Separated At Birth? You Decide
Today has been a whirlwind day dealing with the USA Today report of basically "data-mining" phone records. The president came out an assured everyone that was not what they were doing. (Now, whether he was advised that or not, someone told him wrong; this is data-mining, and no different than what any other intelligence agency does.) Regardless, I'd like to address two nutters. The first is wacky Jack Cafferty from CNN who launched into this diatribe on the Situation Room (the "serious" Situation Room complete with shuffling papers):
I don't know about wisdom, but you'll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that is standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country.
He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours and tens of millions of other Americans. Shortly after 9/11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens. All part of the war on terror, President Bush says.
Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden and seal the country's borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports? The president rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in "USA Today" and declared the government is doing nothing wrong and all this is just fine. Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.
Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says, OK, and drops the whole thing.
We're in some serious trouble here, boys and girls.
Is that a cuckoo clock in the background, or is that Jack's theme music? Of all the nutter comments to make ... Jackie-boy here has no clue. But he's joined by Senator Patrick Leahy who had this to say earlier today:
"Are you telling me tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?" said Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything."
LOL. As if that wasn't bad enough, Leahy had a follow up on the Jim Lehrer Newshour tonight. Here you go:
JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, Senator Leahy, as described by Senator Bond, does that strike you as being legal?
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: No, and I'll tell you why: The Maryland case, in 1979 -- Kit Bond was former attorney general and is a very good lawyer. He's absolutely right. That would have allowed it.
Since then, however, we passed several laws. We passed the so-called CALEA, ECPA, FISA, and the Patriot Act. And we make it very specific in those what you can do and can not do.
As this was described today, I'm hard-pressed -- and most lawyers are hard-pressed -- to say what exception this would fall under one of these laws; it doesn't. And there is a strong question of legality.
When Attorney General Gonzalez basically stonewalled the Senate Judiciary Committee, but did admit that there may be domestic wiretapping going on. I would say what the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said today. He said: Significant questions remain surrounding the legality of the program and whether the White House has misrepresented the program to the public, through the selective declassification.
He's seen everything that's been shown to...
JIM LEHRER: That's Senator Rockefeller you're talking about?
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: I'm talking about Senator Rockefeller. But the point is that we haven't done adequate oversight.
Unfortunately, the Congress has acted like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House and has rubber-stamped everything that's gone on. And then we usually find out through the press, whoops, they weren't following the law.
Let's go through. Let's find out what parts of the law is being followed, what part's not being followed. The president has more times than all presidents put together in history, through signing statements, that said he will follow only parts of the law that he signs.
Let's get this on the record for the American people. We can make ourselves safe, but it's not enough to say, "Gee, we're doing a great job." That's sort of like telling the head of FEMA, "Brownie, you've done a heck of a job."
Two things upfront. FISA doesn't matter in this issue. This isn't a search, yet. If the NSA finds something that causes them to focus on the investigation of a citizen, they must go through FISA for a warrant. As yet, and to our knowledge, that hasn't been done. Second, the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland states that the pen registers being used are permissable under the law. The Fourth Amendment doesn't even apply here.
Both of these guys are nuts. They're completely clueless and running around like Chicken Littles screaming that Big Brother is coming. Hell, Cafferty thinks we're living under a dictatorship right now. I wonder what the survivors of so many despotic regimes around the world that emigrated here to live think that's the case. I'd bet they don't ...
... and I'm betting that yes, these two were separated at birth.
Publius II
UPDATE: 8:00 p.m. AZ Time
I knew I should have made one last check of the blogosphere before posting this. Captain Ed explains the program from his POV as someone who has worked with vast databases and within the tele-communications industry for some time. He understands this more than most could. Trust me, read this, and understand exactly what the NSA is doing.
Today has been a whirlwind day dealing with the USA Today report of basically "data-mining" phone records. The president came out an assured everyone that was not what they were doing. (Now, whether he was advised that or not, someone told him wrong; this is data-mining, and no different than what any other intelligence agency does.) Regardless, I'd like to address two nutters. The first is wacky Jack Cafferty from CNN who launched into this diatribe on the Situation Room (the "serious" Situation Room complete with shuffling papers):
I don't know about wisdom, but you'll get a little outrage. We better all hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that is standing between us and a full-blown dictatorship in this country.
He's vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours and tens of millions of other Americans. Shortly after 9/11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super-secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens. All part of the war on terror, President Bush says.
Why don't you go find Osama bin Laden and seal the country's borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports? The president rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in "USA Today" and declared the government is doing nothing wrong and all this is just fine. Is it? Is it legal? Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn't have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.
Read that sentence again. A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it's not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says, OK, and drops the whole thing.
We're in some serious trouble here, boys and girls.
Is that a cuckoo clock in the background, or is that Jack's theme music? Of all the nutter comments to make ... Jackie-boy here has no clue. But he's joined by Senator Patrick Leahy who had this to say earlier today:
"Are you telling me tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?" said Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything."
LOL. As if that wasn't bad enough, Leahy had a follow up on the Jim Lehrer Newshour tonight. Here you go:
JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, Senator Leahy, as described by Senator Bond, does that strike you as being legal?
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: No, and I'll tell you why: The Maryland case, in 1979 -- Kit Bond was former attorney general and is a very good lawyer. He's absolutely right. That would have allowed it.
Since then, however, we passed several laws. We passed the so-called CALEA, ECPA, FISA, and the Patriot Act. And we make it very specific in those what you can do and can not do.
As this was described today, I'm hard-pressed -- and most lawyers are hard-pressed -- to say what exception this would fall under one of these laws; it doesn't. And there is a strong question of legality.
When Attorney General Gonzalez basically stonewalled the Senate Judiciary Committee, but did admit that there may be domestic wiretapping going on. I would say what the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said today. He said: Significant questions remain surrounding the legality of the program and whether the White House has misrepresented the program to the public, through the selective declassification.
He's seen everything that's been shown to...
JIM LEHRER: That's Senator Rockefeller you're talking about?
SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: I'm talking about Senator Rockefeller. But the point is that we haven't done adequate oversight.
Unfortunately, the Congress has acted like a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House and has rubber-stamped everything that's gone on. And then we usually find out through the press, whoops, they weren't following the law.
Let's go through. Let's find out what parts of the law is being followed, what part's not being followed. The president has more times than all presidents put together in history, through signing statements, that said he will follow only parts of the law that he signs.
Let's get this on the record for the American people. We can make ourselves safe, but it's not enough to say, "Gee, we're doing a great job." That's sort of like telling the head of FEMA, "Brownie, you've done a heck of a job."
Two things upfront. FISA doesn't matter in this issue. This isn't a search, yet. If the NSA finds something that causes them to focus on the investigation of a citizen, they must go through FISA for a warrant. As yet, and to our knowledge, that hasn't been done. Second, the 1979 case of Smith v. Maryland states that the pen registers being used are permissable under the law. The Fourth Amendment doesn't even apply here.
Both of these guys are nuts. They're completely clueless and running around like Chicken Littles screaming that Big Brother is coming. Hell, Cafferty thinks we're living under a dictatorship right now. I wonder what the survivors of so many despotic regimes around the world that emigrated here to live think that's the case. I'd bet they don't ...
... and I'm betting that yes, these two were separated at birth.
Publius II
UPDATE: 8:00 p.m. AZ Time
I knew I should have made one last check of the blogosphere before posting this. Captain Ed explains the program from his POV as someone who has worked with vast databases and within the tele-communications industry for some time. He understands this more than most could. Trust me, read this, and understand exactly what the NSA is doing.
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 7:56 PM
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