RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Bush does the (wire)tap dance

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the G-man said:
Yes, because Bin Laden and the Bush family are part of a giant conspiracy, riiiiiight?

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Matter-eater Man said:
WBAM you have to keep in mind we're talking about a fanatic who was responsible for 9/11. Do you think he's really being honest about anything? He's putting out the best propaganda that benefits himself & his cause.

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White House Dismissed '02 Surveillance Proposal

The Bush administration rejected a 2002 Senate proposal that would have made it easier for FBI agents to obtain surveillance warrants in terrorism cases, concluding that the system was working well and that it would likely be unconstitutional to lower the legal standard.

The proposed legislation by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) would have allowed the FBI to obtain surveillance warrants for non-U.S. citizens if they had a "reasonable suspicion" they were connected to terrorism -- a lower standard than the "probable cause" requirement in the statute that governs the warrants.
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the G-man said:

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called President Bush's explanations for eavesdropping on domestic conversations without warrants "strange" and "far-fetched" Wednesday in blistering criticism ahead of the president's State of the Union address.

"Obviously, I support tracking down terrorists. I think that's our obligation. But I think it can be done in a lawful way," the New York Democrat said.

Clinton, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, told reporters she did not yet know whether the administration's eavesdropping without warrants broke any laws. But the senator, a lawyer, said she did not buy the White House's main justification for the tactic.

"Their argument that it's rooted in the authority to go after al Qaeda is far-fetched," she said in an apparent reference to a congressional resolution passed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. The Bush administration has argued that the resolution gave the president authority to order such electronic surveillance as part of efforts to protect the nation from terrorists.
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the G-man said:
That's pretty interesting, given the precedents set by her husband's administration, that this was okay.

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Matter-eater Man said:
I guess if we're talking about respect, then maybe beyond making accusations you should start defending some of them?

How many secret warrantless physical searches did Bill Clinton do BTW?

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In order to reduce the threat of terrorism, would you be willing or not willing to allow government agencies to monitor the telephone calls and e-mails of Americans that the government is suspicious of?

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Karl Rove wants the American public to believe only one political party disagrees with Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program. But this morning on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) said the program was illegal:

HAGEL: I don’t believe, from what I’ve heard, but I’m going to give the administration an opportunity to explain it, that he has the authority now to do what he’s doing. Now, maybe he can convince me otherwise, but that’s OK.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But not yet.
HAGEL: Not yet. But that’s OK. If he needs more authority, he just can’t unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law. He needs to come back, work with us, work with the courts if he has to, and we will do what we need to do to protect the civil liberties of this country and the national security of this country.
Hagel joins other prominent conservatives — including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) — who have questioned the legal basis of Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales failed on Monday to convince the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and other lawmakers that President Bush had the legal authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping against U.S. citizens.

At a daylong Senate hearing, Gonzales doggedly defended the National Security Agency's surveillance of international phone calls and e-mails as an indispensable "early warning system" against terrorist attacks.

Democrats and some Republicans challenged his assertion that Bush had the authority to act under both the Constitution and a congressional resolution that authorized the use of U.S. military force against al Qaeda three days after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

"I do not think that any fair, realistic reading of the September 14 resolution gives you the power to conduct electronic surveillance," the committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, told Gonzales at the end of a grueling day.

Specter also called for investigations by the full Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees, saying only a thorough closed-door examination of the program could determine whether Bush had the inherent authority to conduct warrantless surveillance.
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"There is an involved question here . . . as to whether the president's powers under Article 2, his inherent powers, supersede a statute."

The Pennsylvania Republican said that if the FISA statute "is inconsistent with the Constitution, the Constitution governs and the constitutional powers predominate."

After Sept. 11, Congress immediately confirmed the president's constitutional authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those "those nations, organizations, or persons he determines" responsible for the attacks.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) gave the president the latitude to use a full complement of tools and tactics against our enemy. A majority of Supreme Court justices have concluded that the AUMF authorizes the president to use "fundamental and accepted" incidents of military force in our armed conflict with al Qaeda. The use of signals intelligence--intercepting enemy communications--is a fundamental incident of waging war.

The president, as commander in chief, has asserted his authority to use sophisticated military drones to search for Osama bin Laden, to deploy our armed forces in combat zones, and to kill or capture al Qaeda operatives around the world. No one would dispute that the AUMF supports the president in each of these actions.

It is, therefore, inconceivable that the AUMF does not also support the president's efforts to intercept the communications of our enemies. Any future al Qaeda attacks on the homeland are likely to be carried out, like Sept. 11, by operatives hiding among us. The NSA terrorist surveillance program is a military operation designed to detect them quickly. Efforts to identify the terrorists and their plans expeditiously while ensuring faithful adherence to the Constitution and our existing laws is precisely what America expects from the president.

History is clear that signals intelligence is, to use the language of the Supreme Court, "a fundamental incident of waging war." President Wilson authorized the military to intercept all telegraph, telephone and cable communications into and out of the U.S. during World War I. The day after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the U.S. These sweeping measures were seen as necessary and lawful during critical moments of past armed conflicts. So, too, are the more focused intercepts of al Qaeda during our current armed conflict, especially given the nature of the enemy we face.

The AUMF is broad in scope, and understandably so; Congress could not have catalogued every possible aspect of military force it was endorsing. That's why the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that the detention of enemy combatants--a fundamental incident of war-- was lawful, even though detention is not mentioned in the AUMF. The same argument holds true for the terrorist surveillance program. Nor was the president's authorization of the terrorist surveillance program in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA bars persons from intentionally "engag[ing] . . . in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." The AUMF provides this statutory authorization for the terrorist surveillance program as an exception to FISA.

Lastly, the terrorist surveillance program fully complies with the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. Like sobriety checkpoints or border searches, this program involves "special needs" beyond routine law enforcement, an exception to the warrant requirement upheld by the Supreme Court as consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

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the G-man said:

You keep saying "bipartisan" as if the fact that a handful of republicans are joining the democratic chorus is the same as widespread republican support for your position.

Using that logic, because Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, supports Bush on the war, one could as easily say Bush has "bipartisan" support in congress.

Of course, that would be deceptive. Just as deceptive as your statement.

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A 2004 NBC report graphically illustrated what not having this program cost us 4 1/2 years ago.

In 1999, the NSA began monitoring a known al Qaeda "switchboard" in Yemen that relayed calls from Osama bin Laden to operatives all over world. The surveillance picked up the phone number of a "Khalid" in the United States--but the NSA didn't intercept those calls, fearing it would be accused of "domestic spying."

After 9/11, investigators learned that "Khalid" was Khalid al-Mihdhar, then living in San Diego under his own name--one of the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. He made more than a dozen calls to the Yemen house, where his brother-in-law lived.

NBC news called this "one of the missed clues that could have saved 3,000 lives."

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

The congresswoman's discomfort with the operation appears to reflect deepening fissures among Republicans over the program's legal basis and political liabilities.
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the G-man said:
Does anyone remember 9/11?

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Matter-eater Man said:
Not Me

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the G-man said:

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the G-man said:
Does anyone remember 9/11?

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Matter-eater Man said:
Not Me

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gathering intelligence against them.

incarcerating them.

going to war against them.

even criticizing them.

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Spying Necessary, Democrats Say
But Harman, Daschle Question President's Legal Reach

Two key Democrats yesterday called the NSA domestic surveillance program necessary for fighting terrorism but questioned whether President Bush had the legal authority to order it done without getting congressional approval.

Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.) said Republicans are trying to create a political issue over Democrats' concern on the constitutional questions raised by the spying program.
...] Washington Post

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wannabuyamonkey said:
You notice teh president hasn't budged an inch from his position, yet everytime the Democrats speak they keep giving more and more ground.

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Matter-eater Man said:
A big story on the Sunday shows this morning was Bush authorizing the NSA to wiretap Americans without going through a court. Sounds unconstitutional to me.

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Democratic House leaders called Sunday for an independent panel to investigate the legality of a program President Bush authorized that allows warrantless wiretaps on U.S. citizens, according to a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

"We believe that the President must have the best possible intelligence to protect the American people, but that intelligence must be produced in a manner consistent with our Constitution and our laws, and in a manner that reflects our values as a nation," the letter says.
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CNN

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wannabuyamonkey said:blah blah blah I luvs me right wing rhetoric blah blah blah...
Besides that article is innacurate because it fails to call teh opposition bi-partisan due to the two Republicans you keep mentioning.

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...And numerous Republican Senators have expressed strong concerns about the program including Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Sununu (R-NH), Larry Craig (R-ID), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and John McCain (R-AZ). Numerous conservative leaders like former Congressman Bob Barr, Grover Norquist, David Keene, Paul Weyrich and other principals in Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, along with former officials like Judge William Sessions—who served as the Director of the FBI under President Reagan—Bruce Fein and former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, have spoken out against the program. Conservative or libertarian scholars have expressed strong concerns, such as the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, CATO’s Robert Levy, and Chicago’s Professor Richard Epstein, as well as noted columnists like William Safire, George Will, and Steve Chapman. These voices join a chorus of concern from progressive leaders.
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