Bush authorized domestic wiretaps without warrants

[Amazon 7]

Quote

Be very very careful, you may end up stuck like rushmc.

That my dear professor, is patently impossible.

[rushmc 23]

You are toooooo paranoid. I do not feel that this is a bad thing. You do, so we can not agree.

The only reason to bring up other presidents have the same power destroys your "we gotta get Bush " argument on this topic.

Clinton is know to "abused" the power (by your standards) way more than Bush has. (and I will give you the "that we know of") Yet still you want to get Bush. I simply provide the info to support an hypocrosy claim against the left.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

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Quote

Quote

I used newsmax to ensure right wing approval.

Be very very careful, you may end up stuck like rushmc.

No, you both may end up moving to the bright right light and be saved

....I like your sneaky attack though

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

• Quote

[kallend 2,117]

Quote

You are toooooo paranoid. I do not feel that this is a bad thing. You do, so we can not agree.

The only reason to bring up other presidents have the same power destroys your "we gotta get Bush " argument on this topic.

Clinton is know to "abused" the power (by your standards) way more than Bush has. (and I will give you the "that we know of") Yet still you want to get Bush. I simply provide the info to support an hypocrosy claim against the left.

When it comes to untrustworthiness, Bush isn't in the same league as Nixon or Johnson.

But he is still untrustworthy, and putting unsupervised surveillance power in untrustworthy hands is a really bad thing.

Were you actually around during Nixons time?

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Channman 2]

>Were you actually around during Nixons time?

I was just a young lad at the time, let me see I may have been 12-13 at the time. I do remember Carter, even had the oppertunity to ride in his motor cade to Hobby Airport. Was working as a press runner for Dem. Congressman Bob Gamage at the time. Ron Paul took him out though.

Back in the days when I did'nt know or care much about politics, not that I know a damn thing about it now, other than my fine oppinion. Maybe the reason I found myself getting more involved with local Rep. politics a few years later.

[rushmc 23]

I was old enough to follow it.

I have done some research about Nixon since however. Much of what he is accused with today is
1) blown up larger than it is and
2)would not be an issue if he was a Dem but impeachabel if he was a Republican.

I say that somewhat tongue in cheek but really.

If Bush lied under oath (don't go to your position of he lied about the war please) I would want him impeached and removed, as I did Clinton.

While some of the issues you raise can be bothering to me, I don't see them the same as you.

As for the survailence issue. It is very very good to be sceptical and watch any government closely because, like you, I think these types of things are very easily abused. But, as of right now, Bush has not done anything to that level (that is known)

Have you been following the Barret (I think that is the name) Report about IRS abuses that the congress is trying to bury?

By the way, Merry Christmas! Even though we are normally on oposite ends of the issues, your passion about your beliefs are commendable.

Hope you and all reading this have a great and safe New Year!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Andy9o8 2]

It took me an extra read-thru to realize you were referring to a traitor. (Remember, SC is a hard-ball field.)

Yes, Ames was certainly a traitor. He was a civilian American citizen who was searched on American soil for violation of a criminal statute under American federal law, known as espionage. The constitution required the issuance of a judicial warrant for that search. The constitution does not carve out an exception to that requirement when the suspected crime is espionage. To satisfy anticipatable needs for exigency, the The Foreign Intelligence Act allows the search (or wiretap, as the case may be) to proceed immediately and not be submitted to a judge for retroactive approval for 72 hours. But, taking the constitution and the statute together, the requirement for submission of the search to a court for judicial approval, even if it is the secret foreign intelligence court, is an absolute. By never having submitted the Ames search to a court, the search was thereby, in my opinion, unconstitutional. Every president, Democrat or Republican, from Carter to the present, has been incorrect on this legal issue. And there are plenty of lawyers who are Democrats who have always said that.

[billvon 3,090]

> Much of what he is accused with today is
>1) blown up larger than it is and
>2)would not be an issue if he was a Dem but impeachabel if he was a Republican.

That's the funniest thing I've read this week! Thanks for lightening the mood here in SC.

[rushmc 23]

Your welcome,
You need all the help you guys can get to lighten up......

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[champu 1]

Any time you write into law the ability to bypass judicial oversight, temporarily or otherwise, on the monitoring of American citizens or American persons, it is cloak-and-dagger at best and unconstitutional at worst. So right out of the gate I am very skeptical of this program.

However, I really can't blame the executive branch for wanting to do this, and with as little "red tape" as possible. I can imagine analyzing communications patterns between the United States and countries that are home to terrorist cells would provide excellent leads for them to follow. Leads like this are highly perishable.

In the interest of civil liberties, I would support an investigation into the matter, perhaps led by FISC, to find out if Bad Things(tm) really happened here (musings of uncertain horrors/fascist states notwithstanding.) If they have, then we certainly need to take corrective/punitive actions.

All the while we must keep in mind numerous congressional leaders were informed of the program and didn't do anything about it. While I certainly agree knowledge does not imply oversight, to a holder of public office, silence sure as shit implies consent.

[rushmc 23]

Well stated.

The public must remain alert!

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

Quote

The Bush administration believes it is above the law, and this is just more evidence of that fact.

Witness the detaining of people in a variety of "camps" and the administrations efforts to find away around the Geneva convention so they could torture people.

Bush does what he thinks is necessary and the law be damned!

Is it starting to apear that FISA is unconstitutional?
And I don't give a dam about Clinton so save those remarks. The point is that it depends who is in power for the media and the Dems as to what is right or wrong......

February 06, 2006, 7:31 a.m.
Times Change
Remember when scholars thought presidents were “above the law”?



"The President has enhanced responsibility to resist unconstitutional provisions that encroach upon the constitutional powers of the Presidency."


That sure sounds like it could have been written by John Ashcroft. Or Alberto Gonzales. Or one of the many Bush-administration officials vigorously defending the NSA's warrantless monitoring of enemy communications into and out of the homeland. After all, it succinctly states the best explanation for why President Bush was empowered to go beyond the strictures of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and create a terrorist-surveillance program, designed to prevent a reprise of 9/11 ... or worse.

But the assertion does not come from the Bush administration at all. Nor from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, National Review, or any of the other precincts limned by today's American Left as megaphones for the president's dreaded "domestic spying program."

No, for this clear statement of principle, we have the Clinton administration to thank. Specifically, then-Attorney General Janet Reno's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — the Justice Department's elite unit of lawyers for the lawyers. It was chiseled into a formal 1994 OLC opinion, aptly entitled "The President's Authority to Decline to Execute Unconstitutional Statutes," by then-Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger, OLC's top gun.

"Where the President believes that an enactment [by Congress] unconstitutionally limits his powers, he has the authority to defend his office and decline to abide by it," Dellinger explained. Far from a novel idea, his opinion elaborates that: "the general proposition that in some situations the President may decline to enforce unconstitutional statutes is unassailable."

Evidently, sometime between 1994 and 2006, it suddenly got assailable. In January, as controversy was stoked over the NSA program's much-decried violation of FISA's purported requirement that the president of the United States ask a judge's permission to intercept enemy communications in wartime, Dellinger joined several other "scholars of constitutional law and former government officials" — including several who served in the Clinton Justice Department — in ceremoniously submitting to Congress a letter-brief castigating the Bush administration's imperial lawlessness.

The Bush Justice Department had argued that FISA, a mere statute, cannot be read to curtail the president's inherent constitutional authority to tap international communications — even those crossing U.S. lines — to protect the American people from foreign attack. In countering, Dellinger and his colleagues — eliding mention of any prior views they'd had on the subject — inveighed that the administration had "fail[ed] to identify any plausible legal theory for such surveillance."

Not even plausible? Now that's odd. Dellinger's 1994 opinion had assured the Clinton White House of an "unassailable" proposition that presidents may carry out their duties irrespective of limiting statutes — an executive prerogative bolstered by both Supreme Court authority tracing back to the Wilson administration and Justice Department guidance unaltered since 1860. And while, this January, the scholars and former government officials told Congress that presidents can ignore statutes only when their "authority is exclusive" (emphasis in original), Dellinger intimated no such thing in 1994 as he canvassed Supreme Court precedent that, unsurprisingly, announces no such rule.

Dellinger, moreover, was far from the only Clintonian champion of a muscular presidency. That is clear from a superb letter-brief just provided by Bryan Cunningham, an attorney who worked on national security issues in both the Clinton and Bush administrations, to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is about to start hearings on the NSA program. Cunningham compellingly demonstrates that the Clinton Justice Department — like every other Justice Department under presidents from both parties — staunchly defended executive primacy in the areas of national-security and foreign-intelligence collection. (Full disclosure, while Cunningham has graciously credited me, among others, for some minor editorial assistance, I note with admiration and envy that the submission is uniquely his.)

Thus in 2000, for example, a new OLC director issued yet another formal opinion — one with ironic bearing on the current melodrama. It was called "Sharing Title III Electronic Surveillance Material with the Intelligence Community."

Title III is the statute that prescribes procedures for wiretaps in criminal investigations, as contrasted with FISA, which covers intelligence cases. In it, Congress strictly limited the sharing of eavesdropping evidence. Yet, the Reno Justice Department admonished that there would be times when the wiretapping of Americans might "yield information of such importance to national security or foreign relations that the President's constitutional powers will permit disclosure of the information to the intelligence community notwithstanding the restrictions of Title III."

But wouldn't that amount to "domestic spying?" For the Clinton administration, that was of little moment. "Where the President's authority concerning national security or foreign relations is in tension with a statutory rather than a constitutional rule, the statute cannot displace the President's constitutional authority and should be read to be 'subject to an implied exception in deference to such presidential powers,'" declared the OLC — taking pains to flag that it had borrowed supporting language from an old opinion by an influential federal appellate judge named "Scalia."

Much has changed, of course, since the Clinton administration closed shop. For one thing, it's not peacetime anymore. Al Qaeda, which blew up two American embassies and one American naval destroyer in the years after Walter Dellinger's 1994 guidance, carried out the worst domestic attack in the history of the United States on September 11, 2001, slaughtering nearly 3,000 Americans. We have had troops in harm's way ever since.

The enemy, meantime, has staged sneak attacks in Bali, Djerba, Ankara, Mombassa, Madrid, London and elsewhere, all the while waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its leaders, in addition, have repeatedly brayed (even as late as just a few days ago) that al Qaeda is planning strikes against the American mainland that would dwarf the carnage of 9/11. Certainly, the need for broad executive discretion to protect the nation seems only more urgent than it was when Dellinger made his strong case a dozen years ago.

Of course, there is one other thing: Did I mention that there's now a Republican in the White House?

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

No wonder Bush has been so quiet. The "idiot" is letting the left and the media makes "idiots" of themselves.

Boy he is dumb

http://www.morgancunningham.net/downloads/article_18.pdf

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[JohnRich 4]

Prepared Statement of Hon. Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, February 6, 2006: Click Here

Excerpts:

"Congress and the American people are interested in two fundamental questions: is this program necessary and is it lawful. The answer to both questions is yes.

"The question of necessity rightly falls to our Nation’s military leaders, because the terrorist surveillance program is an essential element of our military campaign against al Qaeda. I therefore address it only briefly. The attacks of September 11th placed the Nation in a state of armed conflict. In this armed conflict, our military employs a wide variety of tools and weapons to defeat the enemy. General Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former Director of the NSA, recently explained why a terrorist surveillance program that allows us quickly to collect important information about our enemy is so vital and necessary to the War on Terror.

"The conflict against al Qaeda is, in fundamental respects, a war of information. We cannot build walls thick enough, fences high enough, or systems strong enough to keep our enemies out of our open and welcoming country. Instead, as the bipartisan 9/11 and WMD Commissions have urged, we must understand better who the enemy is and what he is doing. We have to collect the right dots before we can “connect the dots.” The terrorist surveillance program allows us to collect more information regarding al Qaeda’s plans, and, critically, it allows us to locate al Qaeda operatives, especially those already in the United States and poised to attack. We cannot defend the Nation without such information, as we painfully learned on September 11th.

"The use of communications intelligence to prevent enemy attacks is a fundamental and accepted incident of military force. This fact is amply borne out by history. This Nation has a long tradition of wartime enemy surveillance—a tradition that can be traced to George Washington, who made frequent and effective use of secret intelligence. One source of Washington’s intelligence was intercepted British mail. And for as long as electronic communications have existed, the United States has intercepted those communications during wartime, and done so, not surprisingly, without judicial warrants. In the Civil War, for example, telegraph wiretapping was common and provided important intelligence for both sides. In World War I, President Wilson authorized the military to intercept all telegraph, telephone, and cable communications into and out of the United States. So too in World War II; the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States. The terrorist surveillance program, of course, is far more focused, since it involves the interception only of international communications that are linked to al Qaeda.

"This Administration has chosen to act now to prevent the next attack with every lawful tool at its disposal, rather than wait until it is too late. It is hard to imagine a President who would not elect to use these tools in defense of the American people—in fact, it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. The terrorist surveillance program is both necessary and lawful."

[rushmc 23]

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The Bush administration believes it is above the law, and this is just more evidence of that fact.

Witness the detaining of people in a variety of "camps" and the administrations efforts to find away around the Geneva convention so they could torture people.

Bush does what he thinks is necessary and the law be damned!

I wonder what kind of shoes you wear?

Cause you are going to get to tell us how they taste.

Anybody bashing Bush on this topic better do some research or thier own words will be choking them.

Again, most of you lefties will only believe your own research so you had better go a looking.

There is way more to this story than the left and the main stream media wants to talk about

Better check your facts - I'm not a lefty! You don't have to be on the left to understand the truth.

How that shoe taste?

You can respond after you get it chewed up enough to swallow

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

Dam this is fun
FISA looks to be an attempt of the Congress to grap power from the Presidents office!! (Signed by the Great Jimmy Carter no less)

Bush is the upholding the Constitution.

Well, this subject is about to die

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

Quote

Quote

Quote

I used newsmax to ensure right wing approval.

Be very very careful, you may end up stuck like rushmc.

Excuse me, who is stuck here?

Dam, life is good

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

• Quote

[rushmc 23]

Quote

Quote

You are toooooo paranoid. I do not feel that this is a bad thing. You do, so we can not agree.

The only reason to bring up other presidents have the same power destroys your "we gotta get Bush " argument on this topic.

Clinton is know to "abused" the power (by your standards) way more than Bush has. (and I will give you the "that we know of") Yet still you want to get Bush. I simply provide the info to support an hypocrosy claim against the left.

When it comes to untrustworthiness, Bush isn't in the same league as Nixon or Johnson.

But he is still untrustworthy, and putting unsupervised surveillance power in untrustworthy hands is a really bad thing.

Were you actually around during Nixons time?

Ya, I was but I was youn, but I do remember it.

Please take the time to read the very well written and researched linkI have above. Then post back to me. I really would like to see what you think.

rushmc

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[rushmc 23]

Quote

Any time you write into law the ability to bypass judicial oversight, temporarily or otherwise, on the monitoring of American citizens or American persons, it is cloak-and-dagger at best and unconstitutional at worst. So right out of the gate I am very skeptical of this program.

However, I really can't blame the executive branch for wanting to do this, and with as little "red tape" as possible. I can imagine analyzing communications patterns between the United States and countries that are home to terrorist cells would provide excellent leads for them to follow. Leads like this are highly perishable.

In the interest of civil liberties, I would support an investigation into the matter, perhaps led by FISC, to find out if Bad Things(tm) really happened here (musings of uncertain horrors/fascist states notwithstanding.) If they have, then we certainly need to take corrective/punitive actions.

All the while we must keep in mind numerous congressional leaders were informed of the program and didn't do anything about it. While I certainly agree knowledge does not imply oversight, to a holder of public office, silence sure as shit implies consent.

Again please refer to the link I posted. It looks like Congress, along with the help of Jimmy Carter, tryed to take presidential power from the White House.

I wonder how long it will take for the media to report on this?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[IanHarrop 42]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Quote

The Bush administration believes it is above the law, and this is just more evidence of that fact.

Witness the detaining of people in a variety of "camps" and the administrations efforts to find away around the Geneva convention so they could torture people.

Bush does what he thinks is necessary and the law be damned!

I wonder what kind of shoes you wear?

Cause you are going to get to tell us how they taste.

Anybody bashing Bush on this topic better do some research or thier own words will be choking them.

Again, most of you lefties will only believe your own research so you had better go a looking.

There is way more to this story than the left and the main stream media wants to talk about

Better check your facts - I'm not a lefty! You don't have to be on the left to understand the truth.

How that shoe taste?

You can respond after you get it chewed up enough to swallow

It ain't over till the fat lady sings and the results are not in yet

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops, away above the chimney tops, that's where you'll find me" Dorothy

[rushmc 23]

I needed that! Thanks

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[kallend 2,117]

Quote

Quote

Any time you write into law the ability to bypass judicial oversight, temporarily or otherwise, on the monitoring of American citizens or American persons, it is cloak-and-dagger at best and unconstitutional at worst. So right out of the gate I am very skeptical of this program.

However, I really can't blame the executive branch for wanting to do this, and with as little "red tape" as possible. I can imagine analyzing communications patterns between the United States and countries that are home to terrorist cells would provide excellent leads for them to follow. Leads like this are highly perishable.

In the interest of civil liberties, I would support an investigation into the matter, perhaps led by FISC, to find out if Bad Things(tm) really happened here (musings of uncertain horrors/fascist states notwithstanding.) If they have, then we certainly need to take corrective/punitive actions.

All the while we must keep in mind numerous congressional leaders were informed of the program and didn't do anything about it. While I certainly agree knowledge does not imply oversight, to a holder of public office, silence sure as shit implies consent.

Again please refer to the link I posted. It looks like Congress, along with the help of Jimmy Carter, tryed to take presidential power from the White House.

Since you admit to not remembering the abuses of the Nixon (aka "I am not a crook") years, you may be excused from thinking, like an idiot, that this was a bad thing. It was a necessary thing and it still is.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Amazon 7]

Quote

FISA looks to be an attempt of the Congress to grap power from the Presidents office!! (Signed by the Great Jimmy Carter no less)

Yup it sure was.. it was a response to the NIXON Administration and the wiretaps and all the other illegal abuses of power that got him to be disgraced from office. So I see we are back to the Enemies List... since they do not goosestep along with the U IS EITHER WITH US OR YOU IS AGIN US.

Do you REALLLLLY believe that given the power.. they will NOT spy on ANYONE who disagrees with them??????

[kallend 2,117]

Quote

Quote

Quote

You are toooooo paranoid. I do not feel that this is a bad thing. You do, so we can not agree.

The only reason to bring up other presidents have the same power destroys your "we gotta get Bush " argument on this topic.

Clinton is know to "abused" the power (by your standards) way more than Bush has. (and I will give you the "that we know of") Yet still you want to get Bush. I simply provide the info to support an hypocrosy claim against the left.

When it comes to untrustworthiness, Bush isn't in the same league as Nixon or Johnson.

But he is still untrustworthy, and putting unsupervised surveillance power in untrustworthy hands is a really bad thing.

Were you actually around during Nixons time?

Ya, I was but I was youn, but I do remember it.

Please take the time to read the very well written and researched linkI have above. Then post back to me. I really would like to see what you think.

rushmc

It's just one guy's opinion, not a SCOTUS decision. I think you celebrate a little prematurely.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[rushmc 23]

Oh, so this is not about the law. It is about politics and paranioa.

Now I get it

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln