George Bush protecting your civil liberties by breaking them

Why wouldn't it be? All the DE can do is offer conditions for funding. The states don't have to accept. I thought free markets, the freedom to spend as you see fit, were what you people were all about. The second amendment says "well-regulated militias." Not "anybody can have all the guns they like." Not only does the Constitution allow the Federal government to regulate an armed populace, it specifies that they must.The Constitution is a neat document, Rand. Maybe you'd like to read it sometime?

Somewhat curious to see the refutation for this argument, as parroted by an old aquaintance of mine from his blog:

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Posted by Jay Reding:

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Bottom line: George Bush would not be evading the less-than-onerous NSA court’s warrant process if the wiretaps our government is engaging in didn’t extend beyond the guidelines of legal precedent. The warrants are so freaking easy to get, bypassing the legal procedures is indefensible if you don’t have anything to hide. So what does Bush have to hide?

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Again, we have an argument that is completely contradictory to the truth.

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FISA warrants are not easy to get. The 9/11 Commission Report stated quite clearly that the FISA application procedure was “still long and slow” and that the number of requests were “overwhelming the ability of the system to process them.”

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As AG Gonzales states in his Georgetown speech:

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Some have pointed to the provision in FISA that allows for so-called “emergency authorizations” of surveillance for 72 hours without a court order. There’s a serious misconception about these emergency authorizations. People should know that we do not approve emergency authorizations without knowing that we will receive court approval within 72 hours. FISA requires the Attorney General to determine IN ADVANCE that a FISA application for that particular intercept will be fully supported and will be approved by the court before an emergency authorization may be granted. That review process can take precious time.

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Thus, to initiate surveillance under a FISA emergency authorization, it is not enough to rely on the best judgment of our intelligence officers alone. Those intelligence officers would have to get the sign-off of lawyers at the NSA that all provisions of FISA have been satisfied, then lawyers in the Department of Justice would have to be similarly satisfied, and finally as Attorney General, I would have to be satisfied that the search meets the requirements of FISA. And we would have to be prepared to follow up with a full FISA application within the 72 hours.

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A typical FISA application involves a substantial process in its own right: The work of several lawyers; the preparation of a legal brief and supporting declarations; the approval of a Cabinet-level officer; a certification from the National Security Adviser, the Director of the FBI, or another designated Senate-confirmed officer; and, finally, of course, the approval of an Article III judge.

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The idea that an ongoing investigation should wait until that level of paperwork is completed is absolutely ridiculous. The FISA system is not “easy”. One of the reasons that 9/11 happened is that the FBI didn’t have enough evidence for a FISA warrant on Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop, which had it been searched would have blown the whole plot wide open before 3,000 Americans could be killed.

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But again we have the usual suspects repeating the same tired, discredited old arguments, despite the fact that they don’t match the facts in the slightest.

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Not Found | Jay Reding.comAnybody? I don't myself know enough about the issue to respond.

Well, in fact, Congress did try to amend the bill to address exactly the "flaws" that the Bush administration has offerent to justify breaking the law; at the time, though, Bush's Justice department opposed the modifications, asserting that they were having no trouble getting the warrants that they needed, and moreover, that there would be serious constitutional problems with the amendment as proposed.

If it's legal, then why did Bush say he had to go around the law, and that the wiretapping couldn't be done under the law?If you can't do something because a law doesn't allow it, that makes doing it illegal.

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Bush: See, that's what you've got to understand. I am upholding my duty, and at the same time, doing so under the law and with the Constitution behind me. That's just very important for you to understand. Secondly, the FISA law was written in 1978. We're having this discussion in 2006. It's a different world. And FISA is still an important tool. It's an important tool. And we still use that tool. But also -- and we -- look -- I said, look, is it possible to conduct this program under the old law? And people said, it doesn't work in order to be able to do the job we expect us to do.

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That's like saying "under the law, we couldn't walk into a bank and take all the money we wanted, so we did it anyway. But it wasn't illegal, because it's 2006."

Who says we don't? I want people spying on Al Queda. I want the cops spying on criminals, too.Why shouldn't that happen with warrants? Why should it happen against the law? He didn't "brief Congress", he told a handful of congresspeople who were not allowed to object or indeed, comment at all. Get real. Do you think bin Laden is so stupid he couldn't expect us to be tapping his phones?The only one helping the enemy is Bush apologists like you. Look, I want you to think long and hard about the next president. Pretend he's one of those liberals you hate. Pretend he's totally unhinged.Think about the powers you've just put in his hands. Do you own a gun, Tal? Do you think that's something an ultra-liberal president might want to know about?

We know from the Administration's own comments that speed was not an issue; that hey had no difficulty getting the warrants that they needed from the standard FISA process. This was the rationale they gave, after all, for opposing amendments to the FISA law back in 2003.So either they were lying then, or they're lying now. Which do you believe it is? And you think that's a bad thing? That we're restricted Al-Queda's communications into the US? The FBI thinks it's a good thing that the illegal tapping program has been restricted; they were being inundated with thousands of useless "tips" from the NSA - tips that wasted valuable time to sort out. Why do the terrorists attack us? Because we're a free and liberal society.If I were to go back in time and speak to you the day of 9/11 and tell you about the future, I imagine the conversation would go something like this:Crash: Tal! I bid you greetings from the future.Tal: Oh, woe are we! We're truly on the brink of an epic struggle against the forces of terror. Are dark times ahead?Crash: Indeed. Within 5 years, we'll have casualty rates of 15 soldiers a week; our press will offer nothing but the propaganda our leaders wish them to promulgate; and our government will eavesdrop on our private phone conversations absent any kind of judicial oversight or regulation, and there will be no consequences when they finally reveal this behavior.Tal: ... Oh. So, you're saying we lost, then.Terrorists strike the West because they're threatened by our free and liberal society. Anything that makes our society less free and less liberal - like a precident for ignoring civil rights altogether - aids terrorism. It's exactly what they want us to do. It's idiotic to assume that they didn't already know. Especially since we gave it away years ago at Tora Bora. I do too. But I don't trust the President - any president - to restrict the tapping, on his own, to just the terrorists. Do you?Do you know why we have FISA in the first place, Tal?

The fact that none of those things are true.

When a known liar makes a statement, the onus of evidence is on he who offers his statements as evidence, not he who challenges them.

Based on what evidence? You're leveling a pretty serious charge against a whole lot of people, so what's your evidence that this is true? The Administration certainly hasn't given any.Do you just trust them not to spy on anybody but bad people? Why on Earth would you?

Well, we authorized the Armed Forces to provide aid to Indonesia after the tsunami.Were we suddenly at war with Indonesia? Or with tsunamis? Sure. And the illegal wiretapping was neither necessary nor appropriate, so he didn't have the authority to do that. But, you know, thanks for proving that for me.

Then it's not really a war, is it?Don't get me wrong. There's definately a conflict of cultures and ideologies. But cultures and ideologies are always in conflict. If the principles and freedoms that define our way of life can simply be suspended any time we suspect some people don't like us, then why have them at all?People like Tal want to have it both ways. They want to rid their party of the civil restrictions we place on a peacetime president and claim for themselves the righteous indignation of being the "good guys", but they don't want any of the consequences of war, like wartime taxation, national sacrifice, and a responsibility to prosecute the war above considerations of politics. Republicans want a war that they're not expected to win, merely to give the impression of holding the moral high ground.I mean, you want to talk about "aid and comfort to the enemy" - the Bush administration literally handed over 200 tons of high explosives to the insurgency. Literally just gave them to them. Those are the same explosives now being used in the IEDs that decimate our troops (and killed one of my best friends last year.)How's that for aiding the enemy? And, of course, there were no consequences at the election, because they own all the voting machines.

Yeah... in all honesty, I thought that was a sloppy and careless remark, and displayed a complete lack of thought for the soldiers who his actions put in harm's way, but I guess I didn't find it "treasonous." The implicit assumption is that terrorists were sitting around saying "Hey, Fahid, should we attack America today?""Well, Abdul, I was gonna just sit back and play some Xbox, but that American swine Bush just told us to 'bring it on!' So you know what? I'm gonna!"Like, I don't see it. Bush echoed a sentiment that I imagine the majority of his troops actually share; that those who wish to pit themselves against our soldiers should step out and do so sooner, rather than later, and in the open and fair field of combat (as though it could ever be fair, fighting the best army in the world.)It was a stupid thing to say, but it was also ballsy, and it's exactly the sort of thing our guys say on their way into theater.Delivering tons of high explosive into the hands of the enemy, though? Absolutely outrageous, and I pin the death of one of my oldest friends square on the shoulders of the President.

Oh, for sure. Well, there is that. Again, I'm not so confident about the incitement effect, but saying it - and then, not being able to match the bravado with bold deeds - certainly did cost us significant credibility.