed them to be illegal
Your knowledge of the law is lacking.
Now, of course, you may content to accept that lawyers working on behalf of the President and serving at his pleasure have said that what they are doing is legal, and to take that on faith without thinking for yourself
Government attorneys are civil servants that are practically immune from termination without serious misconduct. The attorneys in the chief counsels offices of government agencies are picked from the best law schools in the country, and have sacrificed much greater salaries to take a public service position. I know quite a few. Your insinuation that they are less than serious in zealously executing their duty falls rather flat with me.
The Administration is asserting, essentially, an implicit immunity from the law which is not found in the text of the Constitution
It is found in the Constitution - the Executive is a co-equal branch of government, with the inherent powers of Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, which Congress cannot impinge upon. The FISA courts have explicitly recognized this and the limitation of their authority as an Art III court. The two chief justices of the FISA court were advised about the programs also, by the way.
Whether the Congress was briefed or not has no bearing on that, so that Congress was briefed, even if it were true that Congress had been fully and accurately briefed, is no basis at all for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred
A whole army of lawyers from the WH chief counsel, to NSA chief counsel, to FBI chief counsel, to the ranking members of Congress reviewed these programs and found them legal. But you, in your apparently superior wisdom, based on a few stories in the media by journalists untrained in law, have deemed them illegal. You'll excuse me while I laugh.
If we assume the Congress was briefed, its a good basis for arguing that the "regular" authorities had been informed of the wrongdoing, and done nothing, justifying going over their heads to the public
ROFL! OR - Congress had been briefed, and it is a good basis for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred.
Perhaps you should consider forming the X-Men instead of wasting your incredible psychic powers telling all us poor fools how to think?
I'm a law student. No psychic powers needed, only the ability to read. And I have found that Slashdot is a sandbox that is highly resistant to rational thought. Not really worth my time, you'll find out in due course.
And yes kiddies, that means that the so called Whistleblower in the Nixon case who was named for a porn flick was in fact simply a leaker
More than simply a leaker - a disgruntled employee at FBI that was miffed he got passed over. Of course, Nixon was most definitely engaging in illegal activities. What will Slashdotters say when the NSA programs are held to be legal? Its da Man keeping us down! Go back to bed, children.
OK, I am always a bit skeptical of the "impending Microsoft release blunder" industry "news". But I think it is becoming plainly obvious that Vista is a trainwreck.
Louisiana is based off of Roman Civil law. (French Common law may be based off of that
The French don't have common law. They have a civil (Roman law derived) legal system. Judges in the civil law don't (theoretically) interpret law, and their decisions (theoretically) don't become law like common law judges. In civil countries, the legislature mucks about with a gigantic civil Code that is supposed to detail every rule of decision that will ever be needed. Not very efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
This really perplexes me. What's the outrage amongst the geek population? You know we'll just wipe and reinstall. No more Windows update, big deal. Apply SP2 and wait out the Vista release. Steal Vista and continue, business as usual. :P
Kelo wasn't repealed, you can't "repeal" a court decision.
The Supreme Court in Kelo set the Constitutional minimum, stinky as it was. Legislatures are then free to set higher bars than the Constitutional minimum. 31 state legislatures (and counting) have done so. The President's Executive Order only orders the federal executive agencies to limit eminent domain proceedings to the "public use" as defined by either law (Congress) or the Executive Order.
Precision in language, people.
Am I in a mirror world? This is probably the first time I've seen the idea presented that the there is a concerted conspiracy keeping the potential supporters of the oil industry down
Given how you worded the above - Yes, you do live in a mirror world. Time to leave the echo chamber and listen to people with whom you disagree, and try to avoid ad hominems. I mean gosh, could it possibly be that someone might disagree with you and NOT give a damn about the oil industry?
Certainly:
g ename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1 149285034044&call_pageid=976163513378&col=96904886 3474
Toronto Star:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pa
Well, of course there are newspapers which are explicitely representing certain positions or even political parties
And they are mainstream publications. There is no such phenomenon here in the States released as a daily periodical. We don't have such a cozy relationship between State and media. You cannot find a newspaper in the States that is an open, avowed mouthpiece of the State. As a matter of fact, though the allusion is silly, the American media considers itself a self-appointed "Fifth Estate" whose job is to keep government honest. After the 60's and 70's, and most especially after the Washington Post destroyed a Presidency, they are even over-zealous in their self-appointed duties in my opinion. They believe their own arrogance.
Hardly the "lie-infested, one-sided, governmental news". Lie-infested yes. One-sided, yes. As long as it is sensational, as long as it is a chance for some barely-passed-college-journalist to "speak truth to power", as long as it speaks ill of any Republican - YES.
Russia, instead of "outspending" the USA, developed a warhead that evades the interceptors [missilethreat.com]. The link was written before 2004; the warhead had been tested already. This is a low-cost, distributed response to ABM
Absolutely. Bravo, Russia.
This misses the point - we are not in an arms race with Russia and China, and even if we were we'd out-research them. We will never field enough interceptors to significantly effect Russia's deterent. China only has a few ICBMs (less than 100, IIRC), and the ABM systems we are deploying won't effect their deterent either. It isn't meant to.
U.S. papers do just that - pretend. European papers are generally open about their bias from the start. If only American papers would shed their false cloak of objective reporting I'd put more stock in them.
I agree. The "objective journalism" cloak is a sham. US journalism is overwhelmingly liberal in its politics. It is just hilarious when someone on Slashdot inevitably tries to pull the European snobbery bit, as if European journalists and editors are so much less influenced by their own personal beliefs. Quite the contrary, they revel in their biases and are open in their affiliations.
Fox News gets lambasted here regularly. Yet they are open about their perpective. You know when you watch Fox that you are getting the "conservative" viewpoint. When you read the networks or CNN, or read the NYT, you are getting the liberal view, masquarading as objective news. That is a sham.
Interesting. Do you actually live in Europe, or are you at least reading some of our newspapers? If not, you're totally uninformed, or you got this opinion by reading one of YOUR newspapers. Anyway, as a European citizen, I can't approve your statement, and rest assured, others won't too.
Does Le Monde, the Nation, the Telegraph, or Der Spiegel, amongst others, count? If you think that Americans can't/won't/don't access European journalism, you have fallen for the "American ignoramus" tripe. Your papers are as available to us as they are to you, my friend.
If you think that Le Monde, Le Figaro, or the Nation do not have an open political bias, you are not reading closely. Since you imply that you are European, you obviously know that some papers are "the Establishment" papers, some are the "Communist" papers, some "the Liberal" papers, etc.
That trick, I hope, can't work again. But if a clever enemy thinks up an equallly damaging attack, then it does make sense to plan for keeping our command and control intact
What is very instructive is that there was no mention about the Toronto 17 that were arrested yesterday with 3x the explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Even though the perps were caught using Internet surveillance.
News for Nerds, as long as it reinforces my pre-conceived, pre-received beliefs.
Slide to SlashKos? Slashdot hit bottom a long time ago and kept digging.
The real danger is the US developing a missile defense system is that Russia and China will kick into an arms race with the US to develop missiles that can penetrate the missile defense system and develop their own missile shield
Good for them. The missile shield isn't designed with them in mind. And if anemic Russia and inefficient China want to get into a spending race with the US and repeat the 80's, more power to them. The US government can outspend both combined for a much smaller proportion of national GDP than they.
Or better yet, buy some European newspapers, we got a quite more balanced view of the world (which btw. does not only consist of the US, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Iran!)
Are you kidding me? European newspapers don't even try to pretend to be objective and non-partisan. Either you are a total dupe that swallows the Kool-Aid because it conveniently fits your worldview, or you are a total ass.
The T-space consortium already proposed this in their bid for the CEV program. NASA should concentrate on ideas that haven't already been given to them.
http://www.transformspace.com/
Wait, you are blaming the DHS on the Democrats who hold a minority in the House and the Senate and no power in the Executive?
The Democrats still had a majority of one in the Senate in 2001. It was Joe Lieberman that proposed formation of the full cabinet level department. Pelosi and other ranking Democrats pushed the idea. The Bush Administration only wanted a sub-cabinet level position.
Saying "its Bush's Department" when the Democrats pushed it, and both parties voted for it over Bush's objections is both false and asinine.
Securing the border is about controlled growth, making folks respect the law, and equal opportunity for all who want to come here
Exactly. Millions of people from all over the planet want to come to the US. The economy cannot absorb them all at once. There has to be a system to determine who gets a visa or green card - economists know that you ration a good either by price, or by queue. We choose not to ration by price - if you want a visa, you wait in line. Although the wait is long and the process is not simple (there are alot of people that want to come here, natch) everyone has shot at getting a visa.
Now the question: why should latinos be given preferential treatment in that process just because they only have to swim the Rio Grande or Rio Bravo instead of the Atlantic or Pacific?
The least you could do is be honest about it and say "No immigrants... except for highly educated white people."
You know, that's funny. The US admits over 1 million immigrants every year from all over the planet, and most of them are brown and black.
If you are worried about deficits, talk to George W. about his new, very expensive, Department of Homeland Security
I think you mean the Congressional Democrat's new, very expensive, Department of Homeland Security, because it was Congress (and mostly Democrats) that demanded the Department be formed after Sept 11, over the Bush Administration's objections.
Except for the phone number, which half the time you can punch into google and get an answer whether you're NSA or a regular citizen
Except the phone number, which is public information.
Doubly irrelevant. We're talking about the specific powers Bush claims, not vague general "powers of the Presidency", and we're talking about explicit in the text of the Constitution, not "explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court". No one is arguing that there are not powers of the Presidency
You are arguing that the President's claimed powers do not exist, which is patently false because they are within the powers of the President. All the powers granted in Articles I-III are broad "general" powers. Anything falling within those grants of powers are Constitutional. The unenumerated powers are not a laundry list of narrowly construed restrictions like you claim. The President has broad war powers. Surveilling the enemy is inherent in conducting war and falls squarely within the Presidential powers to conduct war. It is absurd to argue otherwise. The fact that you are arguing otherwise shows you don't know a lick about Constitutional law.
The Necessary and Propery Clause applies to Congress, and only applies to give it power necessary and proper to the more specific powers granted to Congress in Article I. Given the various powers to govern the military, it actually works against the claims of Presidential powers Bush makes, not for them.
Again, wrong. The Necessary and Proper clause broadens further the broad grants of Constitutional power. I wasn't arguing that the elastic clause modifies Article II. It makes a Congressional statute authorizing the use of force even broader scope. The President is authorized, through the AUF passed after Sept 11, to take extraordinary measures to defeat AQ. The President is at his Constitutionally maximal power.
And was explicitly given the power to make regulatory, rather than command, decisions -- to set policy which constrains command decisions.
Congress's power over the military is limited to regulatory matters such as the composition and size of the armed forces, the Codes of military justice and discipline, and the power of the purse. Congress cannot pass legislation that impinges on the President's inherent powers. Once deployed, the only power Congress has over the military is the power to withhold funding.
False. The President does not gain totalitarian powers to do without constraint whatever he believes is "prudent" with any of the resources of the United States by waving around the excuse "conduct in war".
You're just plain wrong. The President's war powers are virtually unlimited as far as they are incident to the war. This has been repeatedly confirmed, notably in the Truman Steel Seizure case decided by the US Supreme Court. The Congressional AUF in 2001 granted the President his maximal power against AQ. They aren't totalitarian powers, they are the broad war powers grants of the Constitution, as construed by 200 years of judicial review. The Slashdot crowd is too young, and too ignorant of law and history, to recall a time when the President was at his maximal Executive power, and it is their problem.
Your affection for dictatorship is clearly strong, your understanding of the Constitutional order of the US government is much weaker
Your understanding of Constitutional law is non-existent, and your desire to hobble the President in conducting war against those who would kill both of us is detestable at best.
Keep an eye on the news. Let it go to court. Let there be Congressional hearings. After the grandstanding in the Senate is over, it will disappear with a whimper, because the NSA programs are perfectly legal.
It is not explicit, and its rather dubious that it exists at all
Wrong. The powers of the Presidency have been explicitly confirmed by holdings of the Supreme Court since the Blockade Cases during the Civil War.
but the mere designation of the executive as executive is not an explicit grant of any particular power. Similarly, the designation of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the US military is not a grant of power, rather, it is a limitation on the explicit Article I, Sec. 8 power of Congress to govern the military, specifically, it prevents the Congress from devising a command structure which puts someone else at the pinnacle of the military chain of command
This is laughably false. All of the powers listed in the first three Articles of the Constitution are specific grants of power. Those grants of power are further enhanced by the Necessary and Proper clause. It is from that specific grant of authority to the President, as chief of the Executive branch, and as Commander in Chief of the armed forces, and the explicit authorization in Article II granting the President power to repel invasions or suppress insurrections WITHOUT grant of Congress, that gives the Presidency broad War Powers. Congress only has the power to authorize and fund the creation of an Army and Navy, but was explicitly excluded by the Framers from making command decisions. That power, and the power to decide what is the most prudent course of conduct in war, is the province of the President alone.
False, many of the briefed members of Congress expressed their belief that the program outlined to them was either contrary to the statute law, or even outside of the Constitutional power of the government
You mean Rockefeller "I wrote a letter of objection, but kept it to myself in case I might need it later"? The NSA foreign surveillance program was constituted immediately after 9/11. Senators and Congressmen had 5 years to make their objections known, none did.
No, actually, I, based on the administration's own statements, and a review of the applicable law, have deemed them to be illegal
Your knowledge of the law is lacking.
Now, of course, you may content to accept that lawyers working on behalf of the President and serving at his pleasure have said that what they are doing is legal, and to take that on faith without thinking for yourself
Government attorneys are civil servants that are practically immune from termination without serious misconduct. The attorneys in the chief counsels offices of government agencies are picked from the best law schools in the country, and have sacrificed much greater salaries to take a public service position. I know quite a few. Your insinuation that they are less than serious in zealously executing their duty falls rather flat with me.
The Administration is asserting, essentially, an implicit immunity from the law which is not found in the text of the Constitution
It is found in the Constitution - the Executive is a co-equal branch of government, with the inherent powers of Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, which Congress cannot impinge upon. The FISA courts have explicitly recognized this and the limitation of their authority as an Art III court. The two chief justices of the FISA court were advised about the programs also, by the way.
Whether the Congress was briefed or not has no bearing on that, so that Congress was briefed, even if it were true that Congress had been fully and accurately briefed, is no basis at all for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred
A whole army of lawyers from the WH chief counsel, to NSA chief counsel, to FBI chief counsel, to the ranking members of Congress reviewed these programs and found them legal. But you, in your apparently superior wisdom, based on a few stories in the media by journalists untrained in law, have deemed them illegal. You'll excuse me while I laugh.
If we assume the Congress was briefed, its a good basis for arguing that the "regular" authorities had been informed of the wrongdoing, and done nothing, justifying going over their heads to the public
ROFL! OR - Congress had been briefed, and it is a good basis for arguing that no wrongdoing occurred.
Perhaps you should consider forming the X-Men instead of wasting your incredible psychic powers telling all us poor fools how to think?
I'm a law student. No psychic powers needed, only the ability to read. And I have found that Slashdot is a sandbox that is highly resistant to rational thought. Not really worth my time, you'll find out in due course.
And yes kiddies, that means that the so called Whistleblower in the Nixon case who was named for a porn flick was in fact simply a leaker
More than simply a leaker - a disgruntled employee at FBI that was miffed he got passed over. Of course, Nixon was most definitely engaging in illegal activities. What will Slashdotters say when the NSA programs are held to be legal? Its da Man keeping us down! Go back to bed, children.
OK, I am always a bit skeptical of the "impending Microsoft release blunder" industry "news". But I think it is becoming plainly obvious that Vista is a trainwreck.
Louisiana is based off of Roman Civil law. (French Common law may be based off of that
The French don't have common law. They have a civil (Roman law derived) legal system. Judges in the civil law don't (theoretically) interpret law, and their decisions (theoretically) don't become law like common law judges. In civil countries, the legislature mucks about with a gigantic civil Code that is supposed to detail every rule of decision that will ever be needed. Not very efficient.