Illegal actions taken by the Bush administration cannot be justified by compairing them to actions taken in prior administrations. Illegal acts are illegal acts no matter how many times they are performed or who is performing them.
The actions taken by the Clinton administration were not illegal. From George Tenent's 4-12-00 testemony before Congress:
There is a rigorous regime of checks and balances which we, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the FBI scrupulously adhere to whenever conversations of U.S. persons are involved, whether directly or indirectly. We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department.
If other administrations could comply with the law, why couldn't this one? If the law was too constrictive (it is difficult to imagine a lower bar that the one presented in FISA), why couldn't the administration get the law changed? Republicans have a solid majority in both houses and a good grip on the federal court system. The Patriot Act sailed through without so much as a light skim. So, why try to circumvent the law?
War is armed conflict between states. Since our foe (to use your language) does not represent and is not claimed by any state, we cannot be at war with them. We can call it "hunting them down and killing them like the feral dogs they are", but we cannot call it "war".
We are at war with a stateless foe that moves from place to place easily. (my emphasis)
You directly contradict yourslef by trying to suppose that we could be at war with this stateless enemy.
The NSA is tracking calls from this foe. This foe calls American phone numbers, and in some cases, American citizens.
You are obviously well connected. No one, outside a small circle in the Bush adminstration, has any idea who or how many people are currently targeted. This is a large part of the problem with warrentless searches and why Congress, through FISA, created the top secret court to deal with cases where tiretapping was required in the interest of national security.
With that in mind...will some of you learned people please tell me why it was good for FDR to monitor communications between Nazi and Imperial Japanese intelligence, and their assets here? All without a warrant, simply because wartime national security took precedence? And why can't Bush do the same?
Oh, boy. The short answer: FISA was enacted in 1978, well after WWII. Therefore, Bush cannot do the same because now it is explicitly forbidden by Act of Congress, and punishable by law.
As for the Times...yet again, the fourth estate has become a fifth column.
Blah, blah, blah... first against the wall... blah... revolution comes... blah, blah, blah... ToughtCrime... blah.
I work at a small(ish) company where everyone uses their own favorite file structure on the server. People leave, new people use their own systems. Over the past ten years the network drive has become a shambling pile of disorder. I have resorted to Instant File Name Search, a freeware search program, to find anything at all. I count myself lucky that at least the filenames follow some rhyme or reason.
I rename a.xls to.doc and Word has no idea what is going on. I rename a.wmf to.jpg and windows automagically recognizes the file type. Its bad enough trying to arbitrate every damn media player wanting to co-opt dozens of filetypes (most I have never seen before), but now I have.dlls going behind my back and making decisions for me.
A consistant user interface is all I ask. IS IT THAT HARD?!?!
Hang on, a moment. I thought NTFS did not support application metadata... Are you implying that the.wmf interpreter trys to load EVERY file it happens across?
Slashdot Mirror
- Illegal actions taken by the Bush administration cannot be justified by compairing them to actions taken in prior administrations. Illegal acts are illegal acts no matter how many times they are performed or who is performing them.
- The actions taken by the Clinton administration were not illegal. From George Tenent's 4-12-00 testemony before Congress:
If other administrations could comply with the law, why couldn't this one? If the law was too constrictive (it is difficult to imagine a lower bar that the one presented in FISA), why couldn't the administration get the law changed? Republicans have a solid majority in both houses and a good grip on the federal court system. The Patriot Act sailed through without so much as a light skim. So, why try to circumvent the law?We are at war.
War is armed conflict between states. Since our foe (to use your language) does not represent and is not claimed by any state, we cannot be at war with them. We can call it "hunting them down and killing them like the feral dogs they are", but we cannot call it "war".
We are at war with a stateless foe that moves from place to place easily. (my emphasis)
You directly contradict yourslef by trying to suppose that we could be at war with this stateless enemy.
The NSA is tracking calls from this foe. This foe calls American phone numbers, and in some cases, American citizens.
You are obviously well connected. No one, outside a small circle in the Bush adminstration, has any idea who or how many people are currently targeted. This is a large part of the problem with warrentless searches and why Congress, through FISA, created the top secret court to deal with cases where tiretapping was required in the interest of national security.
With that in mind...will some of you learned people please tell me why it was good for FDR to monitor communications between Nazi and Imperial Japanese intelligence, and their assets here? All without a warrant, simply because wartime national security took precedence? And why can't Bush do the same?
Oh, boy. The short answer: FISA was enacted in 1978, well after WWII. Therefore, Bush cannot do the same because now it is explicitly forbidden by Act of Congress, and punishable by law.
As for the Times...yet again, the fourth estate has become a fifth column.
Blah, blah, blah... first against the wall... blah... revolution comes... blah, blah, blah... ToughtCrime ... blah.
Why, to install Linux, of course.
"Viiv"
See? No problem.
I work at a small(ish) company where everyone uses their own favorite file structure on the server. People leave, new people use their own systems. Over the past ten years the network drive has become a shambling pile of disorder. I have resorted to Instant File Name Search, a freeware search program, to find anything at all. I count myself lucky that at least the filenames follow some rhyme or reason.
Been reading much Frederik Pohl lately?
Get away. You smell like feet!
"My Wang has fully penetrated hundreds of thousands of systems," warn security analysts.
I bet it runs netBSD.
Its a zen koan. If there is no user interface, the user cannot do anything. The user wants nothing to be done and nothing gets done.
It's unpleasantly like being drunk.
What's unpleasant about being drunk?
Ask a glass of water.
Forget about plastics, the one word you need to remember is "cheeseburger".
The revolution will not be podcast. Do not under estimate media corporations' ability to co-opt your utopian dreams and sell them back to you.
But thanks for putting words in my mouth, anyway.
I rename a .xls to .doc and Word has no idea what is going on. I rename a .wmf to .jpg and windows automagically recognizes the file type. Its bad enough trying to arbitrate every damn media player wanting to co-opt dozens of filetypes (most I have never seen before), but now I have .dlls going behind my back and making decisions for me.
A consistant user interface is all I ask. IS IT THAT HARD?!?!
Hang on, a moment. I thought NTFS did not support application metadata... Are you implying that the .wmf interpreter trys to load EVERY file it happens across?
*.wmf would be my guess...
Yes, I am joking. Although, comparing pin counts makes about as much sense as anything tese days.
And curse /. for not letting me post it in all caps =[
edit:
Wikipedia's strhenght lies in the fact that it's edible by pirates, or ninjas at the disection of pirates.
What about hot grits?
Although, you do get double bonus points for reminding me of the amusing Three Stooges "Sanity Clause" skit.
They have seen through our dasterdly plan to force people to have abortions. At least we are making progress on our War on Christmas (tm).
No, you will get modded up. Predicting negative karma is the easiest way to gain positive karma.
Its even easier than thinking up lame jokes.