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Banned
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Originally Posted by Ustwo
Perhaps not in print, but on the radio, all I hear the left talk about is the wire tapping story trying to make it into something it isn't. Its kinda cute as they dig thier own political graves for 2006 mid term elections  |
Ustwo...not only are your comments (quoted above) unsubstantiated, but the following documentation backs an argument that they are untrue. Please raise the level of your efforts here. Your above effort reflects negatively on your credibility........
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http://www.fed-soc.org/pdf/domesticsurveillance.pdf
Below, two Federalist Society members (David B. Rivkin, Jr., partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker & Hostetler LLP, Contributing Editor to the National Interest and National Review magazines, and Member of the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Robert Levy, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute) pose and then answer questions about the administration’s policy on domestic surveillance. [In the coming days, rebuttals by each will be posted on this page.]
We begin with five questions by David Rivkin, with answers by Bob Levy:
– The text of FISA §1809 is unambiguous: “A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally engages in electronic surveillance … except as authorized by statute.”
– I know of no court case that has denied there is a reasonable expectation of privacy by U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens in the types of wire communications that are reportedly monitored by the NSA’s electronic surveillance program.
– [I]n FISA §1811, Congress expressly contemplated warrantless wiretaps during wartime, and limited them to the first 15 days after war is declared.
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http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/18/no-legal-basis/
SCHIEFFER: The Secretary of State said this morning that the president has statutory and constitutional authorization to do what he did. So I’ll start with Senator Graham. Does he have that authority, Senator?
LINDSEY GRAHAM: If he has the authority to go around the FISA court, which is a court to accommodate the law of the war of terror, the FISA Act was–created a court set up by the chief justice of the United States to allow a rapid response to requests for surveillance activity in the war on terror. <b>I don’t know of any legal basis to go around that.</b> There may be some, but I’m not aware of it. <b>And here’s the concern I have. We can’t become an outcome-based democracy. Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process, because that’s what a democracy is all about: a process.</b>
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http://townhall.com/opinion/columns/...20/179727.html
<b>Why didn't he ask Congress</b>
Dec 20, 2005
by George Will
WASHINGTON -- The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...r-powers_x.htm
Posted 12/28/2005 8:57 PM Updated 12/28/2005 9:17 PM
War-powers debate on front burner
By David Jackson, USA TODAY
.......Some conservatives question Bush's decision to forgo court warrants in conducting the NSA surveillance. Bruce Fein, who worked in the Justice Department under President Reagan, said Bush acted "with a flagrant disregard for the separation of powers."
"Will Bush concede there are any limits to his authority to conduct the war on terror?" Fein asked..........
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200512240003
......Fein went further in an appearance on National Public Radio:
On its face, if President Bush is totally unapologetic and says I continue to maintain that as a war-time President I can do anything I want -- I don't need to consult any other branches -- that is an impeachable offense. It's more dangerous than Clinton's lying under oath because it jeopardizes our democratic dispensation and civil liberties for the ages. It would set a precedent that ... would lie around like a loaded gun, able to be used indefinitely for any future occupant.......
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ep/20051223/...sinmediaatlast
......The sudden outbreak of anger or candor has been sparked by the uproar over revelations of a White House approved domestic spying program, with some conservatives joining in the shouting.
Ron Hutcheson, White House correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers (known as "Hutch" to the president), observed that "some legal experts asserted that Bush broke the law on a scale that could warrant his impeachment." Indeed such talk from legal experts was common in print or on cable news.
Newsweek online noted a "chorus" of impeachment chat, and its Washington reporter, Howard Fineman, declared that Bush opponents are "calling him Nixon 2.0 and have already hauled forth no less an authority than John Dean to testify to the president's dictatorial perfidy. The 'I-word' is out there, and, I predict, you are going to hear more of it next year — much more."
<b>When chief Washington Post pollster Richard Morin appeared for an online chat this week, a reader from Naperville, Ill., asked him why the Post hasn't polled on impeachment. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied.</b> When a second participant made the same query, Morin fumed, "Getting madder." A third query brought the response: "Madder still."
<b>Media Matters recently reported that a January 1998 Washington Post poll conducted just days after the first revelation of
President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky asked about impeachment.</b>
A smattering of polls (some commissioned by partisan groups) has found considerable, if often qualified, support for impeachment. But Frank Newport, the director of the Gallup Poll, told E&P recently that he would only run a poll on the subject if the idea really started to gain mainstream political traction, and not until then. He noted that he had been besieged with emails calling for such a survey, but felt that was a "well-organized" action.
Still, he added, "we are reviewing the issue, we take our responsibility seriously and we will consider asking about it."........
.......Todd Gillman wrote in the Dallas Morning News: "Rep. John Lewis (news, bio, voting record), D-Ga., suggested that Mr. Bush's actions could justify impeachment." And Froomkin cited Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a specialist in surveillance law, saying 'When the president admits that he violated federal law, that raises serious constitutional questions of high crimes and misdemeanors."......
.......But John Dean, who knows something about these matters, calls Bush "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." ........
......As Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said recently, referring to the spy program controversy, "I think if we're going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed.".....
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http://www.journalstar.com/articles/...a635906430.txt
Hagel: No president above the law
BY DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star
Sen. Chuck Hagel said Wednesday that Americans can be protected against terrorism without violating the law or ignoring civil rights.
Hagel
Hagel is one of two Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who have called for an investigation into President Bush’s decision to order domestic intelligence surveillance without court approval. “No president is ever above the law,” Hagel said in a telephone conference call from Washington.
“We are a nation of laws. You cannot avoid or dismiss a law.”
At issue, Hagel said, is whether the decision to order such surveillance violates a 1978 law requiring approval by a secret U.S. foreign intelligence surveillance court.
Bush has claimed legal and constitutional authority to act.
Hagel and four other members of the Intelligence Committee have called for a joint probe with the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine the extent of the domestic surveillance and whether the president had legal authority to order it without court approval.
The administration has said the eavesdropping targeted communications between the United States and foreign countries involving suspects or their associates.
The system already is in place to provide “the balance that protects our national security as well as our civil rights,” Hagel said.
“We need wiretaps” in the war against terrorists, he said, “but there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that.”
Hagel said he was not aware of Bush’s domestic surveillance policy before it was revealed by The New York Times.
<b>Asked about Vice President Dick Cheney’s warning that Bush’s critics could pay a heavy political price, Hagel said: “My oath is to the Constitution, not to a vice president, a president or a political party.”</b>
Hagel said he’s determined to “do what I think is right for the people I represent and the country I serve.”........
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122102326.html
Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program
By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 22, 2005; Page A01
The presiding judge of a secret court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases is arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges to address their concerns about the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program, according to several intelligence and government sources..........
......On Monday, one of 10 FISA judges, federal Judge James Robertson, submitted his resignation -- in protest of the president's action, according to two sources familiar with his decision. He will maintain his position on the U.S. District Court here.
Other judges contacted yesterday said they do not plan to resign but are seeking more information about the president's initiative. Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who also sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, told fellow FISA court members by e-mail Monday that she is arranging for them to convene in Washington, preferably early next month, for a secret briefing on the program, several judges confirmed yesterday.
Two intelligence sources familiar with the plan said Kollar-Kotelly expects top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to outline the classified program to the members.
The judges could, depending on their level of satisfaction with the answers, demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted, according to government officials knowledgeable about the FISA court. Warrants obtained through secret surveillance could be thrown into question. <b>One judge, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also said members could suggest disbanding the court in light of the president's suggestion that he has the power to bypass the court..........</b>
..........One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.
"For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap," said the official. "They couldn't dream one up."
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So....what we have is the spectacle of our thuggish V.P. Cheney....so concerned about the potential for further damage to his administration, openly threatening republicans such as Sen. Chuck Hagel, with political retribution if they call the wire taps what they are....illegal.
Read the comments above, Ustwo, they are nearly exclusively from conservatives, starting with a board member of the Federalist Society, Bob Levy, columinist George Will, former Reagan Asst. Atty General Bruce Fein, and two influential republican senators, Judiciary Committee Chaiman Arlen Specter, and Chuck Hagel, the target of Cheney's threat.
The matter is so serious that one of ten FISA court judges commented about "disbanding the court", in reaction to the warrentless wiretaps.
If all of this leaves you unconvinced, Ustwo, I detailed <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=1965230&postcount=222">here</a> the evidence that Bush lied to the American people in an April 20, 2004 speech on this subject in Buffalo, NY, and then nominee for the Attorney General office, Al Gonzales, lied under oath in a Jan. 6, 2005 Senate Judiciary Committee ConfirmationHearing.
Last edited by host; 12-30-2005 at 10:34 AM..
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