M E M, that argument has already been disproven.

WBAM and G-man have both pointed out that the warrants were overly cumbersome and difficult to acquire quickly enough, without needlessly overwhelming the court with warrants, and revealing the surveilance to the terrorists, and causing them not to use phones where they can be overheard.
As is the case now, that the tapping of phone calls to Muslims overseas has been leaked by the media.



In the age of cel phones, and again as WBAM and G-man have pointed out abundantly, in a time of war, our government should have the authorization to do what is necessary to acquire intelligence and prevent terrorism, to save the lives of U.S.soldiers and civilians.

If Kerry or some other liberal schmuck were in the White House and complied with every principled technicality you itemize, we might have completely upheld the the rights of muslim immigrants and illegals in the U.S., but at the cost of American lives.

This once again underscores how liberals bury us in abstractions of pseudo-principled idealism that defies the common sense of fighting a war !




I think you guys would rather die than win a war on terrorism.
Or at the very least, smear and falsely mislead the public into opposing a Republican president, to obstruct his ability to effectively fight that war.
It's transparent spite directed at republicans because:

1) you don't hold Carter or Clinton to the same standard that you hold Republican presidents to.

2) the timing of this wiretap story's release was the same day as the very successful Iraq election, and calculated by House, Senate and media liberals to obscure and blunt the coverage of Bush's success there. ( A story the media has been sitting on for a year.)

3) there is a Constitutional legal precedent for the President to do what he's doing, and you absolutely refuse to acknowledge it.

4) the nation is fighting a war. Far greater infringement on civil liberties has occurred in just about every prior U.S. war.
But you and other liberals argue technicalities and abstractions that would blunt the FBI, NSA, CIA and the Bush administration from doing what's necessary to win that war.



Or as G-Man put it so well earlier:

Quote:

the G-man said: Dec 20, 5:45 PM

Quote:

the G-man said:
even though the attorney general has the authority in some cases to undertake surveillance immediately, and then seek an emergency warrant, that process is just as cumbersome as the normal way of doing things.



Quote:

Matter-eater Man said:
Even if that is true, it's not a good reason to go around a judge. It was the President's job to then go to Congress to get something less cumbersome. Cumbersome is not an acceptable excuse to circumvent our system of checks & balances.



As noted in today's Wall St. Journal:

    The allegation of Presidential law-breaking rests solely on the fact that Mr. Bush authorized wiretaps without first getting the approval of the court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. But no Administration then or since has ever conceded that that Act trumped a President's power to make exceptions to FISA if national security required it. FISA established a process by which certain wiretaps in the context of the Cold War could be approved, not a limit on what wiretaps could ever be allowed.

    The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue [our emphasis], held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And further that "we take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."


The above standard appears to apply to what happened here.

    the Administration was scrupulous in limiting the FISA exceptions. They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties.


Furthermore, as noted below, the "system of checks and balances" was, in fact, respected:
    Far from being "secret," key Members of Congress were informed about them at least 12 times, President Bush said yesterday. The two district court judges who have presided over the FISA court since 9/11 also knew about them.

    Inside the executive branch, the process allowing the wiretaps was routinely reviewed by Justice Department lawyers, by the Attorney General personally, and with the President himself reauthorizing the process every 45 days. In short, the implication that this is some LBJ-J. Edgar Hoover operation designed to skirt the law to spy on domestic political enemies is nothing less than a political smear.




Quote:

G-man said: Dec 20, 5:48 PM
In fact, as noted above, "the Administration was scrupulous in limiting the FISA exceptions. They applied only to calls involving al Qaeda suspects or those with terrorist ties."


  • from Do Racists have lower IQ's...

    Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.

    EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.