After years of screaming about this horrible unconstitutional abuse of power, now that they're in charge the Democrats have passed a bill authorizing the warrentless wiretaps they used to hate so much!
Boy, everyone seems so reasonable lately. Is it the dawn of a new "Era of good Feelings"? Sadly, not all democrats agree with you. Here's a quote from the same article : Still, I'm glad to see you being so reasonable today.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
i cannot believe they caved in to bush again the country did not vote for them just to cave in to bush anytime things get rough
He did threaten to call a special session of congress if this bill wasn't passed. That would have screwed up their vacatoin plans. So you can see they had no choice.
Spider, I get a kick out of watching you rationalize all the Democrats failures to do anything you and your ilk think they were elected to do. You must work for them?
No, it's not, unless it has to be used in a court of law (which such evidence MUST be gathered with a warrant), otherwise, the government can gather anything information it wants the second that information leave the private property of the owner. ~String
Had the Dems any unity or spine (or the Reps any principles) W would have been facing a concerted effort at impeachment when the first lies to Congress and the American people about warrantless wiretapping were uncovered. No more serious crime has been committed by an American president - probably not even this one. The main problem with this new FISA act is that it provides no oversight to ensure wiretaps remain within its restrictions, and it lenghens the time in which a wiretap can be in place - even on an American - before the FISA court is notified and a secret warrant obtained. There always was a lag time allowed - there has never been any delay in setting needed wiretaps - but now the dealy is so long (120 days) that the warrant requirement has become meaningless in most cases. The main problem with this administration is that it pays little attention to FISA regulations anyway - so this law, in the absence of oversight and so forth, is unenforceable. In the vote, we see the difference between the Beltway Dems and the Outsiders. The Reps are all one bloc, basically - Newt and Delay ensured that, years ago.
That quote refers to the old bill which did give unreasonable power to the Attorney General alone. I find it perplexing that don't seem to understand what the issue was in the first place. I suppose Republicans want to spy on terrorists and Democrats don't? It's either black or white? I object to Bush trying to go around the law, not changing the law in the proper way if it's inadequate.
Well, when I see American citizens being prosecuted en masse and/or jailed and/or disappearing off the streets of my hometown, then I'll fret. I'm the last person to believe that the US government is only up to good things when left on its own-- but our entire intelligence community has been hampered for decades by mountains of red tape and pathetic limits to its ability to gather and act upon intelligence. Our field operatives have to call home to mommy and get permission in triplicated before taking a shit. So, no, I don't have a problem with this bill. I'm for the utter and absolute extermination of terrorists. I prefer that they disppear-- no trial, no information. I want their families and friends to suffer never knowing whatever happened to them. There one day... gone the next. Nothing else. I'm all about the US government spying on every other person on Earth, listening to their calls, monitoring their email, and listening to their most private conversations to the point where they don't itch without the NSA having a hardcopy of how they scratched that itch. I'm okay with the NSA listening in on every single radio communication on Earth (domestic or not) and having programs that "trip" when words or word combinations are used. I'm all about every domestic-to-international call tapped and recorded. As LONG as none of that information can be used in a court of law against an American citizen (which it can't), then I don't give a damn if they monitor the porn I download or the phone sex I have. ~String
You're actually planning to worry about shutting the barn door only after the horse disappears? Utter and complete bull. The intelligence community of the US has had far too little oversight, and been able to cowboy around with far too little accountability, for the good of the country. The CIA does not even have to submit a budget to Congress - something the Constitution would normally be thought to require. They blame their failures - which are numerous - on red tape, but even a cursory look at the actual events reveals not bureaucratic hampering but carelessness and arrogance in unilateral, unsupervised, unaccountable ventures far beyond their charters or legitimate purposes. And neglect of their ordinary responsibilities. Once you allow them such a free hand, you have absolutely no control over what they use the info for. They can use it to obtain search warrants, whose findings can be used in court, or inform the activities of various officials, who do have court access. They can hand it to your personal enemies. They can then deny their surveillance ever existed. And of course the various branches of government have other priorities than fighting terrorists. Terrorists are not that much threat to the US executive branch itself. Having given up oversight and control, you will just have to accept their distribution of efforts - you won't have any way of knowing what it is, actually. This administration, for example, is very interested in providing competitive advantages to Chevron and Bechtel and Halliburton, goals that could be well furthered by such a spy program. Even more urgently, this administration is concerned with defeating its political rivals and consolidating its hold on power - wiretaps that legally never have to be accounted for can be very useful, in such a project. And personally, you may find that you have an interest not only in your own privacy, but that of your lawyer, your doctor, the judge that decides your case, the banker that handles your loans, your relatives, various credit card company officials who have access to your account, local candidates for office that you happen to favor but the State does not, etc. Getting crossways with a government that has unlimited surveillance powers over your community, and no accountability ever, exposes you to a myriad of disagreeable possibilities. You may find immediate cooperation with such a government - all of it, including local zoning officials and the like - to be quite the wisest course of action. At that time, you may find yourself fretting a bit. Should you wish to fret in advance, consider this: in the past few years, federal prosecutors have accused about 280 local public officials of various crimes. Of that total, about 40 were Republicans.
No, but when you are the one making the accusations, you have to demonstrate the harm. You have not done so with any degree of authority. Okay. Says you. Everything I've read published from newspapers to books by insiders says the same thing: our LIBERAL government doesn't have the stomach to deal with real threats and wants an inherently dark and disturbing entity such as the CIA to operate like it were run by Aunt Bea. The budget IS submitted to Congress-- but only the Appropriations, Homeland Security, Select Intelligence, and National Security & Military Oversight Committees have oversight over the various intelligence budgets. The CIA's is intentionally parceled between the several different "areas" and then submitted, in secret, to those committees, who then approve them and filter them through various channels, which are then "re-united" and fed to the CIA's various offices and departments independently. Congress itself has, quite constitutionally, done this for national security reasons (a record IS kept, but is NOT published under Article I, Section 5, Paragraph Three of the Constitution which you claim is being circumvented). I won't deny the CIA's failures, which are indeed, numerous. But three things come to mind: ONE-- you only hear of the failures, not the successes; TWO-- you have no clue what "ventures" have gone far beyond their charter and THREE-- it's a human entity, it's bound to fail, that you cannot accept this and then turn it around and make it look like they are running around like cowboys is ridiculous. It's easy to be a monday mornign quarterback from behind the comfort of a desk and say, "WOW, those CIA guys are evil fuckups!" The fact is, all you have is unsupported speculation. Sure you do-- because apparently, nothing the CIA ever does is right, so what are you worried about? I'm okay with that. Part of the CIA's job is to secure American dominance. If we stopped spying on foreign corporations, then we'd be one of the few world powers that didn't and our companies would be at a decisive disadvantage. The DGSE (France) has been caught red-handed, for years, bugging the First Class section of Air France in order to record foreign executives in conversation. Quite an accusation. I assume you can prove, or even substantiate in the slightest, what you say. Part of intelligence is acting intelligently and having all the information. I'm okay with the gathering and holding of all that information. It cannot be used on a court of law, so who cares. The only people that I know of who should be running scared are non citizens and terrorists. And if it can be used to get a warrant (another stretch), then I'm fine with that too-- it's hard to get a conviction on a person without there actually being proof of a crime. If there is a crime committed, I see no reason why that person should get away with it, no matter who gathered the information. Would it make you feel better if they wrongfully accused some Republicans to balance things out for you? If not, then you're going to have to do better than just tossing around the claim that "not enough of the EVIL Republicans have been prosecuted to make you feel good" argument. ~String
Bravo. Very well said. I would prefer that we deal with terrorists like pirates: summary execution. There should be no need for Guantanomo Bay. JUST KILL THE BASTARDS.
? Your comment was that you were not going to fret until after the government started rounding people up. I think if you are going to wait until then you may as well not fret at all - it won't do you any good, at that point. The "accusation" I am making is that unsupervised, warrantless, unaccountable, oversight-free government surveillance is extremely vulnerable to abuse, on the one hand, and I will add: without legitimate purpose, on the other. What is the problem with getting a warrant, which can be done retroactively and secretly even now? If everything you've read says that our government since the inception of the CIA has been "liberal", your reading list is pretty narrow. I wasn't concerned only with the CIA - and the relevant point is not that the CIA does nothing right, but that they often do wrong. Secret police in the service of the executive branch of a government are not trustworthy entities. Aren't you calling yourself a libertarian? That is false, in the first place, and irrelevant, in the second: the advantages desired are over US companies, as well. You don't care that your lawyer and the judge could be blackmailed in an eminent domain case involving your house? Check out the hate mail, threatening calls, and back door attempts to influence his decision Reggie Walton was subjected to in the Scooter Libby trial, and tell me there is no potential for misuse of unaccountable executive branch surveillance of judges, say. And "the terrorists" are, of course, whoever the surveillance team wants them to be. Quakers, for example, under Nixon (and W). Democrats? The people who wrote the US Constitution, and included in its provisions a complete ban on unreasonable, warrantless search and seizure by the government, disagree with you there. They feared uncontrollable government far more than they feared a few unprosecuted criminals. The subject was potential for misuse of surveillance capabilities, if they are not subject to oversight and accountable to judicial - and eventually public - authority. That stat was evidence.
