go ahead.

so your plan would be to build a time machine and go back and change the past? or some sort of magic stopwatch?

Hmmmmmm...... if they tapped Limbaugh trying to buy his drugs, because illegal drug sales include some nasty people who kill many many innocent people. Would that be ok?

I still have to hear an explanation as to why warrants were not pursued.

It's bullshit when there are legal channels to go through that protact ALL people, and have worked for many many years...... Yet Bush putting himself above the law is ok?

All it would have taken was a warrant, plain and simple.

And warrants are pretty easy to get, I'm sure the NSA could have found enough judges to sign off.

So why didn't Bush have the judges sign off??????

What's the use of protecting people's lives if you ignore the Constitution and take away their freedoms?

The Right defnding this shows their hypocrasy and their hatred for the left overtrumps their love of freedom and what is truly right and healthy for the nation.

Like I said 5 years, 10 years from now when the next president uses these excuses and does this.... YOU who defend Bush have sold your right to ever complain about it.

But you will. And your hypocrasies again will show.

ethical law breaking, what an oxymoron


only as a wider known issue. not for anything specific. At this point i've never related Bush to Hitler etc. etc. and blah blah stuff.



If I'm not mistaken, the PATRIOT ACT was written with specific sections to cover these types of wiretaps in order to make them lawful, therefore, these particular wiretaps would be unlawful. justifying them irregardless is totally irresponsible in enforcing our elected representatives to held accountable to our own laws.

within the law, yes.
what do we fix to make sure it doesn't happen again?


isn't that what the PATRIOT ACT was for?

http://www.hippiemuseum.org/ghandi.jpg I think you just lost your argument, unless there is a Goodwins type of law about invoking this man.

What I am saying is that there is a difference between the fictional world used to exaggerate in order to get your point across of be funny (the world in which killing Carriot Top is good), and there is reality where premeditated murder is punishable by jail time or possibly even the death penalty. I am required to follow the law that those we vote for are responsible for making, interpreting, and enforcing. Why, oh why, is the enforcement group allowed to break the very rules they enforce?
We're still doing it right now. It was 2000-2001 when we gave the taliban 245 million to oppress the Afghani people. America STILL TODAY trains and arms all sides of the African wars (oh that won't come back to bite us down the road).

That's just silly. I can't believe you can compare non violent resistence to the war in Iraq and torturing prisoners.

not seeing the connection here.

Which is perhaps why we are done. You have said your piece, you would rather have seen people die and important infrastructure destroyed rather than violating a wiretapping law. I would rather violate the wiretapping law. Your view on the law is fundamentalist in nature, mine considers motivations and outcome. There can be no meeting of the minds.

I can flip flop that argument (after all, that's what liberals do best). I say that our actions DO consider both motives and outcome. Why did we go to Iraq? What was the result of going into Iraq? Those are the real questions that are extremly important (and that we are asking every day). Why do the terrorist want to kill us? What will be the result of escilating freedom loss in the war against terror? Also questions about motive and outcome that we regularly ask.

i'll remember that the next time theres an absolution of the law type argument coming.

That must be why sandy berger only got probation, because it was national security. or why clinton wasn't convicted, because it was only about a BJ.

edit: actually, now that i'm thinking about it, your argument is totally hypothetical in nature. There is zero proof that people would have died or important infrastructure would have been destroyed had the law been followed and a warrant applied for. Instead you mistakenly, or intentionally, surmise that breaking the law was the only possible thing to do in order to prevent a terrorist act.

You say my view of the law is fundamentalist in nature, does that not fly in the face of those who say the constitution is not a living document? those that feel it should be strictly interpreted?

And so you should ask them, but don't assume the answers before you ask the questions (after all thats what liberals do best). ;)

When I say (i can't speak for others) that the guy should be let go I don't just mean let him go and let him blow up the bridge. I mean let him go and then arrest him again going through the process the right way. There are reasons these laws are in place. Countless Americans died to create, uphold, and preserve our constitution. Stepping over it, over the checks and balances, over the will of the people of this country is, like i said before, an insult to every American who died for our freedoms.

I suppose I'll be cliche and answer the original question without browbeating either side.

This latest development troubles me as I believe one of the strengths of our system is the oversite provided by the three branches on each other.

My take on this brooklin bridge guy is that if we have the evidence, use it regardless of how it was obtained. I would prefer that to releasing him.

At the same time, if the law was broken, then those responsible need to be held accountable and oversite restored.

I am VERY disappointed with Bush over this and I wish there had been a better alternative in 2004.

You still think we want to destroy the governmet, don't you. I don't want that. That would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. The best way (the way with the least death) to go about governmental change is to do it slowly and legally.

Also:http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...l/DSCI0037.jpg
I think you just lost your argument, because my picture makes people even happier than yours. It doesn't really have anything to do with the conversation, but it reminds people of being happy and content, and thus makes people think I'm right. BTW, that's my puppy, Jack.

If they're going to break the law can't they just admit it at least? They should just come out and say 'we are going to break the law, but it's for your own good,' instead of all this doublespeak.

Precious dog Will.

SO we have this Patriot Act that is supposed to make things like wiretaps that much easier and yet Bush still personally orders laws broken....... why?

He has a rubber stamp Congress and judges that I am sure would have just needed a phone call to get the proper warrants.

So you people on the Right, where is the same outrage you showed for Waco? Ruby Ridge?

Same principles. Government saw someone breaking the law and refused to go about the right channels, instead the Constitution gets walked over and shat on and when Clinton did it the Right howled and cried foul and not their own president does it and they are making excuses why it was ok.

Clinton wasn't right for those instances above and had Congress tried to impeach him for those, I would probably have agreed.

But now all those who cried for his impeachment over those acts are saying it's ok for Bush to do it.

Same thing. Waco and Ruby Ridge were supposed to be done to protect the masses. Government didn't have what they needed to convict but it didn't stop them.

So why were those wrong and this is ok?

Of course noone on the Right will answer that because they can't. But it gives them a chance to change the thread over to Clinton and try to change the subject and get the heat off of them.

On the issue of ethical law-breaking being an oxymoron... the invocation of Ghandi does have some merits. However, in the context of this discussion, there is no comparing Ghandi's law breaking to that of Bush.


I've been thinking about this issue and I think I agree with Lebell. Bush *did* break the law. There is no question of this. However, Mr. Bridge should still be held accountable regardless of how the information was collected.

Letting him go really isn't an option.


Of course, we all know, that like most things this Administration does, they will get away with it.

I'm sorry but I couldn't let this one go. That money was distributed by the US and other humanitarian organizations to help with an impending famine in Afghanistan. There's a huge difference between giving money to Food-for-Peace and refugees than giving financial aid to a dictatorship.

From Spinsanity.org:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html

/end threadjack

if evidence that lead to arrest was gathered illegally, then the process should stop.

what is hilarious---and i mean that---in the conservative posts above is that they assume the law is drawn to the guilty and that due process is a luxury.
a totally indefenable argument that here, as usual, comes all wrapped up in a nice steaming bon bon we call state of emergency.
it is characteristic of authoritarian regimes to use a state of emergency to suspend civil liberties. among civil liberties, none is more basic that the right to due process.

once again, then: how is it in conservativeland that the state is irrational when it intervenes to regulate economic activity but inerring when it comes to exercizing repression?
if you are cavalier with due process, you must assume that when it comes to exercizing its monopoly on "legitimate violence" is a special type of activity, that the state somehow looses its bureacratic character when violence is concerned.
when i find it possible to take conservative politics seriously, i usually am able to gather that the basis for much of their politics is a variant of liberatarianism.
but this acquiescence to removing limitations of the coercive power of the state flies in the face of all that.

the arguments that attempt to dissolve this newest revelation about bushworld hold no water logically--the premises from which they depart are arbitrary (inevitably rooted above in a structured paranoia, a feature that appears fundamental to any support granted this farce of an administration and its various repressive actions).
this paranoia is the reverse of a kind of aesthetiziation of state violence.
it appears they kinda like it.
maybe its the theater. abstract violence visited upon other people is a sign of Action. Action is an end in itself, so long as it is a republican administration that is Acting.

or maybe this affection for state violence is rooted in the assumption that the victims of such actions---illegal surveillance, arrest without warrant, illegal detention without the right to counsel, a policy of torture rationalized in the name of the "war on terror" and endless detention without trial--would only happen to someone else.
so it is all just hunky dory.
maybe this is linked to assumptions about skin color. it is hard to say.

on the other hand, i expect that if any of the folk from the right above were themselves arrested under the suspicion of being a "terrorist" that they would be among the first to scream about the importance of due process.

Actually that was given to grease the squeeky wheel... the US wanted the Taliban to make sure that an oil pipeline could go through Afghanistan with no trouble.

absoultly yes. i'll say it. our country was founded on an individuals rights. our founding fathers spent a lot of time deciding the laws of this nation in order to protect it's citizens from the government. When the government starts infringing on the rights of citizens we need to make a statement to the government. So let him go, besides i would guess his life expetancy would be quite low after being freed. he crossed america and he crossed al-queda. he has no friends, only enemies.

Got any links to prove this?

Stevo and Ustwo since you two defend this sort of action because of the results I think it is up to you two to prove that similar results could not have been obtained using legal means. Show me that they couldn't have gotten the legal warrents to do all the same things.

Also Ustwo i'm pretty sure there is a clause in Godwin's law that says anyone who invokes Godwin's law imediatly looses the arguement. The idea is 1) you shouldn't bring up hiltler in an arguement (though there are appropriate cases, but there are probably better ways to make your argument) and 2) you shouldn't dismiss an argument just because someone brings it up.

On Mr. Brooklyn Bridge: OF COURSE the administration is going to try to justify this by claiming that it was precisely their wiretapping heroics that nailed this guy.

But why would you want to believe them? They can say anything they want and we can't deny it. It's all classified information.

The other possibility is that they didn't catch anybody with these methods, and they're just lying through their teeth as usual.

Why wouldn't they have gotten a warrant for Faris, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to get, since he was named as a "sleeper agent" by September 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed himself.

unless faris' name had been obtained by torture upon mohammed. hmmm.

The proof doesn't matter when I am describing how you feel we should act, and you asnwered that in replying to Stevo

I've never stated what I think should be done in relation to this, I only stated that I think it was the right course of action. I think once all is investigated nothing will come of it as the executive branch has pretty far reaching powers when it comes to national security. There won't be any tape on the door locks in this case.

I know who the left wing hacks are and I don't think you are one of them, so I think I can maybe explain our differences a bit on how we view this, and I'll guess it has something to do with when we grew up.

I'm about as young as you can get and still have 'grow up' during the cold war, I was an adult before the USSR fell. The biggest external threat was global thermal nuclear war and as such it took up a lot of your thinking. Movies and TV enhanced this feeling of threat, and James Bond was a hero many kids wanted to be like. Real spies were admired, and new military and spy technology was the stuff of small talk. Every few years there would be another major spy ring exposed and we would cringe thinking of what they divulged. The concept of breaking the law with a wire tap would have been assinine to even think of, it was expected that we would NOT follow the law, international or domestic, and we didn't. This wasn't information you gathered to go to court with, it was information you gathered to keep the upper hand.

I view the current conflict in the same light. Its a war for survival and supremacy. I am far less worried about its legalities than I am results. Instead of treating this as an external threat, some want to treat it closer to an organized crime family, and we all know how effective that has been.

I was 25, had been out for a year after a 6 year stint in the USMC.

So the count now is 5 for letting the terrorist go free or should I round up to 10?

to answer you, rekna, I'd really just have to quote ustwo Who cares if the law was followed if we're dead?

You stated only payed attention to politics starting in 1999, I assumed that ment you were under 25, I stand corrected.

So lets change this question a bit. Did you support our illegal spying activites during the cold war?

what spying activities were considered illegal at that time? as far as I was concerned, any spying activities that were done offshore or targeted upon foreign agents on or off our shore were not illegal. my issue at this time is that the individual arrested (faris) was a us citizen (how did that happen anyway?) who was wiretapped/spyed upon by a government agency without a warrant, FISA or otherwise, when the PATRIOT ACT was created to allow just that sort of thing. Is this not correct?

I realize that we've got two topics going on at this point, sorry about that.

You know this all makes sense now.

The Patriot act is undergoing a fillibuster right now in the senate.

In doing some research for this thread I find this from 2002...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...779746,00.html

You know I'd hate to take it to tilted parinoia but it seems this is mostly old news, and the NYT's timing of this new 'story' might be a bit suspect. Unless this is a current situation, and the story doesn't make anything like dates clear, this looks like activities which have been long exposed....

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.

Drudge flash report...

Newspaper fails to inform readers "news break" is tied to book publication

On the front page of today's NEW YORK TIMES, national security reporter James Risen claims that "months after the September 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States... without the court approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials."

Risen claims the White House asked the paper not to publish the article, saying that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.

Risen claims the TIMES delayed publication of the article for a year to conduct additional reporting.

But now comes word James Risen's article is only one of many "explosive newsbreaking" stories that can be found -- in his upcoming book -- which he turned in 3 months ago!

The paper failed to reveal the urgent story was tied to a book release and sale.

"STATE OF WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" is to be published by FREE PRESS in the coming weeks, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Carisa Hays, VP, Director of Publicity FREE PRESS, confirms the book is being published.

The book editor of Bush critic Richard Clarke [AGAINST ALL ENEMIES] signed Risen to FREE PRESS.

I'm going hmmmmm.........

Well sheet......

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHI203A.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1984459.stm
http://www.unocal.com/uclnews/97news/102797a.htm
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wsap212982.htm
http://www.ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SICD/Unocal/unocal.html

or you may have caught the congressional hearings on CSPAN

What does that even mean? I guess I'm lost.

Is this one of those stories that will cause the debate to shift from 'did they use illegal wiretaps' to was 'this is another example of media bias'. I hope neo-cons won't use this to try to debunk the whole wiretap story.

It changes the focus from current to imediately after Sept 11. I still don't have a problem with the wiretaps but it does change the picture a bit don't you think? This has been known and exposed IN court for more than three years. I don't think you will find Bush going away in chains now :lol:

what it looks like to me is that this is 3 year old news that didn't get looked in to the first time. Most likely because everybody was still focused on the war in afghanistan as well as midterm elections. A great misdirection piece.

By the look of the responses on this board, thats some good publicity for his book and it'll prolly do pretty well.

But the real question is, will somebody kill Carrot Top?

Please?