George Bush protecting your civil liberties by breaking them

Again you refuse to listen to facts. Please refer to post #61, where I showed that you have your "facts' confused and wrong.

More importantly randman, did they find a damn thing? NO!!!!!
Civil liberties violated for nothing

Theodric, the fact you consider "spin" delivered in Congress so that we would not be sued by EU members that were ticked off Echelon was used for corporate spying is all we need to know about your stance here. Sorry, but I am not buying "your facts."

Do you know that? No, you don't. You hate Bush so much you are not willing to look at the facts, but instead wish to engage in partisan sniping.

In a non-partisan way, I think both of you are posting crappy messages. Need we suspend all your posting privileges, except to lock you in a "Great Debate" room?Adminnemooseus

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I have just been responding, but I will cease to respond to Randman in the future

source USA todaysource Washington Posthighlight source Sfgatesource BBC NewsYeah, haven't found a damn thing have we? And that is just a partial list.This message has been edited by Tal, 12-28-2005 10:18 AM

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"Damn. I could build a nuclear bomb, given the fissionable material, but I can't tame my computer." (1VB)Jerome - French Rocket Scientist

Tal,You really should read the contxt of the messages. This thread is not about the Iraq war. It is about the president violating our civil rights.When I said they didnt find anything, it was in reference to illegal searches of islamic citizens in the D.C. Please refer to that in this thread, not arguying for justification of the war in Iraq.Thank You

You still on the payroll?We've told and shown you countless times already, the material you are citing was known and under control. The Bush was talking about OTHER MATERIAL. He has since admitted the material he was claiming existed and we were going after did not exist. As far as your articles go, from USAToday... I'm not sure how much clearer that can be. It was under UN control. The US went in and not only could not find the extra material it was claiming to "know" about, but lost control of the already sealed material.But thank you for alerting people to yet another issue. The US has now stolen WMD material from Iraq, removing it from UN supervision once again, not to mention careless attitude in accounting such that materials may still be a threat... Again, that's what we said would happen. No sorry that's not true. It's actually more botched than we had estimated possible.Your other cites were about chemical weapons being created by groups after our invasion. They have NOTHING to do with materials Bush was discussing, and only point to how bad the situation has become as there are now MORE WMD type labes than existed before. From the Post article... So we introduced the possibility of manufacture that was not there before. Your other cites included even more disturbing prospects of terrorists openly bidding for material that was once under UN seal. Right, we know that we've found many examples of Bush and Co screwing up.This message has been edited by holmes, 12-28-2005 11:21 AM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Messages related to the subtitle should be in this topic, not somewhere else.Adminnemooseus

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

quote:

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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.

If getting a warrant was truly a problem then why has Bush not proposed legislation to fix this problem in the 5 years since 9-11. If the law was a problem CHANGE IT... don't BREAK IT.He seems to have plenty of time to propose laws to fight evils like gay marriage and stem cell research.....If the law was a problem he should have changed it. Bush is either lazy or a liar... My guess is both

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.

There's a strange kind of double-think going on here."We can't use the "72-hour tap without a warrant" provision of FISA because it requires us to be absolutely sure that the court will grant a warrant when we request it.Our respect for FISA is so complete that we would never dream of tapping for those 72 hours without rock solid certainty that the requested warrant would be granted.Therefore, we authorized warrantless taps."Of course, the unstated premise is that the court would NOT have authorized many of these taps.As you've already noted, crash, the obvious thing to do would be to fix the law, not ignore it because you respect it so much.

I suppose I will only repeat the obvious points already made:1) He does not explain how the process would have actually interfered with obtaining the surveillance... unless he is implicitly stating that they knew such requests would be rejected.2) The FISA requirements are pretty clearcut and not exceedingly hard to determine, and so no reason why a request could not be processed quickly. It is patently obvious that if the request is retroactive, they do not have to be absolutely correct in issuing the surveillance, just reasonably certain. If time was such an issue, they could have simply signed off, rather than defying the law in violation of both that and the Constitution.3) If it was denied then they could appeal (something he did not mention), and in any case the data would have been obtained and usable by intel (even if not in a court of law). Here he never discusses what rejection means and treats it as if the surveillance would magically disappear or be unusable. I would specifically like to hear him address a direct question on the Moussaui example. Lets say they signed off and got the laptop and found out what was on it and then were denied (and somehow the appeal failed as well)... they couldn't have used the knowledge to stop 911? This only argues for bolder use of warrants even if rejection is possible, not to sideline the court altogether.4) I might add that citing lack of evidence to initiate a search of moussaui does not argue retroactively for rights to search under all conditions, just because he was part of 911. If we agree with the level of evidence necessary for a search then that is all we can go on. To lower it would only mean that many others who were not linked to 911 could have been searched, and indeed we may have missed the plot due to extended search programs. As it stands there was enough info out there to stop or hinder 911 from occuring which did NOT require searching M's laptop. Break laws or improve communication? Hmmmm.5) If paperwork is getting in the way, and I do believe obtaining physical signatures on time in this day and age is a little silly, then they could have put in a request to change the law. To remain silent and create your own law through secret actions is illegal and unconstitutional.I am upset that this has not drawn more ire from republicans. This is a serious issue and one which will make or break separation of powers for some time in the future, as well as actual civil liberties. To support one man just to make the party look good at this point in time will have repercussions against what that party supposedly holds dear.This message has been edited by holmes, 01-31-2006 12:04 PM

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holmes
"What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority." (M.Ivins)