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I love the "but they did it too!!!" argument.
Bush: I have power to order spying in U.S.
Some legal experts say president broke the law
RON HUTCHESON
Knight Ridder
Silicon ValleyWASHINGTON - President Bush said Monday he didn't need explicit permission from Congress or the courts for a secret domestic surveillance program to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.
At a White House news conference, Bush expressed outrage that the program had become public and vowed to continue it. The president said his cons utional power as commander in chief and the congressional resolution that authorized the use of military force against terrorists gave him the authority to order the eavesdropping.
His explanation fueled more anger over the domestic spying, and some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment.
"The president's dead wrong. It's not a close question. Federal law is clear," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance law. "When the president admits that he violated federal law, that raises serious cons utional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors."
When did Presidential executive powers equal the divine right to break Federal and international law anyway?
Spy Briefings Failed to Meet Legal Test, Lawmakers Say
NY TimesWASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - The limited oral briefings provided by the White House to a handful of lawmakers about the domestic eavesdropping program may not have fulfilled a legal requirement under the National Security Act that calls for such reports to be in written form, Congressional officials from both parties said on Tuesday.
The White House has refused to describe the timing and scope of the briefings, except to say that there were more than a dozen. But among the small group of current and former Congressional leaders who have attended the high-level gatherings conducted by Vice President Cheney at the White House, several have described them as sessions in which aides were barred and note-taking was prohibited.
...
Without a written record or the recollections of staff members to guide them, members of Congress who have attended the briefings have provided starkly different versions of what they were told at the sessions, which they said were almost invariably led by Mr. Cheney and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who as director of the National Security Agency oversaw the effort.
...
A White House spokesman declined on Tuesday to say whether the administration had ever provided a written report to Congress about the eavesdropping program. Some reports have suggested that the first briefings to Congress took place in late 2001, before the law took effect.
So what? Clinton did the same thing, right? Wrong...
Think ProgressFrom Think Progress:
The Echelon Myth
Prominent right-wing bloggers – including Mic e Malkin, the Corner, Wizbang and Free Republic — are pushing the argument that President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program isn’t news because the Clinton administration did the same thing.
The right-wing outlet NewsMax sums up the basic argument:
During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon…all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.
That’s flatly false. The Clinton administration program, code-named Echelon, complied with FISA. Before any conversations of U.S. persons were targeted, a FISA warrant was obtained. CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00:
I’m here today to discuss specific issues about and allegations regarding Signals Intelligence activities and the so-called Echelon Program of the National Security Agency…
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.
Meanwhile, the position of the Bush administration is that they can bypass the FISA court and every other court, even when they are monitoring the communications of U.S. persons. It is the difference between following the law and breaking it.
The scary part of all this is that provisions in the soon to be extinct Patriot Act may muddy the legal waters on domestic survellience so much, that it may yet again give the ethically-challenged Bush Administration anotherlegal out from this mess.
I love the "but they did it too!!!" argument.
In Republican world two wrongs always make a right.
you America Haters...
You would want to give up all the classified programs huh?
Go to Lackland and tell the hill that they can't spy anymore...
Maybe an SP with some dogs will throw your ass out of the base.
President of the U.S. is in charge of a lot of classified projects...
Too ING BAD... maybe you can move to Canada?
maybe you can die a horrible death. one can only hope
It's good you know about that! Why all the in then?
Finally, someone came out and said what I have been passing on for the last
day or two regarding President Bush's use of the NSA for warrentless use of
his powers to obtain intelligence from calls outside the US to people in the
US. It is my understanding from other reports that I have read, that
Presidents Bush the Elder, and Reagan also used the NSA in this manner. This
should shut up the MSM's and the Democrats since their two "Darlings",
Clinton in particular, used these powers much more broadly than Bush is.
Matt Drudge just posted this on his website...
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash8.htm
CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SECRET SEARCH ON AMERICANS -- WITHOUT COURT ORDER
CARTER EXECUTIVE ORDER: 'ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE' WITHOUT COURT ORDER
Bill Clinton Signed Executive Order that allowed Attorney General to do
searches without court approval
Clinton, February 9, 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve
physical searches, without a court order"
WASH POST, July 15, 1994: Extend not only to searches of the homes of U.S.
citizens but also -- in the delicate words of a Justice Department official
-- to "places where you wouldn't find or would be unlikely to find
information involving a U.S. citizen... would allow the government to use
classified electronic surveillance techniques, such as infrared sensors to
observe people inside their homes, without a court order."
Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick, the Clinton administration
believes the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless
searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
Secret searches and wiretaps of Aldrich Ames's office and home in June and
October 1993, both without a federal warrant.
Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: "Attorney General is
authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign
intelligence information without a court order."
END
You can also find excellent discussions regarding the Bush use of the NSA on
PowerLine. http://www.powerlineblog.com/
Just as in the CBS fiasco, the New York Times report and reporters are being
torn apart by those who know the law, making the New York Times look like
the idiots they have become all in the name of liberalism...
Their reporting is much to do about nothing. President Bush's actions are
much to do about everything. He is trying to keep Americans from being blown
to kingdom come by WMD that Saddam smuggled out of Iraq, into Syria before
we got there. I noticed yesterday that Syria and Iran have signed an
agreement for Iran to store their WMD in Syria, if needs be. Probably right
next to the numerous sites I saw detailed months ago where the Iraqi WMD's
are stored....
While what you are saying may very well be true, it still does not make sense to use the fact that "other presidents did this" to excuse a crime.
You may say democrats are trying to nitpick over this, but the ing facts are that the republicans nitpicked over a ing lie about a blowjob.
I do think if the democrats take this avenue they will face reprecussions they don't want to face, but what you say does not change the fact that its a crime, and a far greater one than what Clinton was impeached for.
yes he did
a federal law
Why not tell Bush about these sites?I noticed yesterday that Syria and Iran have signed an
agreement for Iran to store their WMD in Syria, if needs be. Probably right
next to the numerous sites I saw detailed months ago where the Iraqi WMD's
are stored....
John Schmidt, associate attorney general of the United States in the Clinton administration, superbly explains why the NSA intercept program is legal under all authorities and precedents:
Schmidt quotes the same language from the 2002 decision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review that I cited in another post:
post 9/11 doesnt mean more than 3 or 4 days
So really, since Bush already had the authority to call for wiretaps and ask for a warrant later -- warrants that are hardly ever denied btw -- why didn't he just do that?
Will you defend a Democratic President's right to do this if we're still "at war" a few years down the line?
Phhht!! Why don't we just throw out the laws and just put a "citizens beware" warning on our driver's licenses? Why even have laws against unlawfull search and seizure if the president can say screw the law!?
yeah i read somewhere that secret courts approved 15,000 warrants since 1979 and not one was denied
not one
What's your point?
The courts' opinions held true prior to 9/11 as well and, in fact, were issued prior to 9/11. Face it, the President of the United States of America can authorize warrantless searches or wiretaps if it's related to a foreign threat.
Period.
Wait a minute...
when a police officer conducts an illegal search without a warrant, he doesn't get charged with a crime for doing so. The evidence just gets thrown out. At worst, the officer gets fired. This "impeachment" talk is typical loony left crap. They'd want to impeach Bush if he had an overdue library book.
This is only an issue if the feds try to use evidence obtained from the wiretaps to try a U.S. citizen/resident/other person owed due process in court.
They're not using this to spy on American citizens. They are spying (on a very limited basis - 45 days) on people in this country who have are suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations.
So unless you're calling your Al-Qaida cronies, you have nothing to worry about!!
"They're not using this to spy on American citizens"
You right-wingers who hate the federal govt to death look silly when you trust the fed govt to be Boy-Scout honest and virtuous. aka, ideological blindess.
The assumption must always be that abuse will occur. So preventing or at least detecting abuse is central to any govt powers. Paranoia is expressed in the Cons ution in the system of checks and balances, which assume that (unchecked) power will be abused, because power, like $$$, is always corrupting.
well said boutonsYou right-wingers who hate the federal govt to death look silly when you trust the fed govt to be Boy-Scout honest and virtuous. aka, ideological blindess.
The assumption must always be that abuse will occur. So preventing or at least detecting abuse is central to any govt powers. Paranoia is expressed in the Cons ution in the system of checks and balances, which assume that (unchecked) power will be abused, because power, like $$$, is always corrupting.
famous last words of a free society
what are people afraid of?
are they talking about cheating on their spouse or how they stole something?
who cares.
this is about national security.
the gov't can listen in on my convo's if it means they are listening in on terrorists nuclear plots as well.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...1900211_2.htmlUnder the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA in urgent situations can already eavesdrop on international telephone calls for 72 hours without a warrant, as long as it goes to a secret intelligence court by the end of that period for retroactive permission. Since the law was passed in 1978 after intelligence scandals, the court has rejected just five of 18,748 requests for wiretaps and search warrants, according to the government.
No one has explained how FISA is wholly inadequate to counter today's threats.
maybe you can move to Canada?
"No one has explained how FISA is wholly inadequate to counter today's threats."
anyone? anyone? Ferris?
Just as the Repug Iraq war wasn't about WMD or terrorism or 9/11, the current dubya/ head push for unlimited, unending executive power is not about national security.
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