oliphaunt writes "As regular readers will recall, after the 2004 elections the New York Times revealed that the NSA had been conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens since early 2001. Over the course of the next four years, more information about the illegal program trickled out, leading to several lawsuits against the government and various officials involved in its implementation. This week several of these matters are coming to a head: Yesterday, the lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit against the Obama DOJ. The motion begins by quoting a statement made by Candidate Obama in 2007, acknowledging that the warrantless wiretap program was illegal. US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released. Emptywheel has the beginnings of a working thread going here."
American lawyers.... based in America, and protected by the Constitution no matter how fast the Republicans spin the word "People".
The lawyers are the aggrieved party here, having received a copy of their own wiretap in the mail and therefore being the only people outside of the government able to prove that these wiretaps occurred. That they just happen to be lawyers for an Islamic foundation that gives all its money to a bunch of murderers would be a good reason to put in a request for a warrant from the secret FISA court that rubber-stamped almost every single request ever, shame Bush's administration just couldn't be bothered to obey the law.
See my other post in this thread. Not all of al-Haramain's money went to al-Qaida. A lot of it went to very poor people for food, education, or health care. Only a small minority of it was skimmed by a few sympathizers.
That's the problem with the guilt-by-association game. If you're a large charity and any one of your employees helps al-Qaida, your whole charity's image is permanently tarnished, even if your employee was acting outside of official capacity.
While I realize that quote has taken on the mantle of Truthiness in its condemnation of Bush Era policies, and it now represents the general spirit of lawlessness, it'd be better to find something true to use as a cudgel. "I'm the decider, and I decide what's best" would be a good place to start.
1) Yes, I expect the government to go before a judge and ask if they can wiretap a foreign target, because that's how we make sure they aren't wiretapping domestic targets. Remember, once they have the warrant, they don't need to ask a judge anymore.
2) Even if they're so lazy that they can't bother to get warrants for wiretapping known terrorists, there's still the emergency retroactive warrants.
3) Even Pentagon officials admit that the "charity" spent the majority of its money feeding hungry people, teaching poor people, and helping sick people. Only a small portion of it was skimmed by a few terrorist sympathizers who infiltrated the charity.
4) Actually, we don't let them continue to campaign. We had many of their branches in foreign countries shut down.
5) Do you seriously think that a handful of fools wearing sandals and turbans who hide in caves are going to take down 300 million people? Can you imagine the size of the force that would be needed to invade American soil? It's moot, anyway, because you're more likely to die of colon cancer in Wisconsin than you are to die from a terrorist attack.
"Even Pentagon officials admit that the "charity" spent the majority of its money feeding hungry people, teaching poor people, and helping sick people. Only a small portion of it was skimmed by a few terrorist sympathizers who infiltrated the charity."
I agree the threat has been blown out of all proportion [ombwatch.org], 65yrs in jail for charity work is nothing short of barbaric.
So... you think the NSA should call back to the states to ask a judge "mother may I?" when one of their foreign, hostile targets gets a phone call, just in case it's an American lawyer calling
So... you think the government is too stupid to find the other end of the wire? (Well, they did manage to mail the transcript there...) Maybe you think they're too lazy to bother with all that dumb paperwork? (Well, there were all those wiretaps that were cancelled because the phone company didn't get paid...) Maybe you think they're ignorant of the FISA law allowing them to take several days AFTER the wiretap to call back and ask a judge? (Well, YOU certainly are!)
Since they are such an awful bunch(and to be fair, they do seem to be), it would have been really fucking easy to do the surveillance in a legal manner.
The preception by the administration was that it was a legal manner.
Your sort of arm chair quarterbacking here and using the later presumption of not being legal to invalidate the entire idea of thinking it was legal at the time it was done. Let's see if I can put this in a car analogy, if you checked your blindspot and thought it was safe to change lanes only to find later the you missed a car and hit it when changing lanes, did you act maliciously and intentionally to hit the car or did you think you were being legal and safe but erred?
In the eyes of the law, it wouldn't have mattered, you were still at fault and liable for damages. Especially if you claimed you checked your blindspot and missed them, since that implies that you weren't paying close enough attention.
Similarly, in the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter that they 'thought' it was legal. Legal in this instance being them going to their lawyers and saying "I want you to tell me this is legal so I can claim I was told it was legal". It only matters if it actually were legal.
In the eyes of the law, it wouldn't have mattered, you were still at fault and liable for damages. Especially if you claimed you checked your blindspot and missed them, since that implies that you weren't paying close enough attention.
Yes, but your not looking at the context. You are at fault if you hit someone. If it is an accident, you pay a fine and move on. If you hit the person intentionally, you are then charge with vehicular assault and face fail time.
It doesn't matter whether you were malicious or merely erred, you were still at fault and should be held accountable for your actions.
It certainly does matter. Accidents are usually minor misdemeanors and don't carry any jail time. If it was malicious, then it can be a felony carrying several years in prison.
I think your analogy gives the administration way too much credit. The fact that you can find a hardcore loyalist who has passed the bar to tell you what you want to hear is hardly an excuse.
For the car analogy, if you pasted a picture of a nice, clear road onto your rearview mirror, and, after carefully checking that, hit another vehicle, it'd be all kinds of your fault.
Or had your drunk 6-year-old child change lanes with his eyes closed. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty apt description of the way the Bushies ran the country.
The administration got a hack lawyer to say it was legal. It was so hacky that other administration officials who came on board later had no choice but to revoke the legal justifications used for the program. Any legitimate legal scholar who reads that opinion will point out that it's complete bullshit (it makes me wonder how many people they had to ask before they found one who would write the bullshit they wanted to hear)
Allow me to extend your analogy. You ask your passenger to tell you there's no one
Asking enough "experts" until they found one that gave them the answer they wanted was par for the course amongst the Bush Administration, and it was hardly restrained to legal matters. This behavior was common in a variety of scientific, environmental, and economic areas as well.
The administration got a hack lawyer to say it was legal. It was so hacky that other administration officials who came on board later had no choice but to revoke the legal justifications used for the program. Any legitimate legal scholar who reads that opinion will point out that it's complete bullshit (it makes me wonder how many people they had to ask before they found one who would write the bullshit they wanted to hear)
Allow me to extend your analogy. You ask your passenger to tell you there's no one in
Looks like the administration didn't check their blindspot as well as you think. [nytimes.com] It appears that the wiretapping program was approved in the same way most decisions in the administration were approved. They made their decisions, then cherrypicked the evidence and strongarmed those that disagreed with those decisions.
From the linked article:
The investigation stopped short of assessing whether the wiretapping program broke the law that required the Justice Department to get a court-ordered warrant before it
The preception by the administration was that it was a legal manner. Your sort of arm chair quarterbacking here and using the later presumption of not being legal to invalidate the entire idea of thinking it was legal at the time it was done. Let's see if I can put this in a car analogy, if you checked your blindspot and thought it was safe to change lanes only to find later the you missed a car and hit it when changing lanes, did you act maliciously and intentionally to hit the car or did you think you w
Right, because it's okay to violate the rights of bad guys. We never, ever get the "bad guy" designation wrong. Just ask Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil [mcclatchydc.com]
It's not like the vast majority of the donations to al-Haramain went to feed hungry Somalis, teach poor Indonesians, or help sick Kenyans [cbsnews.com]. It couldn't possibly be that there were a few sympathizers working in al-Haramain were skimming the money for al-Qaida.
No, no, no, we don't care about any of that. Some very, very important people tell us that these other people are evil, so why should we care if their rights get trampled on? They're only terrorists, just like Wakil.
There's no way on earth a judge is going to hold that a statement made on a campaign is anything binding. If he were to, Obama would be utterly buried in lawsuits, as would every other president.
Yes, because the president is supposed to lead the country, not waste taxpayer money every time somebody has a real or imagined beef with the federal government. If you want to change the government, the Constitution has these things called "elections", not "lawsuits". I don't even agree with Obama on most topics, and I'm 100% convinced that his expansions of the federal government that Slashdot seems to completely approve of will have a vastly higher negative impact on my individual rights than the hypothetical outrage that people here feel that somebody in Al Queda might have had his "right to privacy" intruded upon. However, the proper way for me to affect change in the government is not by suing every time they adopt a policy I don't agree with.
No one is suggesting that the president should be open to a lawsuit over every minor disagreement over how the government is run. It makes perfect sense, however, that all politicians--the president included--should be held liable for the promises they make during their campaigns, to at least the same extent that commercial entities are held liable for their advertising promises. Promising something to get elected and failing to carry out that promise afterward can reasonably be considered a form of fraud.
Does anyone remember when we elected people to represent us, not to lead us?
No, I don't remember, from my life or from history. The President has always been Leader, not representative. Do you think the people voted General George Washington to represent or to lead the nation? We vote for Congressmen, aka Representatives, to represent our interests in creating the law that governs us. We vote for Presidents to lead the nation, to guide its direction in war or peace. You vote for a leader you think is capable of the task, and who wants to lead the country in a direction you want to go. They're the Executive both in name and in terms of the powers granted them in our Constitution. That's what President means -- leader of the Republic.
Elections do not change our government. In the last election we had the choice of continuing Bush's foreign policy OR continuing Bush's foreign policy with nicer rhetoric. We had the choice of bailing out our economy with favours to those corporations that favour fascism or bailing out our economy with favours to those corporations that favour socialism. We basically had the choice of Bush the third in white or Bush the third in black.
They don't let us vote on real change, allowing the people a choice on th
I don't think the intent is to make the promise binding on this case. I think the intent is to make Obama look like a hypocrite in front of the whole world. The problem isn't with this judge, it's with the Obama administration's approach to dealing with the wholesale criminality of their predecessors. People can try to change that policy by winning lawsuits, or they can try to change it by shaming Obama into actually sacking up and doing something about it. This case just presents a nice opportunity to
Obama can't do anything legally. Public officials are pretty much exculpated from acts done in good faith in public office. Breaking a law to avoid a death is a common excuse to violate the law. For instance, it you jaywalk in order to pull a small child out of the street, should you be cited. If you are, a legal principle called "necessity" would get you out of the fine. It's illegal to shoot someone, illegal to discharge a firearm within so many feet of a dwelling and illegal to discharge a firearm within
US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released.
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced legal analysis including legislation, lobbying, and litigation. If you'd like a circular describing these research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your lawyer, and ask for one!"
- With apologies to any crypto geeks who got hired by talking to their grandmothers about mathematics on an open line:)
Comes down to the same BS of: "We told our lawyers to tell us it was legal, and so it was." Will the Bush administration EVER answer for their crimes? I think not at this point.
the IG report does confirm that the warrantless surveillance involved "unprecedented collection activities," beyond the surveillance program of Al-Qaeda touted by President Bush. The report described the scope of the additional spying only as "Other Intelligence Activities." Collectively, the so-called terrorist surveillance program and the Other Intelligence Activities were referred to as the "President's Surveillance Program." The report does not use the program's code name, Stellar Wind, which remains classified. Given the scope of the Nixon Administration's illegal spying (which led to FISA in the first place), it is sobering to consider that the Other Intelligence Activities were unprecedented. [...]
The report damns the effectiveness of the program with faint praise. [...]
The IG report provided a dramatic summary of the dispute in March 2004, when dozens of Bush Administration officials nearly resigned in protest over the Other Intelligence Activities. The Department of Justice could find no legal support for these activities, and found that the factual basis for prior legal opinions was substantially incorrect. [emphasis mine]
that last bit is referring to some of John Yoo's embarrassingly shoddy 'legal' work, which (now 9th Circuit Judge-for-life) Jay Bybee signed off on.
The NSA tapping American phones? I would feel really bad about that, if I did not just recall that I'm European and that the NSA requires no warrant or reason to invade my privacy. It was expressly created for that. Do not expect me to feel sympathy when a Chinese agency snoops on your communications. You never gave it a thought whether indiscriminate spying on 'them danged furriners', i.e. me, was ethically justified.
The whole thing dodges everything from 2001-2005. All they do is put it on Mr. Yoo. It's very light on details to a good point un until 05-07. Surprise = 0. The whole thing is a giant circljerk/clusterfuck about whose fault it is.
It does kinda seem like the people running the show picked the fall guy in advance. Emptywheel's thread does point out one interesting detail - After Comey refused to sign off, George W. Bush personally called Ashcroft at the hospital, to try to hide what was going on just one more time.
The man's entire presidency was an exercise in law breaking and ass-covering.
The man's entire presidency was an exercise in law breaking and ass-covering.
Bush didn't see himself as breaking any laws. The way he saw it, as "War President" he wasn't bound by any laws. The ass-covering part was merely an attempt to avoid the hassle of having to explain that to a bunch of naive liberal lawyers who foolishly believed what they were told in civics class.
And the Crusades were (if not started, at least kept alive) by people legitimately believing they were doing God's work by liberating the Holy City from heathens.
That's the scary part of life, villians aren't the handle-bar mustache twirling evil-doers that we see on TV. They, for the most part, aren't acting out of pure self interest and a desire simply to cause misery. Most 'villians' are people who quite clearly seem themselves in the role of the Hero (with the capital H required) in the story, doing wha
It's worse than that. Bish got rid of Habeas Corpus after 800 years. Obama now reserves the Executive Privilege to detain indefinitely, those acquitted and exonerated!
Obama claims right to imprison "combatants" acquitted at trial By Bill Van Auken 10 July 2009
In testimony before the US Senate Tuesday, legal representatives of the Obama administration not only defended the system of kangaroo military tribunals set up under Bush, but affirmed the government's right to continue imprisoning detainees indefinitely, even if they are tried and acquitted on allegations of terror-related crimes.
This assertion of sweeping, extra-constitutional powers is only the latest in a long series of decisions by the Democratic administration demonstrating its essential continuity with the Bush White House on questions of militarism and attacks on democratic rights.
The testimony, given to the Senate Armed Services Committee by the top lawyer for the Pentagon and the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, came in the context of a congressional bid to reconfigure the military tribunal system set up under the Bush administration.
In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in an attempt to lend legal cover to the system of drumhead courts set up to try so-called "enemy combatants," which had been found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The high court subsequently ruled against the congressionally revised system as well.
This latest effort, like the one carried out three years ago, is aimed at fending off successful court challenges to the system. The Senate Armed Services Committee introduced new military commission legislation last month as part of the 2010 military spending bill.
As the committee's Democratic chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan, put it, the aim was to "substitute new procedures and language" that would "restore confidence in military commissions."
As the administration's lawyers made clear, however, any changes will amount to mere window dressing in an Orwellian system where the government decides who is entitled to trial, whether defendants are brought before military or civilian courts, and even whether or not to free those who are found not guilty.
The Justice Department attorney, David Kris, told the Senate panel that civilian and military prosecutors are still debating whether scores of detainees who have been marked for trial will be brought before a military tribunal or a civilian court.
"This is a fact-intensive judgment that requires a careful assessment of all the evidence," Kris said. He acknowledged that some form of trial was preferable to simply continuing to hold the detainees as "unlawful combatants."
What is clear, however, is that this "fact intensive" process is aimed at determining which detainees can be convicted in a civilian court, which of them must be sent to military tribunals because of the weakness of the evidence against them, and which will simply be held without trial because there is no evidence that would stand up in either venue. In such a system, all must be found guilty--the only question is by what means.
Undoubtedly another major concern is keeping out of open court cases which could make public the heinous crimes carried out by the US military and intelligence apparatus in the "war on terror," including acts of "extraordinary rendition," torture and murder.
The Obama White House has repeatedly demonstrated its determination to cover up these crimes, including by defying a court order to release Pentagon torture photos and the Justice Department's attempts to quash legal challenges to the criminal practices of the Bush administration, including rendition, torture and illegal domestic spying.
Appearing with Kris was Jeh Johnson, the chief lawyer of the Defense Department, who made the case for the president's supposed power to continue holding detainees without bringing them before any court and to throw men acqui
t's worse than that. Bish got rid of Habeas Corpus after 800 years. Obama now reserves the Executive Privilege to detain indefinitely, those acquitted and exonerated!
Um.. Not 800 years. Lincoln got rid of it for a lot more people just 140 years ago. Almost the entire south was without it at one point in time.
So much for change. I have the feeling these detainees will just be held until Obama is out of office, where it's 4 or 8 years. Just pass the problem on. I think for once my mom is correct, the country really is starting to go to hell.
confiscating the retirement savings of GM bond holders and giving it to the UAW
There were no savings of GM bond holders. GM went bankrupt, and its liabilities far outweighed any conceivable future profits. The bonds were already worthless, and the retirement savings were already lost.
The government may have wrongly given a bunch of taxpayer bailout money to the UAW, but that still doesn't mean that GM bond holders deserved any of the taxpayers' money either.
taking over the banking sector
Likewise, the entire banking sector was insolvent. Flat B-R-O-K-E. Either the US government, the Chinese government, or Middle Eastern investors were going to end up owning all of the pieces of that entire industry. The American people opted for the US government.
planning to ration health care.
Heads up: your health care is *already* rationed, by your PHB.
There was NO MONEY for the bond holders *or* the UAW to have "preference" over. The UAW got new money from the taxpayers. That's a different issue, but the bondholders didn't have a valid claim on this new money either.
Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.....based in Saudi Arabia, tied to Al-Qaeda and banned by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267.
http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/ [un.org]
Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
American lawyers.... based in America, and protected by the Constitution no matter how fast the Republicans spin the word "People".
The lawyers are the aggrieved party here, having received a copy of their own wiretap in the mail and therefore being the only people outside of the government able to prove that these wiretaps occurred. That they just happen to be lawyers for an Islamic foundation that gives all its money to a bunch of murderers would be a good reason to put in a request for a warrant from the secret FISA court that rubber-stamped almost every single request ever, shame Bush's administration just couldn't be bothered to obey the law.
Parent
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
See my other post in this thread. Not all of al-Haramain's money went to al-Qaida. A lot of it went to very poor people for food, education, or health care. Only a small minority of it was skimmed by a few sympathizers.
That's the problem with the guilt-by-association game. If you're a large charity and any one of your employees helps al-Qaida, your whole charity's image is permanently tarnished, even if your employee was acting outside of official capacity.
Parent
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
What do you think makes taping the phone call "unreasonable"?
The constitution.
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Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
"Don't throw the Constitution in my face anymore. The Constitution is just a Goddamn piece of paper."
::facepalm::
Long story short: It's the fake quote that just won't die.
According to Google, the last time I bothered to rebut it was March 2008:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=496572&no_d2=1&cid=22832270 [slashdot.org]
And in that post, I reference an earlier post I made in Oct 2006.
Nothing has changed since then.
While I realize that quote has taken on the mantle of Truthiness in its condemnation of Bush Era policies,
and it now represents the general spirit of lawlessness, it'd be better to find something true to use as a cudgel.
"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best" would be a good place to start.
Parent
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Yes, I expect the government to go before a judge and ask if they can wiretap a foreign target, because that's how we make sure they aren't wiretapping domestic targets. Remember, once they have the warrant, they don't need to ask a judge anymore.
2) Even if they're so lazy that they can't bother to get warrants for wiretapping known terrorists, there's still the emergency retroactive warrants.
3) Even Pentagon officials admit that the "charity" spent the majority of its money feeding hungry people, teaching poor people, and helping sick people. Only a small portion of it was skimmed by a few terrorist sympathizers who infiltrated the charity.
4) Actually, we don't let them continue to campaign. We had many of their branches in foreign countries shut down.
5) Do you seriously think that a handful of fools wearing sandals and turbans who hide in caves are going to take down 300 million people? Can you imagine the size of the force that would be needed to invade American soil? It's moot, anyway, because you're more likely to die of colon cancer in Wisconsin than you are to die from a terrorist attack.
6) ...it's lose, not loose.
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I agree the threat has been blown out of all proportion [ombwatch.org], 65yrs in jail for charity work is nothing short of barbaric.
Re:Ah yes (Score:4, Interesting)
So ... you think the NSA should call back to the states to ask a judge "mother may I?" when one of their foreign, hostile targets gets a phone call, just in case it's an American lawyer calling
So ... you think the government is too stupid to find the other end of the wire? (Well, they did manage to mail the transcript there...) Maybe you think they're too lazy to bother with all that dumb paperwork? (Well, there were all those wiretaps that were cancelled because the phone company didn't get paid...) Maybe you think they're ignorant of the FISA law allowing them to take several days AFTER the wiretap to call back and ask a judge? (Well, YOU certainly are!)
Parent
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
But hey, anything goes, right?
Parent
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
The preception by the administration was that it was a legal manner.
Your sort of arm chair quarterbacking here and using the later presumption of not being legal to invalidate the entire idea of thinking it was legal at the time it was done. Let's see if I can put this in a car analogy, if you checked your blindspot and thought it was safe to change lanes only to find later the you missed a car and hit it when changing lanes, did you act maliciously and intentionally to hit the car or did you think you were being legal and safe but erred?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the eyes of the law, it wouldn't have mattered, you were still at fault and liable for damages. Especially if you claimed you checked your blindspot and missed them, since that implies that you weren't paying close enough attention.
Similarly, in the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter that they 'thought' it was legal. Legal in this instance being them going to their lawyers and saying "I want you to tell me this is legal so I can claim I was told it was legal". It only matters if it actually were legal.
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Yes, but your not looking at the context. You are at fault if you hit someone. If it is an accident, you pay a fine and move on. If you hit the person intentionally, you are then charge with vehicular assault and face fail time.
The point is that the administration was under
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It doesn't matter whether you were malicious or merely erred, you were still at fault and should be held accountable for your actions.
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It certainly does matter. Accidents are usually minor misdemeanors and don't carry any jail time. If it was malicious, then it can be a felony carrying several years in prison.
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Insightful)
For the car analogy, if you pasted a picture of a nice, clear road onto your rearview mirror, and, after carefully checking that, hit another vehicle, it'd be all kinds of your fault.
Parent
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Or had your drunk 6-year-old child change lanes with his eyes closed. Which, when you think about it, is actually a pretty apt description of the way the Bushies ran the country.
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The administration got a hack lawyer to say it was legal. It was so hacky that other administration officials who came on board later had no choice but to revoke the legal justifications used for the program. Any legitimate legal scholar who reads that opinion will point out that it's complete bullshit (it makes me wonder how many people they had to ask before they found one who would write the bullshit they wanted to hear)
Allow me to extend your analogy. You ask your passenger to tell you there's no one
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Looks like the administration didn't check their blindspot as well as you think. [nytimes.com] It appears that the wiretapping program was approved in the same way most decisions in the administration were approved. They made their decisions, then cherrypicked the evidence and strongarmed those that disagreed with those decisions.
From the linked article:
Re: (Score:2)
The preception by the administration was that it was a legal manner. Your sort of arm chair quarterbacking here and using the later presumption of not being legal to invalidate the entire idea of thinking it was legal at the time it was done. Let's see if I can put this in a car analogy, if you checked your blindspot and thought it was safe to change lanes only to find later the you missed a car and hit it when changing lanes, did you act maliciously and intentionally to hit the car or did you think you w
Re:Ah yes (Score:5, Informative)
Right, because it's okay to violate the rights of bad guys. We never, ever get the "bad guy" designation wrong. Just ask Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil [mcclatchydc.com]
It's not like the vast majority of the donations to al-Haramain went to feed hungry Somalis, teach poor Indonesians, or help sick Kenyans [cbsnews.com]. It couldn't possibly be that there were a few sympathizers working in al-Haramain were skimming the money for al-Qaida.
No, no, no, we don't care about any of that. Some very, very important people tell us that these other people are evil, so why should we care if their rights get trampled on? They're only terrorists, just like Wakil.
Parent
Campaign promises? (Score:5, Informative)
There's no way on earth a judge is going to hold that a statement made on a campaign is anything binding. If he were to, Obama would be utterly buried in lawsuits, as would every other president.
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:5, Insightful)
And this would be a bad thing?
Parent
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because the president is supposed to lead the country, not waste taxpayer money every time somebody has a real or imagined beef with the federal government. If you want to change the government, the Constitution has these things called "elections", not "lawsuits". I don't even agree with Obama on most topics, and I'm 100% convinced that his expansions of the federal government that Slashdot seems to completely approve of will have a vastly higher negative impact on my individual rights than the hypothetical outrage that people here feel that somebody in Al Queda might have had his "right to privacy" intruded upon. However, the proper way for me to affect change in the government is not by suing every time they adopt a policy I don't agree with.
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s/affect/effect near the end there... preemptive grammar strike.
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No one is suggesting that the president should be open to a lawsuit over every minor disagreement over how the government is run. It makes perfect sense, however, that all politicians--the president included--should be held liable for the promises they make during their campaigns, to at least the same extent that commercial entities are held liable for their advertising promises. Promising something to get elected and failing to carry out that promise afterward can reasonably be considered a form of fraud.
A
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Promising something to get elected and failing to carry out that promise afterward can reasonably be considered a form of fraud.
Only if one is a simpleton.
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because the president is supposed to lead the country
Does anyone remember when we elected people to represent us, not to lead us?
Parent
Re:Campaign promises? (Score:4, Informative)
Does anyone remember when we elected people to represent us, not to lead us?
No, I don't remember, from my life or from history. The President has always been Leader, not representative. Do you think the people voted General George Washington to represent or to lead the nation? We vote for Congressmen, aka Representatives, to represent our interests in creating the law that governs us. We vote for Presidents to lead the nation, to guide its direction in war or peace. You vote for a leader you think is capable of the task, and who wants to lead the country in a direction you want to go. They're the Executive both in name and in terms of the powers granted them in our Constitution. That's what President means -- leader of the Republic.
Parent
Oh, so McCain was a free choice? NOT (Score:2)
Elections do not change our government. In the last election we had the choice of continuing Bush's foreign policy OR continuing Bush's foreign policy with nicer rhetoric. We had the choice of bailing out our economy with favours to those corporations that favour fascism or bailing out our economy with favours to those corporations that favour socialism. We basically had the choice of Bush the third in white or Bush the third in black.
They don't let us vote on real change, allowing the people a choice on th
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I don't think the intent is to make the promise binding on this case. I think the intent is to make Obama look like a hypocrite in front of the whole world. The problem isn't with this judge, it's with the Obama administration's approach to dealing with the wholesale criminality of their predecessors. People can try to change that policy by winning lawsuits, or they can try to change it by shaming Obama into actually sacking up and doing something about it. This case just presents a nice opportunity to
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Obama can't do anything legally. Public officials are pretty much exculpated from acts done in good faith in public office. Breaking a law to avoid a death is a common excuse to violate the law. For instance, it you jaywalk in order to pull a small child out of the street, should you be cited. If you are, a legal principle called "necessity" would get you out of the fine. It's illegal to shoot someone, illegal to discharge a firearm within so many feet of a dwelling and illegal to discharge a firearm within
From the old mathematics joke... (Score:5, Insightful)
"NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced legal analysis including legislation, lobbying, and litigation. If you'd like a circular describing these research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your lawyer, and ask for one!"
- With apologies to any crypto geeks who got hired by talking to their grandmothers about mathematics on an open line :)
We told our lawyers to tell us it was legal... (Score:2, Insightful)
Comes down to the same BS of: "We told our lawyers to tell us it was legal, and so it was." Will the Bush administration EVER answer for their crimes? I think not at this point.
EFF updates their commentary (Score:4, Informative)
Since I wrote the summary, the EFF has a new page up with some analysis and commentary. [eff.org]
that last bit is referring to some of John Yoo's embarrassingly shoddy 'legal' work, which (now 9th Circuit Judge-for-life) Jay Bybee signed off on.
My heart bleeds (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA tapping American phones? I would feel really bad about that, if I did not just recall that I'm European and that the NSA requires no warrant or reason to invade my privacy. It was expressly created for that. Do not expect me to feel sympathy when a Chinese agency snoops on your communications. You never gave it a thought whether indiscriminate spying on 'them danged furriners', i.e. me, was ethically justified.
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The whole thing dodges everything from 2001-2005. All they do is put it on Mr. Yoo. It's very light on details to a good point un until 05-07. Surprise = 0. The whole thing is a giant circljerk/clusterfuck about whose fault it is.
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It does kinda seem like the people running the show picked the fall guy in advance. Emptywheel's thread does point out one interesting detail - After Comey refused to sign off, George W. Bush personally called Ashcroft at the hospital, to try to hide what was going on just one more time.
The man's entire presidency was an exercise in law breaking and ass-covering.
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The man's entire presidency was an exercise in law breaking and ass-covering.
Bush didn't see himself as breaking any laws. The way he saw it, as "War President" he wasn't bound by any laws. The ass-covering part was merely an attempt to avoid the hassle of having to explain that to a bunch of naive liberal lawyers who foolishly believed what they were told in civics class.
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Bush didn't see himself as breaking any laws.
the fact that he was wrong doesn't make his conduct lawful. Ignorance of the law is no defense.
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And the Crusades were (if not started, at least kept alive) by people legitimately believing they were doing God's work by liberating the Holy City from heathens.
That's the scary part of life, villians aren't the handle-bar mustache twirling evil-doers that we see on TV. They, for the most part, aren't acting out of pure self interest and a desire simply to cause misery. Most 'villians' are people who quite clearly seem themselves in the role of the Hero (with the capital H required) in the story, doing wha
Re:Seems like nothing now... (Score:4, Informative)
It's worse than that. Bish got rid of Habeas Corpus after 800 years. Obama now reserves the Executive Privilege to detain indefinitely, those acquitted and exonerated!
Obama claims right to imprison "combatants" acquitted at trial
By Bill Van Auken
10 July 2009
In testimony before the US Senate Tuesday, legal representatives of the Obama administration not only defended the system of kangaroo military tribunals set up under Bush, but affirmed the government's right to continue imprisoning detainees indefinitely, even if they are tried and acquitted on allegations of terror-related crimes.
This assertion of sweeping, extra-constitutional powers is only the latest in a long series of decisions by the Democratic administration demonstrating its essential continuity with the Bush White House on questions of militarism and attacks on democratic rights.
The testimony, given to the Senate Armed Services Committee by the top lawyer for the Pentagon and the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, came in the context of a congressional bid to reconfigure the military tribunal system set up under the Bush administration.
In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in an attempt to lend legal cover to the system of drumhead courts set up to try so-called "enemy combatants," which had been found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The high court subsequently ruled against the congressionally revised system as well.
This latest effort, like the one carried out three years ago, is aimed at fending off successful court challenges to the system. The Senate Armed Services Committee introduced new military commission legislation last month as part of the 2010 military spending bill.
As the committee's Democratic chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan, put it, the aim was to "substitute new procedures and language" that would "restore confidence in military commissions."
As the administration's lawyers made clear, however, any changes will amount to mere window dressing in an Orwellian system where the government decides who is entitled to trial, whether defendants are brought before military or civilian courts, and even whether or not to free those who are found not guilty.
The Justice Department attorney, David Kris, told the Senate panel that civilian and military prosecutors are still debating whether scores of detainees who have been marked for trial will be brought before a military tribunal or a civilian court.
"This is a fact-intensive judgment that requires a careful assessment of all the evidence," Kris said. He acknowledged that some form of trial was preferable to simply continuing to hold the detainees as "unlawful combatants."
What is clear, however, is that this "fact intensive" process is aimed at determining which detainees can be convicted in a civilian court, which of them must be sent to military tribunals because of the weakness of the evidence against them, and which will simply be held without trial because there is no evidence that would stand up in either venue. In such a system, all must be found guilty--the only question is by what means.
Undoubtedly another major concern is keeping out of open court cases which could make public the heinous crimes carried out by the US military and intelligence apparatus in the "war on terror," including acts of "extraordinary rendition," torture and murder.
The Obama White House has repeatedly demonstrated its determination to cover up these crimes, including by defying a court order to release Pentagon torture photos and the Justice Department's attempts to quash legal challenges to the criminal practices of the Bush administration, including rendition, torture and illegal domestic spying.
Appearing with Kris was Jeh Johnson, the chief lawyer of the Defense Department, who made the case for the president's supposed power to continue holding detainees without bringing them before any court and to throw men acqui
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Re:Seems like nothing now... (Score:5, Informative)
Um.. Not 800 years. Lincoln got rid of it for a lot more people just 140 years ago. Almost the entire south was without it at one point in time.
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So much for change. I have the feeling these detainees will just be held until Obama is out of office, where it's 4 or 8 years. Just pass the problem on. I think for once my mom is correct, the country really is starting to go to hell.
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Madison Avenue.
Re:Seems like nothing now... (Score:5, Insightful)
confiscating the retirement savings of GM bond holders and giving it to the UAW
There were no savings of GM bond holders. GM went bankrupt, and its liabilities far outweighed any conceivable future profits. The bonds were already worthless, and the retirement savings were already lost.
The government may have wrongly given a bunch of taxpayer bailout money to the UAW, but that still doesn't mean that GM bond holders deserved any of the taxpayers' money either.
taking over the banking sector
Likewise, the entire banking sector was insolvent. Flat B-R-O-K-E. Either the US government, the Chinese government, or Middle Eastern investors were going to end up owning all of the pieces of that entire industry. The American people opted for the US government.
planning to ration health care.
Heads up: your health care is *already* rationed, by your PHB.
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Re:Seems like nothing now... (Score:4, Informative)
There was NO MONEY for the bond holders *or* the UAW to have "preference" over. The UAW got new money from the taxpayers. That's a different issue, but the bondholders didn't have a valid claim on this new money either.
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Re:The Big Question is: (Score:5, Funny)
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