Government Seeks Dismissal of Spy Suit 135
The Wired blog 27B Stroke 6 is carrying the news that the US has filed a motion to drop the case the ACLU won in lower court against the government's warrantless wiretapping program. The government's appeal of that ruling will be heard on Wednesday, January 31 in front of the Sixth Circuit court of appeals. The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program. Turns out there's a Supreme Court precedent saying that if you were doing something illegal, get taken to court, and then stop the illegal activity, you're not off the hook. The feds argue in their petition that this precedent does not apply to them. Here is the government's filing (PDF).
So lets see if I have this chain of events right: (Score:5, Funny)
Governmnet: Yea but we stopped after we were sued.
Court: Yes, but that doesn't get you off the hook.
Government: Hey look! Behind you! A two headed moose!
Court: *Whrils around* Where? Where? I demand to know where!
Government: *Runs away*
Now IANAL, but that sounds like a reasonable summary to me.
Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:3, Insightful)
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Right. So they pointed to the two headed moose and got off scott free?
Yup. There isn't a choice that can punish those who violated the Constitution with the political situation as it is today. The best that you can hope for is that the courts drop the case but Congress uses their Power of Subpoena to investigate the hell out of it. The worst is if it remains in the courts and they decide that it was legal (unlikely, but the Supreme Court did once rule that internment of Japanese civilians was perfectly legal for national security purposes).
Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:5, Insightful)
I take particular conflict with this statement. The fed's continued assertion that the program was lawful without FISA approval shows that they can, and will use this 'constitutional authority' again as the perceived need arises. On that basis alone, the balance of prejudice against state secrets powers, constitutional power of the executive brach during times of war and mootness versus the right of the people to use the last check in the federal system to prevent future harm is highly in favor of letting the case proceed.
Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no confidence that Bush will obey any adverse ruling that comes out of this case. After all, to do so would undermine the "unitary executive" theory of government upon which he bases his dictatorial actions. I suspect that, in the back of his little twisted mind, he thinks he's immune to actions by the other branches of government. After all, "How many divisions does the Supreme Court have?" In the final analysis it's only the willingness of each branch of government to abide by decisions made by another that makes our form of government work. With his signing statements Bush has repeatedly demonstrated that only he, as the "unitary executive", will make the determination of how a law is to be interpreted or enforced. The Attorney General has recently stated in Senate hearings that the civil liberties embodied in our Constitution do not apply all the time: http://www.lewrockwell.com/eddlem/eddlem14.html [lewrockwell.com]. Given that mindset there is nothing to prevent this President from deciding that he is not subject to rulings of the courts and I'm sure that he will have no problem getting a ruling to that effect from his AG and others in his administration.
This country is facing a Constitutional crisis that makes the Watergate affair pale by comparison. Between a President who believes that he is not bound by the rule of law and willingly believes whatever twisted interpretation of same will allow him to achieve his ends while appearing to act within the law and a Congress whose members have, by and large, stood by while he has shredded most of the Consitution we have arrived at this point. President Bush has been allowed to carry out whatever course of action he wants, be it the suspension of habeus corpus, torture, secret imprisonment, warrantless wiretapping, etc. with nothing of substance being done to stop him. Indeed, the Congress has abetted him by passing such legislation as the PATRIOT ACT, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and the Anti-Torture Act of 2005 (which merely formalized AG Gonzales' interpretation of what constitutes torture, essentially allowing anything short of causing death). All he has had to do is to cloak himself in the flag and claim that Patriotism and a desire to "keep America safe" justify his actions. Congress is as much a part of this travesty as he is and the decision by the new Democratic leadership to "take impeachment off the table" can only have strengthened his view of the correctness of his actions. There is still some hope that our course can be reversed, but doing so will require a concerted effort by the Congress, the Courts, and the People to achieve it. Let's hope that the courts don't let us down and that they allow this suit to go forward. At least it would be a start.
Just my $.02,
Ron
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They'll need it, too. Have you seen the food that outreach programs give to homeless people? Because that's exactly what happens to people who ask too many of the proper questions when the Federal Government starts throwing its weight around willy-nilly.
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That's a terrible, horrible, and plainly stupid thing to say the president is thinking. It's ignorant of facts, contrary to any known interpretation of the facts, and requires a completely perverted world-view to work.
Do you HONESTLY think that G. W. knows enough about the military to know what a division is?
Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:5, Interesting)
So how are your militias going? It is time to feed the tree of freedom, and I nominate every congrescritter that opposes impeaching BabyBush.
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There's still hope. I don't really believe it, but as long as there is at least the option that Bush and his cronies spend a few years in Guatanamo themselves, there is still hope.
Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:5, Informative)
It is my understanding of FISA that getting a warrant after the fact is perfectly legal if the warrant is obtained within 72 hours. The Bush administration refused to even do that! The reason FISA exists is so that someone outside the administration (i.e., at least one federal judge) is aware of who and what is being wiretapped and will hopefully keep them from abusing the power of the intelligence services as had been the case from WWII to Watergate. During the 1960's the government was spying on the likes of Martin Luther King, Vietnam War protesters, and many others who did not warrant it. The government even had the audacity to attempt to use the information gathered about King to coerce him to commit suicide [rutherford.org].
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The feds argue that the case is now moot because they are now obtaining warrants from the FISA court, and furthermore President Bush did not renew the warrantless program.
So..their arugment comes down to: we are no longer committing this crime and breaking laws, so therefore you should drop all activity to prevent us from doing so in the future and making us pay the legal penalties for our lawbreaking!!! Hmmmm......is there any half-wit or twit out there or would dare argue that
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If you or I do this at a job, you have people who oversee you and tell you how to stay in compliance. FISA allows you to get the warrant after the fact to give time-sensitive matters precedent over procedure.
Bush want
Well, in completely un-slashdot-like fashion... (Score:2)
I firmly believe there is the potential for greatness in all of us so, the list of people I truly admire is fairly small. Rev. King is one of the very few people on that list. So, intrigued by your article, I went ahead and read it. He makes some strong accusations but, they are unqualified. While that doesn't necessarily mean they are incorrect, that article is insufficient to act as a reference. Furthermore, it contains this statement:
"Hoover even had a personal vendetta aga
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Re:So lets see if I have this chain of events righ (Score:5, Interesting)
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That is not as meaningless as you seem to imply. First it still sets a precident, either way. "We will punish you as best we can" or "we will sit quietly and take it". Second, as long as a big deal is made of it by the press, the president will have to further embarass himself by pardoning them. It will keep this issue alive and public, perhaps long
I believe you are wrong... (Score:2)
Really, after World War II many German generals tried just that defense. "I was only following orders." They were hanged.
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Turns out there's a precedent [wikipedia.org] for that as well. Everyone in the military is told that they are expected to refuse an unlawful order. Of course, these people aren't even in the military, so their case is even weaker since they could resign at any time.
Libya & sending money to it (Score:1)
What if i shipped PS2 from Amazon.com / elswhere to Afghanistan in 2001 and then retrospectively claim it is to be used by US troops there?
Considering the asshole Gonzales claims that Bush should be protected retrospectively, can i apply for protection under same precendences.
I say a lawyer fi
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People: "Hey! You can't do that!"
Government: "We wrote a law that said we could."
People: "You don't have the power to write that law."
SCOTUS: "The law is good."
People: "They don't have the power to write that law."
Government: "No soup for you!"
What a difference a Congress makes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, it's back to the Court and warrants are being issued and there's no need to take this to the SCOTUS because we're not doing anything illegal
Just for that reason this MUST be seen by the SCOTUS.
This is still a Democracy.
Exactly. If it were a security matter, (Score:4, Interesting)
This pattern of hyping a security threat and forgetting about it when challenged has come up before. Yaser Esam Hamdi was supposedly too dangerous ever to be set free, allowing him to see a lawyer was somehow supposed to endanger our national security, and when he finally did get to meet an attorney the military recorded the entire meeting.
So, when the Supreme Court ruled that a US citizen was entitled to say "put up or shut up" when imprisoned, did the government build up a prosecution based on the Qala-e-Jangi prison riot? No -- they cut him loose and shipped him to Saudi Arabia. Pretty much the last thing anyone who cared about the country would do if they really thought he were a terrorist.
We already knew that it wasn't a national security issue whether a security-cleared patriotic judge saw the wiretap applications beforehand (even after the fact if the government so chose). Now we know that the Administration didn't even think it was a national security issue.
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Hamdi to be sent to Saudi Arabia, renouncing US citizenship [pitt.edu]
Hamdi Returned to Saudi Arabia [washingtonpost.com]
A discussion of the Hamdi ruling: Harmful Rulings - Enemy combatants and an irresponsible Court. [nationalreview.com]
As for lawyers and national security: Sheik's U.S. Lawyer Convicted Of Aiding Terrorist Activity
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Comparing moderation to what the Nazis did is, and I will be brutally frank, fucking deranged.
Get over it, the original
it's like (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:it's like (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually ... (Score:2)
It would be like arguing that you have stopped beating your wife, but you retain the right to resume beating her if she "really needs it".
The governments play here is quite plain and obvious. Getting the case this far has taken a long time. They are seeking a dismissal so that the case will have to be restarted from scratch once they've restarted their wireless wiretaps.
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Meaning: "We figured out who leaked it, they've been lynched, and we've determined the most effective way of continuing without letting anyone else know."
If you have a security clearance you get to "know" a lot more about what the government is doing with trillions of dollars in taxpayer money. Has anyone stopped to wonder just what all the new database jockey positions with military contractors requiring security clearances will be
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If you have a security clearance you get to "know" a lot more about what the government is doing with trillions of dollars in taxpayer money.
Do you have one? They don't hand you the keys to the car with a clearance. You get access to know a little bit about a small piece of an enormous pie.
I'm guessing the databases are chock full of information gleened from digital transmissions, many financial transactions, cell phones (satellites are in international airspace, therefore, every cell phone call is a
Not FISA court approval (Score:5, Informative)
An actual legal FISA warrant is done case by case:
Each application
for a surveillance order must include, inter alia:
1) the identity of the federal officer making
the application;
2) the authority conferred on the Attorney
General by the President of the United States
and the approval of the Attorney General to
make the application;
3) the identity, if known, or a description of
the target of the electronic surveillance;
4) a statement of the facts and circumstances
relied upon by the applicant to justify his
belief that . . . the target of the electronic surveillance
is a foreign power or an agent of a
foreign power . . . [and] each of the facilities
or places [to be subjected to the surveillance]
. . . is being used, or is about to be used, by a
foreign power or an agent of a foreign power;
5) a statement of the proposed minimization
procedures;
6) a detailed description of the nature of the
information sought and the type of communications
or activities to be subjected to the surveillance;
[and]
7) a certification [from an appropriate executive
branch official] . . . that the certifying
official deems the information sought to be
foreign intelligence information . . . that the
purpose of the surveillance is to obtain foreign
intelligence information . . . that such
information cannot reasonably be obtained
by normal investigative techniques . . . .
http://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/sojudge.pdf [fas.org]
Re:Not FISA court approval (Score:5, Informative)
Yay, a general warrant [wikipedia.org]! We don't need no stinking Fourth Amendment!
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Section D of the government filing (Score:2, Informative)
'A judge from the FISA court issued order authorising the government to target for collection international
i.e. a blanket authorization from a single FISA judge, a power the FISA court isn't empowered to grant, let alone an individual judge. It can only grant individual warrants in the circumstances above.
I'm not aware of any power under which a FISA judge can issue a blanket power like that.
Re:Section D of the government filing (Score:5, Informative)
The Fourth Ammendment:
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It is when a *lead* from a NSA tap on a foreign *target* that the FBI needs to get a warrant. That appears what the TSP was doing. It tore down the wall between the NSA and the FBI so the NSA could pass leads to the FBI.
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1. A judge on the FISA court not the FISA court approved it.
Okay, fine. It is interesting to note that they did seem to agree on the argument.
2. Not within the FISA court powers to authorize blanket warrants so irrelevant.
It is also not within
Of course that's what the feds say (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't expect the feds to argue any different. King George and his regime have been arguing that the Constitution doesn't apply to them and the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to them. How could anyone think they'd accept prior case law as applying to them.
Gotta remember this (Score:5, Insightful)
Right?
Oh, wait. Doesn't that mean Bush should also stop hunting Bin Laden? I mean, he hasn't crashed any airliners into skycrapers for years now.
The mind boggles trying to follow what passes for "reason" in your government. I once thought Bush is stupid. I don't do that anymore. I think he has some unknown insanity that is contagious.
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WTF is this numbnut still doing in office? Why?
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Re:Gotta remember this (Score:4, Informative)
I just tried for quite a while, and I can find no mention of this in the constitution. What part is it in?
The closest thing I found was in article 1, section 3, about the Senate:
What this clearly says is that the impeachment process itself can only result in getting the target tossed from office; but that the rest of the body of law, and punishment, still applies in the normal venues, that is, police, court, jail and so on. It doesn't say that the person has to be impeached before normal procedures take effect, either.
In article 2, section 4, we find this:
Here, under article 3, the judicial branch, we find:
The above makes it clear that the courts do indeed have jurisdiction when the case involves a "public minister" and furthermore, the last part clearly sets out what to do in the case of trials of "other" kind than impeachment, meaning they were specifically thinking that law should apply to public officials (as of course it should, what, were they supposed to be idiots?) Not only that, the wording makes it clear that such trial can occur without impeachment - so impeachment does not have to come first.
This whole business of the president being "immune" smells like nonsense of the first degree to me, and I utterly fail to see any constitutional justification for it. Barring anyone pointing out something critical I've missed here, my position is that Bush is a crook, he is long past needing to be arrested for illegal wiretapping, torture, and obstruction of justice - he is the responsible party - and tried, and punished. Congress can get around to impeaching him, or not, I don't really care, but I do think the man belongs in a courtroom, facing these accusations, and frankly, I think conviction should be a doddle.
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I don't have any problem with that. However, the constitution does not grant the ability to secretly invade a citizen's privacy without a warrant, does it? Nor does it grant the power to torture; I could go on for quite a while. The bottom line is clearly that he can be criminally charged, and that he is not, by the above court d
The NSA is the defendant, not the President (Score:1)
The Federal Judiciary should stay out of political battles, as it cheapens their legitimacy in the public eye. It is a shame that they did not heed this, in the election aftermath of 2000. Still, it is not the President, and his unlawful acts which are being appealed. It is the NSA's unlawful acts determined to be unlawful, notwithstanding that they claim were predicated on a presidential finding.
These unlawful acts are surely Constitutional Violations. Whether the Legislature finds the courage to chal
"The party convicted..." (Score:2)
Civil immunity (Score:2)
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According to your reasoning, Bush could climb a bell tower, aim a machine gun at the crowd of churchgoers below, mow them down in a hail of lead, and he could not be arrested. He could take a bunch of visiting boy scouts, cut them up on his desk, and eat their livers, and there wouldn't be a thing we could do about it until he was not only impeached, but also convicted in the senate.
I think your reasoning has mo
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According to your reasoning, Bush could climb a bell tower, aim a machine gun at the crowd of churchgoers below, mow them down in a hail of lead, and he could not be arrested. . . .
IANAL, but I do believe that while he certainly could be detained by authorities in order to stop the commission of a crime, he could not be prosecuted for said crime by authorities other than Congress until impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate. I agree with you that the clause also means that impeachment is no excuse for prohibiting further prosecution, but it also means that removal from office by way of impeachment must precede further prosecution.
Again, the text reads "but the party co
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We will agree to disagree then, for I see no way that the passage can be read the way you say. You are adding a great deal of meaning, and words, that are not in the passage. I'm just reading the sentence for what it actually says, which is that conviction at impeachment doesn't make the subject immune from mundane procedures at law.
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I understand what you're getting at, and in a strictly technical sense, you are correct. That doesn't mean it's proper. Frankly, I would like to know why the ACLU didn't ask for damages. How about $100 per illegally monitored call, payable in half to each participant in the call.
I mean, it's not as if you could bancrupt the government, not anymore than they alrea
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It applies to countries which impose puntitive sanctions on US-made goods, by taking that country's own laws and applying it to goods exported by that country to US.
We should similarly try the Prez and AG under the same secret laws, and secret prisons which they are so fond of.
One fine day we all wake up to the news at 8 that prez and AG are in Gitmo for being "persons-of-interest" but their lawyers are unable to reach them because of the laws made by th
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Otherwise (ie. a criminal case for individual offenses), no.
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Actually, Bush has never been hunting for that old family friend of his, Osama bin Laden. If you recall from the news several years ago, a Delta team was ordered to stand down by Central Command when they thought they had spotted bin Laden at Tora Bora. They then witnessed Soviet-made, Pakistani military helicopters fly in and retrieve him and his entourage.
Latter, upon retu
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Look, your leader is a psychopath. The fact that others aren't much better doesn't change it, doesn't make it any less horrible, and should not take attention away from the fact that yes, there might be 50 criminally insane heads of state around the world, but you can do something about this one.
I Got Better (Score:3, Interesting)
That specific example will probably show up in court. If not in this spy suit, then at the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Neocon war crimes trials.
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If they win (Score:5, Interesting)
Power Company (Score:4, Insightful)
Because all that BushCo has learned from politics is the Nixon philosophy "it's only a crime when you get caught". Because the Bush admin made its bones in the Nixon admin [google.com].
These people will do anything for tyrannical powers, including use ones they don't actually have to get them. The Constitution is designed to stop such criminal tyrants: impeachment [u-s-history.com]. It works only while the Constitution still has more power than the tyrants attacking it.
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They have only one rationale: "Because I said so." And their political philosophy is the Divine Right of Kings. We've been down that road before with absolute monarchies. It inevitably leads to torture, corruption and wars of adventure.
Drop the talk of impeachment. The gutless wonders in Congress are right on that point: by the time impeachment proceedings are completed Bush will already be out of office or nearly so. In
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First, the president (and arguably, the VP) cannot be tried for anything while they're in power, except by impeachment, according to the Constitution. Who will violate that? No one.
Second, impeachment doesn't have to take long. Republicans impeached Clinton in a few weeks.
Third, impeachment doesn't have to lead to conviction to stop a criminal president. Nixon resigned rather than allow a trial to expose even more of his criminal enterprise and his
Study of Kafka (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same trial, I think, in which one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs said he was studying Kafka as a refresher course on bizarre legal proceedings.
If the only goal of the plaintiffs was to seek an end of the government's wiretapping activities, then the government's request would not be illogical. One of the major disadvantages of the Common Law system is that it is so laborious and costly that only a minority of cases can actually be decided in court. Stopping a procedure to achieve a goal that is already achieved, would save time and money.
Unfortunately for the government, one of the plaintiffs is seeking civil damages, because documents that got accidentally in the "wrong" hands, revealed that it was being illegally spied upon. And this damages part of the trial clearly cannot be avoided by simply stopping the snooping, as it applies to the past. The US government's position on this appears to be that it cannot be prosecuted because all evidence against it is secret (how convenient) and should never have been seen by the plaintiffs, their lawyers, or the court. It did not yet file a formal request to have any memory of it erased from their minds, but I am sure that is only because they lack the technology, not because they have an scruples about it.
This, of course, is only the civil side of the issue. I think possible criminal prosecution is still open regardless of what is decided in this case, although it may have to wait for the end of the Bush administration.
As far as I remember, in some Italian republics of the Renaissance government officials were sent to court automatically after the end of their tenure. They had to account for their actions in office and clear their names of accusations of abuse of power. Maybe that is a system the USA should be considering again.
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This Is Awesome. (Score:2, Insightful)
Do as I say not as I do should be the new motto on the money.
another motto (Score:1, Troll)
two steps forward, one step back (Score:1)
Summary of U.S. government corruption (Score:3, Informative)
I wrote a summary of the corruption: George W. Bush comedy and tragedy [futurepower.org]. I hope other people will write their own summaries and send them to their elected representatives. I love the U.S. and the corruption is extremely unhappy for me.
--
U.S. government violence in Iraq causes more violence, not peaceful democracy. Violence breeds violence.
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G.W. Bush is far, far worse. (Score:2)
Of course, G.W. Bush is someone with an alcoholic personality who mostly just reads what is written for him. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are also major abusers of government power.
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Anyone who thinks the Dubya administration is worse than Nixon doesn't know their history. If anything should stand for proof it is the realization the Nixon was truly paranoid and far smarter than GWB.
The rule of law has been suspended. (Score:2)
Bush administration representatives have not been arrested because the rule of law has been suspended. Here is one of the many, many articles about that: Bush Is Not Above the Law [nytimes.com].
GWB is only a figurehead. Yes, he is corrupt, but he mostly enables other corrupt people.
Government by Weasels (Score:1, Troll)
I wish I were joking.
What part of the government? (Score:4, Informative)
To refer to the executive branch as "the government" is incredibly misleading. Congress is now controlled by the Democrats, which means the president now has to get everything approved by a group with conflicting views. Then there's the judicial branch, which at this point is still trying to hold the NSA responsible. To call one agency of one branch of the government "the government" shows an incredibly poor understanding of hour our government works. For a while we may have been headed down a path where the executive branch was the only one with any authority, but thankfully this is looking to be less and less the case.
Not without impeaching him (Score:1, Insightful)
To put the brakes on his power, they have to pass laws. But he can veto those laws, so the true power is still with the President.
Congress didn't vote for warrant less spying on Americans, and this change he's made is cosmetic, yet there is nothing Congress can directly do.
Until they get the 2/3rds majority they can only delay anything that requires extra money, but as Cheney has stated, he will simply dissect b
Selective use and abuse of the constitution (Score:2)
It seems that this administration and the people behind it's policies want to selectively use and selectively abuse the constitution.
They want to disregard, eviscerate and invalidate parts of the constitution which provide protections to the people, checks and balances between the branches of government and state's rights; Bush himself has even, (on one occasion it is reported) referred to it as "just a goddamned piece of paper;"
yet when it suits them they claim that under t
Old story: Palmer Raids, Cointelpro, etc. (Score:2)
Abuse of office -- the roots of imperial Federal power -- old story. Take for example the early twentieth centure --
Palmer Raids [wikipedia.org], 1918-1921 -- "In 1919, J. Edgar Hoover was put in charge of a new division of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, the General Intelligence Division. By October 1919, Hoover's division had collected 150,000 names in a rapidly e
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Reported by noted bullshitters Capitol Hill Blue, unsourced and unverified.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn GW would blow his nose on the constitution if he could. But it would surprise me if CHB started doing real reporting.
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The Feds Argue (Score:1)
Nothing applies to them. They are living in Alternate Reality W.
Above the Law (Score:2)
Nothing applies to them, because they have the ways and means -- the guns and the spies -- the money and the power -- and becaue they wish to listen to anything, anytime, anywhere.
-kgj
Can't we all just leave the past where it belongs? (Score:2, Funny)
"You can't take me to court, Nicole isn't dying, she's dead! That's past tense, see. I'm not still killing her!" - OJ Simpson
"Oh, no, no, I stopped mailing out bombs a while ago, thanks anyway! Oh, I have a present for you. Go ahead, open it!" -Theodore Kaczynski
I am scared for the very democracy we live in (Score:4, Insightful)
I've noticed that recently this seems to have stopped being a Republican/Democrat thing and seems to have become an Executive Branch vs. Congress sort of thing. Dozens of Republican congressmen are now speaking critically of our president and his cabinet publicly. While I think this is a very good thing, I think it may be too little too late. So much damage has already been done. Laws like the Patriot Act have already been passed and implemented and our President has too much power and momentum going his way.
We have secret prisons and our citizens (and non-citizens alike) can be tried in secret courts. Hell, we don't even have to try them according to the Justice Department, Habeas Corpus is actually not a constitutional right!
Don't forget that our president was elected based on a highly questionable election in 2000. Many people called it a bloodless coup! I have no explanation on how he was re-elected in 2004 and frankly, I fear that the power structure is already in place to make the 2008 election another sham. I suspect that the people that control this administration will stop at nothing to remain in control.
The president and his cronies lied to us about the threat that Iraq represented and they dragged us into an illegal war that has killed thousands of people and maimed tens of thousands more. He sent our troops into battle without adequate protection and recently ordered even more in to Iraq despite the fact that we no longer have much of a reason to be there.
Our president is out-of-touch with the citizenry, he is not listening to congress or even to logic. He and his administration are operating not according to law but rather as they wish. The executive branch while part of a democracy is not functioning as if it is a component of a democratic nation but rather as if it were a dictatorship.
I think we need to place our hope in the third triad of our government, the one that is least democratic (it is not elected and its members are appointed for life). We must rely on the Judicial Branch to make the right decisions to keep democracy intact. Court cases like this one, and the one testing Habeas Corpus, are quite literally a test of the mettle of our country. Sadly, we have a (politically) "conservative" court, the majority of which were appointed by Republicans, the same people who are in control of our Executive Branch.
I am worried about what America is letting itself become. I don't think that our
leadership in the Executive Branch any longer has any interest in representing "we the people" and I worry that we may be too late to restore our country to what it was.
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You may see that as a step in the right direction, but after 6 years of republicans fellating the president, the significance of their change of heart one year before another election cycle has not been lost on me.
Politicians are liars. Regardless of what these fucks say now, I vote based on past actions.
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I was extremely vocal in my anti-war protests (to the point that my MP knows me by name on sight now
Like the sign in the shop said 'You broke it, you bought it'.
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Voluntary cessation... (Score:2)
I don't think this argument will go far, but it is standard legal practice to throw everythi
a joke of a rationalisation (Score:1)
The Government is basically saying that since they are now in compliance with statutory rules guiding FISA warrants, that the original plaintiffs, who won the suit under appeal, no longer have standing. Yet their pleading arrogantly begs for an appeal determination by denying the original case controls, and that the compliance to FISA warrant rules is not the result of them following the lower Court's determination. From the supplemental submission:
I'm not alone! (Score:1)
10 Print "PUT THEM IN JAIL."
20 goto 10
Card carrying member (Score:2)
Are you? Donate today.
mod parent down immediately! (Score:2, Redundant)
Slashdot is a good source (Score:2)
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