Does anyone even care?

[archangel]

FACT: You have claimed that the wiretaps somehow filter out the words from the US persons - while providing absolutely no evidence to support your claim.

even though I am retired I am still bound by the secrecy document I signed...I gave you my answer dimwit! either join up and find out or shut up!

 

[rtwngAvngr]

So you think its good that the President is intentionally violating Federal Law? You beleive he is above the law, like a dictator, or a monarch?

Spidey, get it through your head. We're not going to let you insane lefties jeopardize our safety with your insincere "concern" for our freedom.

 

[Bonnie]

So you think its good that the President is intentionally violating Federal Law? You beleive he is above the law, like a dictator, or a monarch?

Re read what I said........And dictator LOL wow that has been the liberals media's newest mantra word for all of two days now, think they can make that stick??

 

[SpidermanTuba]

No, because I don't see this act by Bush as breaking the law, and by the way all those who are asking for hearings were fully informed this was going on from the very beginning, much like everything else they accuse Bush of doing behind their collective backs.

A) So FISA says that a wiretap without court authorization cannot be issued for a conversation involving a US person - and Bush authorizes a wiretap without a court order involving a US person - and this is somehow not breaking the law? That's kind of, well, hmmm. Don't know what to say to that. Hard to come up with anything to say when I say "2+2=4' and you say "no, it equals 5" You'd be a good White House press secretary.

B) So you are saying its OK to break the law as long as you tell someone about it?


C) You seem to know that they were "fully informed" about the whole program. Obvsiouly, you must have access to the exact memos which the President provided Congress. Will you tell me where I can find them? Or do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your claim that they were "fully informed"?

And by your own admission you say Clinton was found to not have broken the law, therefore how can Bush have???

First off - I was talking about his perjury charges. Second of, first support your claim that CLinton was doing the same thing, and then we'll talk.

 

[Bonnie]

But Spider I am curious if you also think that Roosevelt rounding up thousands of Japanese Americans into camps during WWII was illegal??

 

[SpidermanTuba]

even though I am retired I am still bound by the secrecy document I signed...I gave you my answer dimwit! either join up and find out or shut up!

Right - so you're retired and they still provide you daily briefings on what's going on present day. That's hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mr. P]

Where? Tell me where?


Oh - I think I get it. You think that Congress issued a declaration of war, and therefore he is allowed under 1811. Sorry buddy, no declaration of war has been issued by Congress in over 6 decades.

Two short pages, kid. Put em togather, you can do it.
This act has nothing to do with war either...Go fish some more, geeezzzz.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Spidey, get it through your head. We're not going to let you insane lefties jeopardize our safety with your insincere "concern" for our freedom.

So you are fine with the President violating Federal Law?

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Two short pages, kid. Put em togather, you can do it.
This act has nothing to do with war either...Go fish some more, geeezzzz.

I read them. Its not in there. Next please.


1811 refers to a declaration of war. I would say that has something to do with war. geeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 

[rtwngAvngr]

So you are fine with the President violating Federal Law?

If that's the only way your feeble brain can frame the issue, then yes.

 

[archangel]

Right - so you're retired and they still provide you daily briefings on what's going on present day. That's hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!

you are denser than a rock...I receive about the same 'daily' briefings as you do...duh! I based my answer to you from experience( minus classifeid details)...something you obviously lack!

 

[SpidermanTuba]

But Spider I am curious if you also think that Roosevelt rounding up thousands of Japanese Americans into camps during WWII was illegal??

The Supreme Court rules on the government's side. I disagree with their ruling, so yes, I believe it was illegal. Later, in the Civil LIberties Act of 1988, signed by Reagan, the US apologized to the victims and paid reparations. Also, the CWRIC found in 1983, under Reagan, that it was not even a military neccesity.

 

[Bonnie]

Clinton NSA Eavesdropped on U.S. Calls

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.

On Friday, the New York Times suggested that the Bush administration has instituted "a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices" when it "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without [obtaining] court-approved warrants."

But in fact, the NSA had been monitoring private domestic telephone conversations on a much larger scale throughout the 1990s - all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks.

In February 2000, for instance, CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft introduced a report on the Clinton-era spy program by noting:


Story Continues Below



"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency."
NSA computers, said Kroft, "capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."

Echelon expert Mike Frost, who spent 20 years as a spy for the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency, told "60 Minutes" that the agency was monitoring "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs."

Mr. Frost detailed activities at one unidentified NSA installation, telling "60 Minutes" that agency operators "can listen in to just about anything" - while Echelon computers screen phone calls for key words that might indicate a terrorist threat.

The "60 Minutes" report also spotlighted Echelon critic, then-Rep. Bob Barr, who complained that the project as it was being implemented under Clinton "engages in the interception of literally millions of communications involving United States citizens."

One Echelon operator working in Britain told "60 Minutes" that the NSA had even monitored and tape recorded the conversations of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Still, the Times repeatedly insisted on Friday that NSA surveillance under Bush had been unprecedented, at one point citing anonymously an alleged former national security official who claimed: "This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the NSA only does foreign searches."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/18/221452.shtml

Just one story, many more out there..


Thank You for Wiretapping
December 20, 2005; Page A14

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold wants to be President, and that's fair enough. By all means go for it in 2008. The same applies to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who's always on the Sunday shows fretting about the latest criticism of the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war on terror. But until you run nationwide and win, Senators, please stop stripping the Presidency of its Constitutional authority to defend America.

That is the real issue raised by the Beltway furor over last week's leak of National Security Agency wiretaps on international phone calls involving al Qaeda suspects. The usual assortment of Senators and media potentates is howling that the wiretaps are "illegal," done "in total secret," and threaten to bring us a long, dark night of fascism. "I believe it does violate the law," averred Mr. Feingold on CNN Sunday.

The truth is closer to the opposite. What we really have here is a perfect illustration of why America's Founders gave the executive branch the largest measure of Constitutional authority on national security. They recognized that a committee of 535 talking heads couldn't be trusted with such grave responsibility. There is no evidence that these wiretaps violate the law. But there is lots of evidence that the Senators are "illegally" usurping Presidential power -- and endangering the country in the process.

* * *
The allegation of Presidential law-breaking rests solely on the fact that Mr. Bush authorized wiretaps without first getting the approval of the court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But no Administration then or since has ever conceded that that Act trumped a President's power to make exceptions to FISA if national security required it. FISA established a process by which certain wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps could ever be allowed.

The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that, "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

On Sunday Mr. Graham opined that "I don't know of any legal basis to go around" FISA -- which suggests that next time he should do his homework before he implies on national TV that a President is acting like a dictator. (Mr. Graham made his admission of ignorance on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he was representing the Republican point of view. Democrat Joe Biden was certain that laws had been broken, while the two journalists asking questions clearly had no idea what they were talking about. So much for enlightening television.)

The mere Constitution aside, the evidence is also abundant that the Administration was scrupulous in limiting the FISA exceptions. They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties. Far from being "secret," key Members of Congress were informed about them at least 12 times, President Bush said yesterday. The two district court judges who have presided over the FISA court since 9/11 also knew about them.

Inside the executive branch, the process allowing the wiretaps was routinely reviewed by Justice Department lawyers, by the Attorney General personally, and with the President himself reauthorizing the process every 45 days. In short, the implication that this is some LBJ-J. Edgar Hoover operation designed to skirt the law to spy on domestic political enemies is nothing less than a political smear.

All the more so because there are sound and essential security reasons for allowing such wiretaps. The FISA process was designed for wiretaps on suspected foreign agents operating in this country during the Cold War. In that context, we had the luxury of time to go to the FISA court for a warrant to spy on, say, the economic counselor at the Soviet embassy.

In the war on terror, the communications between terrorists in Frankfurt and agents in Florida are harder to track, and when we gather a lead the response often has to be immediate. As we learned on 9/11, acting with dispatch can be a matter of life and death. The information gathered in these wiretaps is not for criminal prosecution but solely to detect and deter future attacks. This is precisely the kind of contingency for which Presidential power and responsibility is designed.

What the critics in Congress seem to be proposing -- to the extent they've even thought much about it -- is the establishment of a new intelligence "wall" that would allow the NSA only to tap phones overseas while the FBI would tap them here. Terrorists aren't about to honor such a distinction. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," before 9/11 "Our intelligence agencies looked out; our law enforcement agencies looked in. And people could -- terrorists could -- exploit the seam between them." The wiretaps are designed to close the seam.

* * *
As for power without responsibility, nobody beats Congress. Mr. Bush has publicly acknowledged and defended his decisions. But the Members of Congress who were informed about this all along are now either silent or claim they didn't get the full story. This is why these columns have long opposed requiring the disclosure of classified operations to the Congressional Intelligence Committees. Congress wants to be aware of everything the executive branch does, but without being accountable for anything at all. If Democrats want to continue this game of intelligence and wiretap "gotcha," the White House should release the names of every Congressman who received such a briefing.

Which brings us to this national security leak, which Mr. Bush yesterday called "a shameful act." We won't second guess the New York Times decision to publish. But everyone should note the irony that both the Times and Washington Post claimed to be outraged by, and demanded a special counsel to investigate, the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, which did zero national security damage.

By contrast, the Times's NSA leak last week, and an earlier leak in the Washington Post on "secret" prisons for al Qaeda detainees in Europe, are likely to do genuine harm by alerting terrorists to our defenses. If more reporters from these newspapers now face the choice of revealing their sources or ending up in jail, those two papers will share the Plame blame.

The NSA wiretap uproar is one of those episodes, alas far too common, that makes us wonder if Washington is still a serious place. Too many in the media and on Capitol Hill have forgotten that terrorism in the age of WMD poses an existential threat to our free society. We're glad Mr. Bush and his team are forcefully defending their entirely legal and necessary authority to wiretap enemies seeking to kill innocent

http://terpsboy.com/Articles/Wiretapping.html

 

[SpidermanTuba]

If that's the only way your feeble brain can frame the issue, then yes.

So you believe the President is above the law?

 

[Mr. P]

I read them. Its not in there. Next please.


1811 refers to a declaration of war. I would say that has something to do with war. geeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Ahhhhhh, but we're not talking about 1811 are we? No, we're talking 1801/1802.
Or was it the Patriot Act? You should really make yer mind up kid...Then get back to me.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

you are denser than a rock...I receive about the same 'daily' briefings as you do...duh! I based my answer to you from experience( minus classifeid details)...something you obviously lack!

And your assumption that the government does things in exactly the same way now as they did when you were working for them?


If this information isn't classified, why would I need to have access to classified information to find it out for myself?

 

[archangel]

And your assumption that the government does things in exactly the same way now as they did when you were working for them?


If this information isn't classified, why would I need to have access to classified information to find it out for myself?

do you always talk in circles...Confucious said: "Man who fly upside down...bound to have hairy crackup"! I think you need to turn off your computer...go to the nearest club...have a couple of stiff drinks...dance a little...maybe get lucky...then come back tomorrow and continue this diatribe!

 

[rtwngAvngr]

So you believe the President is above the law?

I believe in the limited context of surveying conversations of suspected terrorist collaborators, yes. And no, that's not espousing dicatorship.

 

[archangel]

you have a picture posted...in the picture one looks a awful lot like "Chuck Norris"...if it is him and you are related...does he know about your left wing rantings?

 

[Annie]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_12_18_corner-archive.asp#085374

Should be top link, pdf