Bush defends domestic eavesdropping.

[ksmybuttons]

LOL, yeah. Gore shot off his mouth only to have Gonzales shove his words up his ass within a couple hours of the speech. And Gonzales did it with class.

Ishmael

Except he lied by implication.

Physical searches without a warrent were not outlawed until 1995, 2 years after the one he sited in the Clinton administration. Clinton supported the bill and signed it into law.

 

[Cap’n AMatrixca]

Paul Harvey just pointed out the the irony of the uproar about the gub'ment listening in at a time when talk radio calls are full of people complaining that Washington doesn't listen...

 

[Cap’n AMatrixca]

And sho' nuff, the FBI said they weren't paying attention to any of the stuff...

 

[Byron In Exile]

And sho' nuff, the FBI said they weren't paying attention to any of the stuff...

"And things..."

It's "any of the stuff and things"!

You are such a dork.

Sir, you are sort of like the guy that I played the single analog recording, and a Japanese pressing, of The Wall that I have, says, "Awesome, where's the chips," and wanders out the door.

That's not meant in a bad way, but there's the paper...

 

[Meekail]

Gonzales defends US domestic spy programme

Washington, Jan. 25 (AP): US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales offered additional defences of President George W Bush's domestic spying programme, as the administration tried to redefine the warrantless surveillance in a way that undermines critics.

Speaking to students at Georgetown University law school yesterday, Gonzales said a 15-day grace period allowing warrantless eavesdropping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act demonstrates that Congress knew such surveillance "would be essential in wartime."

Gonzales was supplying legal arguments to the president's comments Monday that the effort should be called a "terrorist surveillance programme."

Confronting Gonzales during his nearly half-hour speech were more than a dozen young people in the audience who turned their backs to him and held up a banner for television cameras. The banner, loosely based on a Benjamin Franklin quote read, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Before his appearance at Georgetown, Gonzales said in a television interview that some congressional leaders told the administration in 2004 that it would not be possible to write legislation regarding the warrantless surveillance effort without compromising its effectiveness.

"We did go to certain members of the congressional leadership a year and a half ago," Gonzales said on CBS's 'The Early Show.'

 

[Holy Devil]

Tsk tsk tsk, Vermillion, Bush is looking out for you and yours.

Bush is a necessary evil.

~ Holy Devil

 

[Meekail]

Bush downplays Abramoff photos, again defends NSA eavesdropping

WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush on Thursday dismissed White House photos with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff as an innocent "grip-and-grin" encounter, as he sought to minimize damage to Republican candidates in the fall congressional elections from a spreading lobbying scandal.

"I don't know him," Bush insisted as the White House continues to try to keep its distance from the scandal.

Amid GOP concerns about losing their congressional majorities, Bush used a hastily called morning press conference in advance of next week's State of the Union address to restate his defense of the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program and the administration's response to hurricane Katrina's devastating assault on the Gulf Coast.

Insisting once again that NSA covert eavesdropping is legal, the president signaled that he would oppose congressional attempts to change the program if the effort appears likely to compromise the program launched in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

With Democrats pounding their Republican opponents for corruption and threats to civil liberties, Bush mounted an aggressive defense in an effort to deflect questions from the White House. But he said he would cooperate with federal prosecutors in a spreading probe of Abramoff's use of bribes to advantage his lobbying clients.

Earlier this month, Republican Party officials said Bush would donate $6,000 in Abramoff's personal 2004 campaign contributions to the American Heart Association. All told, the one-time super-lobbyist steered about $100,000 in contributions to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.

"There's a serious investigation going on by federal prosecutors," Bush declared during the 46-minute question-and-answer session. "If they believe something was done inappropriately in the White House, they'll come and look, and they're welcome to do so."

He also insisted that he attempts to keep his distance from lobbyists and called for constraints on earmarks – the practice of lobbyists using ties to key lawmakers to win money or contracts for their clients without legislative scrutiny.

Taking aim at a lobbying culture that led to the conviction and resignation of former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Bush said, "This is about earmarks and people making, you know, special deals in the budget. ... There needs to be earmark reform."

Pressed about the Abramoff photos and his own exposure to lobbyists, Bush conceded that the pictures demonstrated that he had met the convicted felon but insisted he couldn't remember the occasion and asserted, "I don't know him."

He teased a reporter about having posed for a presidential picture with him at a White House holiday party, as he cited one estimate that he had to stand still for as many as 9,000 photos during the Christmas season.

"It's part of the job of the president to shake hands ... with people and smile," Bush remarked.

Appearing a day after he had delivered a stout defense of the eavesdropping program during a visit to the nearby NSA headquarters, Bush offered what may be a preview of how he would strike back at Democrats who criticize the high-tech snooping operation. The primary targets are said to be e-mail and telephone traffic, linked to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups, that flow across U.S. borders.

Referring to a recent videotape of al-Qaeda's fugitive leader, Bush said, "We're at war with an enemy that wants to hit us again. Osama bin Laden made that clear the other day, and I take his words very seriously. And I also take my responsibility to protect the American people very seriously. And so we're going to do what is necessary – within the Constitution and within the law and at the same time guaranteeing people's civil liberties – to protect the people."

He reiterated the administration's contention that it might have aborted the assaults on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon if the warrantless surveillance program had been in place prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. Two of the airliner hijackers were in San Diego while the attack was being plotted.

Referring to the nation's second ranking intelligence official and former head of NSA, Bush declared, "Michael Hayden said that because he believes that had we had the capacity to listen to the phone calls from those from San Diego, elsewhere, we might have gotten information necessary to prevent the attack."

Previewing next week's speech, Bush argued in favor of making permanent the time-limited tax cuts that were enacted in his first term, including reductions in investment taxes.

Saying he has "one more off-year campaign in me," Bush spoke with relish of the prospect of stressing his signature issue as a tax-cutting president when he hits the stump next fall one final time before retiring from the presidency three years from now.

"I think raising taxes will hurt the economy, and that's a debate I look forward to having with the people as we get close to the 2006 elections," Bush said, as he mocked Democrats and others who argue that the struggle to balance the budget could be aided if the earlier tax cuts were allowed to expire.

"That's not how it works," Bush said. "They're going to raise your taxes and they're going to continue to expand the government."

He indicated that he would ask Congress to approve tax breaks designed to help individuals and families shoulder health care costs at a time when employers are cutting back on insurance coverage.

He defended the administration against critics who say that its recovery plan would abandon poor people whose homes in New Orleans' low-lying neighborhoods were ruined.

The $85 billion congressional appropriation for helping to rebuild the storm-ravaged areas is "a significant commitment to the people whose lives were turned upside down ... by that hurricane," he said.

He also suggested that the city and the state of Louisiana have been tardy in coming up with a rebuilding plan.

Answering critics who say the military has been stretched too thin by the war in Iraq and its other commitments, Bush declared that the armed forces have the capability of achieving victory in Iraq and defending U.S. interests in areas of strategic importance such as the Far East.

Emphasizing the promise of greater reliance on technology as the military undergoes a process of transformation, Bush asserted, "The things I look for are the following: morale, retention and recruitment. And retention's high. Recruitment is meeting goals. And people ... feel strong about the mission."

 

[TWB]

Washington, Jan. 25 (AP): US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales offered additional defences of President George W Bush's domestic spying programme, as the administration tried to redefine the warrantless surveillance in a way that undermines critics.

Speaking to students at Georgetown University law school yesterday, Gonzales said a 15-day grace period allowing warrantless eavesdropping under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act demonstrates that Congress knew such surveillance "would be essential in wartime."

Gonzales was supplying legal arguments to the president's comments Monday that the effort should be called a "terrorist surveillance programme."

Confronting Gonzales during his nearly half-hour speech were more than a dozen young people in the audience who turned their backs to him and held up a banner for television cameras. The banner, loosely based on a Benjamin Franklin quote read, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

Before his appearance at Georgetown, Gonzales said in a television interview that some congressional leaders told the administration in 2004 that it would not be possible to write legislation regarding the warrantless surveillance effort without compromising its effectiveness.

"We did go to certain members of the congressional leadership a year and a half ago," Gonzales said on CBS's 'The Early Show.'

Hahahahahaha...so the logic is, they granted us 15 days, so they must have known that we might need warrantless searches during wartime, so therefore we do not have to ask for warrants.

I bet Ed Meese is wondering why he never used that kinda logic. Oh wait. Maybe he did.

 

[TWB]

There's no public support for an investigation. Gore's just grasping at straws. I think he's trying to get in a position to run again.

Can you imagine the rhetoric the countries going to be subjected to with Gore, Kerry, and Hillary all running against each other? Should be colorful.

Ishmael

I wonder how you would feel about this program were Hillary President right now.

 

[Meekail]

Gonzales stands his ground as Congress assails wiretapping program

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 07, 2006
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sipped water, read from bread-box sized law books and generally kept his cool through a barrage of questions Monday as Senators from both parties tried to corner him on the limits of presidential wartime powers. It was the first real public debate in Congress since 9/11 about presidential authority in times of war, and so while the hearing was ostensibly about the President's secret warrantless wiretapping program, the most exercised debate was about how far the Commander in Chief's powers could be taken without judicial oversight.

"Mr. Attorney General," Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said at one point, "I'm getting the impression this administration picks and chooses what it's subject to." Senators asked directly if opening first class mail or listening to calls beginning and ending inside the U.S. without notifying a court could be justified under the same argument. Gonzales wouldn't answer, saying he couldn't talk about operational details. Senators repeatedly pressed him on who was keeping the National Security Agency (NSA) program in check. How could Americans be assured that the government was only listening to the phone calls of known terrorists?

The NSA performs its own oversight, said Gonzales. The program, he argued, is run by professional intelligence officers, and the NSA Inspector General reviews the program to be sure the agency is not listening in on the conversations of unsuspecting citizens. Also, he added, the program itself, which only monitors phone calls where one end originates outside the U.S., is renewed every 45 days on the condition, said Gonzales, that "al Qaeda continues to pose a threat."

The NSA wiretaps were performed without obtaining the warrants beforehand required by the law that governs eavesdropping on foreign agents, in part, because the process is "cumbersome and burdensome," said Gonzales. Convinced that it wasn't necessary, the Bush Administration did not ask Congress to streamline the procedures to perform these wiretaps. Senators cited five recent examples when changes in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) were passed at the request of the White House. When asked, Gonzales argued, it wasn't necessary because the president's constitutionally granted powers, as well as the specific wartime authority granted after 9/11, allow the President to authorize these types of wiretaps, without a change of existing law. The program "is an early warning system for the 21st century," Gonzales said.

Unlike Republican colleagues Orrin Hatch of Utah or John Cornyn of Texas, Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania didn't easily accept that rationale. He expressed his skepticism early on, telling Gonzales that federal law has a "forceful and blanket prohibition against any electronic surveillance without a court order"; he even suggested that the program's legality should be reviewed by a special court. Specter did come to Gonzales' aid early on, when Democrats on the committee ate up twenty minutes with a doomed procedural vote to force Gonzales to testify under oath, a gesture Chairman Arlen Specter (R. - Pa.) thought was unnecessary.

Kevin Griffey, a 27-year-old mechanical engineer from San Diego, Calif., interrupted the proceedings midway through the day by jumping up and calling Gonzales, at the top of his lungs, a "lazy fascist." Griffey, who was subsequently escorted from the hearing, had attended a protest at the White House on Saturday and wanted to attend the hearing because he felt Gonzales has been misinterpreting the law. "It might be the only opportunity to talk to the Administration," he told TIME after he was taken out of the building. "He might hear what I had to say."

That is doubtful. But Gonzales heard plenty of what the Senators had to say. When Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, suggested the former White House Counsel had been less than truthful during his Attorney General confirmation hearings a year ago for saying that a question about warrantless wiretapping was "hypothetical," Gonzales remained firm; the question was indeed hypothetical, he retorted, because Feingold had asked him whether he thought the president could authorize eavesdropping "in violation of the law."

Questions about the operational specifics of the NSA program bounced off Gonzales all day — "what happens to the data?", "how long is it retained?"— none of which Gonzales would answer. "An open discussion of the operational details would put the lives of Americans at risk," he claimed.

Sitting in the front row of the spectator's gallery Richard Fisher, a retired social studies teacher from Hinsdale, Ill. had the same questions. After a recent trip to the Middle East, Fisher was curious if any of his phone calls or emails to the region are now in the NSA's database and sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out. The NSA responded that they could neither confirm nor deny that they intercepted copies of his communications. He's written an appeal and is still waiting for an answer. "It's not about getting money," said Fisher, leaning back in his gallery chair during the hearing, "it's about knowing. Yes, you have the information or no you don't." After spending the day with Gonzales, Senators looking for some detailed answers about the controversial wiretapping program had to be just as unsatisfied.

 

[atmas]

For him, it justifies everything.

Thank God.

 

[cjh]

A US federal judge on a court that oversees intelligence cases has resigned to protest President George W. Bush's authorization of a domestic spying programme, The Washington Post said yesterday.

US District Judge James Robertson resigned late Monday from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) on which he served for 11 years and which he believes may have been tainted by Bush's 2002 authorization, two associates familiar with his decision told the daily.

The resignation is the latest fallout of Bush's weekend public admission that he authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) the country's super-secret electronic surveillance arm to eavesdrop on international telephone calls and electronic mail of US citizens suspected of having links with terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda.

Bush's statement on the weekend that the secret programme did not require FISA court orders according to his reading of the Patriot Act passed after the September 11 attacks, has angered civil rights groups and lawmakers, some of whom have called for a congressional investigation.

The New York Times first revealed last week the secret NSA programme that officials said has likely involved eavesdropping on thousands of people in the United States. Bush said he expected the Justice Department to investigate the leak of such sensitive information.

Yesterday, The New York Times quoted US officials as saying that "a very small fraction" of those wiretaps and e-mail intercepts were of communications between people in the United States and were caused by technical glitches.

The revelation is likely to add fuel to the firestorm over the NSA spying programme.

Robertson's associates said the judge one of 11 on the FISA court in recent conversations said he was concerned that the information gained from warrantless NSA surveillance could have been used to obtain FISA warrants.

Just digging around.

 

[snugglestruggle]

AS someone who was in favor of FISA courts & the patriot Act in the begining it's time to end them. The claim there are terrorists behind every tree has proved untrue.

Just like a child that abuses the trust placed in him or her and are grounded so it must be with government abuse of power.

 

[koalabear]

Just digging around.

Desperate much.

 

[unregistered]

 

[unregistered]

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

I'm ready to scrap it too. I was for it in the beginning when it was said we were only tracking terrorists and those who were in communication with them. They did not say they were going to be spying on every aspect of the civil society and destroying all assumptions of privacy.

Except those of us who were against it pointed out that this was exactly where we were heading from the beginning. Not only that, it was exactly what was going on the entire time.

NOW you have a problem with it... Convenient.

 

[about_average]

Except those of us who were against it pointed out that this was exactly where we were heading from the beginning. Not only that, it was exactly what was going on the entire time.

At the time I couldn't believe how often I heard, "If you don't have anything to hide what's your worry?"
What a bunch of dumbasses.

 

[Ishmael]

Just digging around.

Yeah, and what'd ya find?

Ishmael

 

[Busybody]

Under BUSH it was OK

Under NIGGER its not

Its a COLOR thing

 

[Wrong Element]

In a word, the difference is 'Bush'. No other reason is needed.

Ishmael

Yeah, imagine changing your entire belief system because the identity of the president has changed!

I'm ready to scrap it too. I was for it in the beginning when it was said we were only tracking terrorists and those who were in communication with them. They did not say they were going to be spying on every aspect of the civil society and destroying all assumptions of privacy.

AS someone who was in favor of FISA courts & the patriot Act in the begining it's time to end them. The claim there are terrorists behind every tree has proved untrue.

Just like a child that abuses the trust placed in him or her and are grounded so it must be with government abuse of power.

Oops

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Except those of us who were against it pointed out that this was exactly where we were heading from the beginning. Not only that, it was exactly what was going on the entire time.

NOW you have a problem with it... Convenient.

At the time I couldn't believe how often I heard, "If you don't have anything to hide what's your worry?"
What a bunch of dumbasses.

Didn't seem to hurt the crybabies' bottom line much. Wonder what's the difference between then and now?

http://www.tmnews.it/web/images/660-0-20130120_144204_523D4942.jpg

OH.

Oh yeah...that. Mmm.

 

[snugglestruggle]

Taking into account that until 9/11 nobody had ever crashed airliners into skyscrapers in the US. When it was later revealed there were terror networks set up in the US that were responsible establishing FISA courts & passing the Patriot act were not unreasonable response's. Potentially dangerous if abused but not unreasonable in response.
The issue now is Congress's refusal to act as a counter balance and reign in an out of control Executive (which those departments are apart of). Congress needs to stop being IBM's doormat and do their job. Maybe we will finally see some action now that Senator Feinstein blew a gasket over snooping into her computers.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Except those of us who were against it pointed out that this was exactly where we were heading from the beginning. Not only that, it was exactly what was going on the entire time.

NOW you have a problem with it... Convenient.

You will never get that spineless fucking slow ass penis extension Douchevette driving weasel twat to ever admit it was wrong or that the only fucking reason he has a problem with it now is because a white guy with an (R) in front of his name isn't the one doing the domestic eavesdropping anymore. He'll never admit how much he loves slobbing police state dick as long as it belongs to a Republican.

Under BUSH it was OK

Under NIGGER its not

Its a COLOR thing

B2B4EVA..... because at least you're fuckin' honest.

 

[unregistered]