Bush rebuffed opportunity to lower FISA standard.
By on Jan 25th, 2006 at 11:18 am
Bush rebuffed opportunity to lower FISA standard.
The Justice Department argued in July 2002 that a “reasonable suspicion” standard would not “pass constitutional muster” — the very standard they’re trying to employ now.
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Summary: Numerous media outlets have cited Gen. Michael V. Hayden’s defense of the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic surveillance program while ignoring a Justice Department statement from June 2002 that contradicted Hayden’s claims. Now that the statement has surfaced, will those media outlets now report the facts undermining Hayden’s defense?
Awrite, The Media being scared little men, wont run the obvious Hypocrisy, but thats OK. The More they DONT report and the more the bloggers expose, the WORSE they look, and the further corporate media earnings drop. Eventually they will spin themselves out of business taking Bushcos Neo-kook mouthpiece with it.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:28 amWhy would they want to lower the FISA standard? They believe they are entitled to do what they want, when they want to do it. Lowering the standard and then going ahead without warrants would show they absolutely knew it was wrong. Not changing the standard, they can say it was an honest mistake, a mis-interpretation.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:32 amAgreed Zoo.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:40 amThey Knew they knew.
I must be in the twilight zone. This can not be America. Lie lie and lie again. What honor and dignity this man has brought to the WH. His supporters must be so proud of being consistently lied to and made a fool of by this man. Just keep on praying and he’ll keep on lying. Hey, any word on when the rapture begins?
January 25th, 2006 at 11:44 am#2 – If they lower the standards, then they can blame everything on Pres. Clinton, and still think they’re doing the right thing.
I think we’ll be hearing about how everything bad is because of Pres. Clinton until the next millennium. How convenient is it to have someone to blame for your own actions? I guess we know now!
January 25th, 2006 at 11:45 amlet’s see… that’s now five facts that work against Bush’s assertion that he has the authorization to perform illegal wiretaps…
1) legal wiretap warrants are easily obtained, even retroactively
2) the spying has included vegans and Quakers, not just Al Qaeda
3) the president’s quote from a while back, to the effect of “when we’re talking about a wiretap, we’re talking about getting a warrant”
4) wiretaps are not explicitly included in the military authorization
5) this 2002 admission that illegal wiretaps were un-Constitutional…
Bush’s arguments are collapsing… it’s time for him to pack it in…
http://blogdebogs.blogspot.com/2006/01/if-it-aint-in-contract.html
January 25th, 2006 at 11:49 amDamn man, just damn.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:49 amBush to visit super-secret spies . Let me get this straight, we have super-secret spies that cannot be spied on? or we have super-secret spies that can spy on us but we Cannot Spy on them because they are SUPER Secret? I,m confused.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:49 amOnly Keith Olberman had the cajones to show Hayden’s “LACK” of Constitutional knowledge when he (during his propagandist news conference) erroneously objected to a Knight ridder reporter’s (correct) assertion that the fourth amendment contained the phrase “probable cause”…
Hayden insisted (erroneously) that the amendment ONLY referred to ‘unreasonable searches and seizures” WITHOUT the “probable cause” parameter…
This basta*d (Hayden) is a former NSA head and 4 star general…geeesh!
Also, on C-Span this morning a caller called in with an absolutely brilliant question:
“If these NSA electronic surveillances are involving anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of intercepted calls (depending on who’s making the assertion) and there is a shortage of translators, then who’s doing the translating of these overseas Al Qaida connected calls? Surely they’re not calling here- or from here to there- and speaking English?”
I thought that was a rather telling inquiry…
January 25th, 2006 at 11:51 amIf the people who you are really spying speak english as their first language, you don’t need all those translators.
January 25th, 2006 at 11:53 amJanuary 25th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
January 25th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Folks,
Leave a message to the students in Georgetown who protested Abu Gonzales and his American Gestapo Roadshow.
http://hammeroftruth.com/2006/01…e-constitution/
It will do your hearts and minds some good.
-GSD
January 25th, 2006 at 12:14 pm#5 – Absolutely, Dem Soldier.
#9 – I thought was so hilarious when Hayden said something to the effect of, “if we know any Amendment, we know the 4th.” Ha! When you find your self in a hole, STOP DIGGING!
January 25th, 2006 at 12:17 pmI still would like someone to tell me how NSA knows that an american citizen is a terrorist or is calling a terrorist. If they know that I am a terrorist and I am on american soil, why not arrest me? Who makes the determination? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. They have to be sifting through all calls.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:18 pm#15 – They would have to be listening on a HUGE number of calls, probably all international calls. I mean, if I were a terrorist, I would change my phone (cell) number everyday. I’ll bet anyone $1 that this administration is spying on Democrats and news people.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:21 pm#14
What do you bet that Hayden won’t be accessible for quite some time to reporters or anyone who can ask him to correct himself. I saw the video on Countdown, and his attitude towards the reporter was, “How dare YOU lecture ME on the 4th Amendment!!!”
January 25th, 2006 at 12:26 pmT-O-A-S-T!!!!
January 25th, 2006 at 12:26 pmI would have really enjoyed being a fly on the wall of his commanders office when hayden “reported as ordered sir”. That must have been an ass chewing because the top brass really do not like when one of their own ends up looking like a MORON on national TV, kinda gets the civilians nervous when they realise the leadership of the military do not always know what they are3 talking about.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:34 pmIsn’t that just what Abu Gonzales was saying recently? I thought I read right here in this fine publication that he had gone to Congress to propose changing the FISA law and was told that it would not pass.
So they went ahead and did it anyway.
Now they want to call it spying on Terrorists. They can call it a banana for all I care. Read the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
It’s so weird, so cognitive-dissonant, what the WH is saying these days, that I really believe that President Bush’s admission of this in his radio address (which started the whole mess) wasn’t supposed to happen. I think he just blurted it out, to the horror of the folks inside. Now they’re trying to clean up his mess and avoid impeachment. What do you guys think?
January 25th, 2006 at 12:36 pm#17 – And when Hayden realizes his little boo boo, he certainly won’t be on the television making it right.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:39 pm#21 No he is trying to save his career. You don’t pull a bonehead move like that and get recomended for promotion
January 25th, 2006 at 12:43 pm#21
Yep. I’d be surprised if anyone in the government acknowledges his, um, oversight. And the sad thing is, there will be people in this country who agree with Hayden about the 4th Amendment. They won’t bother to get the truth. The fact that he was being challenged on it, even from what some would consider a lowly reporter, should make everyone who is familiar with the exchange want to confirm it. Too bad that many Americans do not feel that way.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:49 pmI think he just blurted it out, to the horror of the folks inside. Now they’re trying to clean up his mess and avoid impeachment. What do you guys think?
Comment by merciless
Yeah, I think there was static when Rove was trying to talk in his earpiece and he tried to wing it without the puppetmaster.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:50 pmoops, forgot one:
6) Gonzo said he already went to Congress to ask for wiretap permission, and they rebuffed him… meaning they didn’t give Bush that authority!
January 25th, 2006 at 12:55 pmWhat seems to be very clear as of late is the fact that Bush is only told what THEY (Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeldt) want him to know so Bush can plead the fact that he knew nothing. Honestly, do you really think that Bush is running this country? Maybe into the ground, but he does not know a thing about what is going on in his own administration except for what THEY tell him.
January 25th, 2006 at 12:59 pmI’m going back to what I remember of Watergate and how it unfolded (now granted I was not living in the US then), and I have to conclude two things: (1) this is worse than Watergate, maybe only because the Watergate break-in was aimed directly at Democrats and that Nixon never claimed the right to wiretap without a warrant or that the Constitution was suspended because of Vietnam (2) the legislative branch contained members of NIxon’s own party who actually put the Constitution ahead of party (maybe they had no choice since control lay in the Dems hands).
What is it going to take for the Republican party to break from Bush and likewise to put the Constitution ahead of the party? We may be witnessing the end of the Republic, sports fans….
January 25th, 2006 at 1:15 pm#26
You may be right. Sometimes I think that he is indeed a puppet. The latest revelation about the Homeland Security e-mail to the White House indicating that it was likely that the levees would break is just another example. The WH got this before Katrina hit, and yet we have Bush stating 4 days later that no one foresaw this. If Bush didn’t see the memo, WHY didn’t he see it?
Sometimes I think he does not have the intellect to run the country. And then there are other times that I think his “aw shucks” personality and his simplistic view of things are just an act, and in reality he is smarter than some people give him credit for. Not saying that he is an intellectual heavyweight, but that he is not quite the fool we make him out to be.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:20 pm#27
At this point the only thing I see as causing the Repubs to take down Bush is a realization that he is going to cost them control of Congress. If Bush continues to falter, if we keep seeing what by now is an almost daily revelation of some sort of corruption or questionable activity by the WH, if a majority of people in this country wake up and demand Congress take action against the WH (and I’m not meaning feedback from a weekly opinion poll), then we might see Congress take action. But I’m not holding my breath.
January 25th, 2006 at 1:32 pmSaying if Bush continues to falter is like saying if the suncomes up tommorrow
January 25th, 2006 at 2:12 pmFine. Change my first two “ifs” to “as.”
Happy now????
:)
January 25th, 2006 at 2:20 pmI think we agree he’ll screw up as long as tyhey let him, and they let him
January 25th, 2006 at 2:35 pm#29, hence the declared strategy of ‘putting a mullah under every American bed’ by the summer so that a repeat of 2002 can be executed. Even if the sabre-rattling by the administration results in a US climb down anyway, the climb down won’t happen until December. It may already be too late:
January 25th, 2006 at 2:41 pmhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012206A.shtml
They have spun this so many different ways, they have twisted into whirling dervishes.
January 25th, 2006 at 8:06 pmThey are tripping over their own words now. They “have inherent authority.” They were advised that the “Congress wouldn’t approve it.” “They acted “within the law.” There wasn’t time to “change the law.”
Congress “gave the authority.” We don’t need “congressional authority.”
Doublespeak – newspeak – Oceania no, Eurasia.