Flawed Democratic Thinking
The proof is in today’s Washington Post article. Here’s the first bit of evidence:
Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his party must take a firm stand in protest.
I don’t doubt Feingold’s sincerity in believing that. It’s Feingold’s logic that I question. Feingold thinks that the President had to get a FISA warrant for each of these intercepts, which is silly. This isn’t at all similar to Nixon’s wiretapping his political enemies or the Kennedys wiretapping MLK. As explained by Gen. Michael Hayden, this is part of SIGINT or Signals Intelligence, which has been going on since at least the Civil War, when Lincoln used his constitutional authority to intercept telegraphs. SIGINT certainly was used in WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam and in Operation Desert Storm to intercept enemy communications. Of these wars, only Operation Desert Storm happened after FISA was enacted.
In other words, presidents have used their inherent Constitutional authority to order SIGINT intercepts for over a century before FISA happened. In short, FISA can’t override Constitutional authorities. To be fair, any Senator will argue that with you but they’d lose that fight if that type of case ever made its way to the Supreme Court. And it wouldn’t be a 5-4 cliffhanger, either.
Let’s examine the second piece of evidence of liberal illogic:
Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-NV) said he hoped the Feingold measure would spur the intelligence committee to complete an investigation of the wiretapping program, to determine whether Bush broke the law. “Senator Feingold is a man of principle,” said Reid. “I think that people should cool their jets and let the process takes its course.”
The Intelligence Committees can’t determine the legality of the NSA intercept program any more than the Judiciary Committees could. They can offer opinions on the plan’s legality but it’s nothing more than that. Only the Supreme Court can rule it constitutional or unconstitutional. There’s only one way that the Intelligence Committees can determine the program’s legality and that’s if this truly is a domestic wiretapping program. Based on Gen. Hayden’s description, that eliminates that possibility.
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
March 15th, 2006 at 5:03 am
ah the dems are just trying to make a story out of nothing don’t mind them.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:21 am
Evading the call for censure
Looks like about all Sen. Russ ‘let’s censure President Bush’ Feingold is hearing these days from members of his own party in response to his censure call are the sounds of crickets chirping:
Democratic senators, filing in for their…
March 15th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Yesterday, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) introduced a Motion of Censure on the floor of the US Senate, to formally take Our Commander in Cheat to task for violating the Constitution and the law in his illegal domestic wiretapping program. Astonishingly enough, the main response from the Republican leadership (specifically, Dr. Bill “I’ve seen the videotape and in my medical opinion she’s conscious” Frist) was they they couldn’t support the motion on the grounds that — and this is a direct quote — “it would send the wrong signal around the world.”
This is the man, by the way, who wants to be the next Republican President of the United States.
(READ MORE HERE: http://mattstover.blogspot.com/2006/03/so.html)
None of these idiots seems to comprehend that invading a nation which has not attacked us, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians (the current best estimate, which our Pentagon continues to suppress, is 25-30,000 Iraqi civilians died in the actual fighting, and the bump in overall death rate from all factors, comparing pre- and post-invasion, suggests that the invasion of Iraq was responsible, by the end of 2004, for 130,000 Iraqi civilian deaths. And we wonder why they hate us . . .), kidnapping innocent citizens of friendly nations and shipping them off without trial or even the faintest shred of evidentiary review to be tortured — not to mention maintaining our own officially-sanctioned torture chambers in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, and having an executive banch of government (Constitutionally charged with enforcing the our nation’s laws) openly declaring that our nation’s law does not apply to them . . .
I mean, how much more wrong can our fucking signals get? Ahhh, anyway. Anyone still wondering about the actual legality of the domestic wiretap program might want to check out the details here: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18650
March 15th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Nobody is opposed to SIGINT. It’s a good thing and if the government isn’t monitoring terrorists and potential terrorists and suspected terrorists, they aren’t doing their job. The issue is UNACCOUNTABLE surveillance in which the organizations doing the watching never have to explain why they are watching someone. This invites abuse as the definition of “enemy” becomes vague and the watchers start to watch people completely innocent of terrorism related activities other than having voiced the opinion that the administration is going about things wrong. Why can’t you NSA apologists get this through your heads? My 14 y/o son seems to understand the difference. I think my dog does as well. It’s not terrorist spying that’s the problem; it’s the other spying no one knows about.
jeff
March 15th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Gary, the examples of SigInt that you cite make clear that these were programs designed to intercept enemy communications on foreign soil. The NSA program intercepts communications among Americans on domestic soil. The Administration claims, but can’t prove, that the communications originate with “suspected terrorists.” If so, then the FISA court would readily have issued warrants for such surveillance (FISA turned down warrants in only a handful of cases).
If you have no problem with the government reading your email, monitoring your financial transactions and listening to your phone conversations without your knowledge or permission–fine. But to some of us, it reeks of totalitarianism.
March 15th, 2006 at 11:19 am
In addition to the unaccounted for aspect already touched on by others here…
The comparison of pre-FISA spying to post-FISA spying is apples to oranges. Any 4th amendment right is shared by congress in their capacity to advise and consent - FISA is not intended to remove power, but to create oversite and prevent abuse. What is so hard to understand about that?
March 15th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
This isn’t at all similar to Nixon’s wiretapping his political enemies or the Kennedys wiretapping MLK.
How do you know? Is it faith in the government? Its practically a cliche at this point, but would you agree to be kept in the dark for “reasons of national security” if Hillary Clinton was President?
I don’t understand where you get your faith. I wouldn’t trust Clinton, Kerry, Reagan, McCain, Bush or anyone to use this power exclusively - unmonitored, undocumented - for national security purposes. I would frankly expect they would use it for political purposes. What is it about George Bush’s character that makes him so much more trustworthy than any other President in this nation’s history?
March 15th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Several of you have talked about the lack of accountability built into the NSA intercept program or cited the lack of oversight. One person asked if I’d trust it if Hillary were president.
Let me address the oversight/accountability issue first. There is oversight for the program because the chairs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee, along with the ranking members of those committees, the Senate Minority and Majority Leaders, the Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader have been briefed since this program’s inception back in 2001. These briefings were conducted by Gen. Michael Hayden, then the person in charge of the program. These briefings weren’t generalizations. They were detail-oriented. These briefings are held roughly every 45 days.
It’s also noteworthy that the program was shut down for a brief period because the DOJ didn’t reauthorize it while John Ashcroft was hospitalized. It was subsequently reauthorized and resumed.
It seems reasonable to me that if this program is shut down temporarily, then meaningful oversight is being conducted and that it isn’t unaccountable.
As for me trusting this program if Hillary were president, I’d trust it if this same oversight were conducted.
March 15th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Yes because GWB is always honest and aboveboard….like when he had his pic taken with the autistic basketball player and talked up his support of education while simultaneously slashing education funding for the disabled….why should I trust the scumbag when he says he is spying on “al queda”?
March 15th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
But IF it turns out that Bush has violated the Constitution by spying on domestic US citizens without the proper authority, then you would agree that he should be impeached, right?
March 15th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
…then meaningful oversight is being conducted and that it isn’t unaccountable.
Whether or not the Constitution is being violated or not, is not to be decided by this dicey third-party guesswork. One might as well read tea leaves.
This is why the Constitution separates the powers. There should be either judicial branch or legislative branch oversight of this program, or else it violates the separation of powers.
And oversight does **not** mean telling some select couple of people that something’s going on, and they can’t do anything about it, and they can’t tell anyone else about it - as was done with this program.
We as private citizens are told that if we’re doing nothing wrong, we have nothing to fear from the government knowing what we’re doing. Well then, what does Bush have to fear from some Judicial or Legislative Branch insight? If he’s doing what’s right, he has nothing to worry about.
March 15th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
But wait! It is true that other presidents may have conducted operations that would have been legal before FISA, but Bush operates in the post-FISA world! The fact is, the US put in place provisions to prevent exactly the type of wire-tapping that Bush has engaged in, and Bush ignored it. Other presidents operated differently, but they followed the laws that were in place at the time. We must hold Bush to the same standard, don’t you think?
March 15th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
This is really illogical thinking.
You say: “presidents have used their inherent Constitutional authority to order SIGINT intercepts for over a century before FISA happened. In short, FISA can’t override Constitutional authorities.”
what the heck does that mean?? Abraham Lincoln wasn’t using “inherent constitutional authority” when he ordered intercepts of telegraphs during the Civil War (show me some authority indicating Lincoln thought that’s what he was doing by the way). He was simply doing something that was not, at that time, illegal. If what you were arguing was correct, Congress could never act to curb presidential authority that has been exercised. According to you, as best as I can tell, once a president does something that is legal at the time he does it, that’s the end of the sory and Congress is powerless to rein in future presidents.
Do you really think people who initiated a revolution to overthrow a despotic king intended the Constitution (designed in large part to PREVENT tyranny) to work this way?
You’re way overthinking this. The President took an oath to execute the laws (including FISA) and broke the law, and violated FISA, by ordering warrantless spying.
March 15th, 2006 at 3:11 pm
kudos to Duncan by the way who made a point similar to mine…
March 15th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
So what other laws is the president breaking? What other Supreme Court decisions is he ignoring.
We are not supposed to have to take the word of one or two people that everything is all right, even if one or two of them are senators. We are supposed to have a government of laws, not of men. And you do not get to waive my right to that government just because you are afraid of the bogeyman.
March 15th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
Your logic is flawed. “Sigint “, which you toss around so casually, is collected in the field between opposing armies. You simply don’t know what the government is up to here, other than trusting them. Two clues. 1) They’ve tapped thousands of calls. Do you really think there are hundreds of Al Quaeda operatives in this country on the other side of those calls? 2) Apparently, it’s led to zip, and worse: wild goose chases. So, we are tapping regular people’s calls and it is serving no purpose.
This isn’t sigint. And you’re right. It’s not Nixon. It’s worse. Its the whole-sale wiretapping of hundreds, probably thousands, and possibly far, far more than that without any oversight.
I’m glad you’re comfortable with that.
I have a question for the supposed conservatives on this blog: when did you decide the government deserved your full and unconditional trust? Was this shortly after the presidency concluded where some conservatives criticized the FBI as using gestapo tactics? Do you have ANY problem with unsuperivised government surveillance by, say, Hillary Clinton?
March 15th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
From a conservative on this blog (definitely a minority in these responses):
There have been a bunch of allegations of illegal wire-tapping, gathering of information on thousands of citizens, etc., in the previous comments. I have yet to see any proof that any of that is so, unless one believes unerringly that the NYT never lies and always tells the whole truth (kinda like y’all always accuse conservatives of believin’ GW).
As far as trusting Hillarious, I trust her as far as I trust her (meandering) husband, which is not at all. Especially since his secret spying programs had no oversight (legislative or judicial) at all. Again, how can you tell if Billy Bub (or Hillarious, as far as that goes) is lying? His (her) lips are moving.
Feingold has done more to destroy the hopes of the donkeys in a week than the elephants could ever do, and all the other (elected) donkeys are running from him at light speed. How dumb he was, when the donkeys were just getting to an issue they could beat the conservatives over the head about!
Trust GW? Not a chance, but I trust him a lot more than motor-mouths like Rockyfeller or Chucky Cheesy. Those dopes have not a clue what national security is for, only what they perceive as their best chance at re-election. With sieve-mouths like theirs, it’s a wonder the nation has any secrets at all. (’Course, there’s a few out there that think that’s unconstitutional, too.)
March 15th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Carlos,
Carlos, since we don’t know for sure, do you think it makes more sense to investigate what’s REALLY happening with the NSA eavesdropping or do you just want to forget the whole thing and see what happens?
What will our enemies find out? That we conduct eavesdropping on them without a warrant? How will this change their actions, since they may think we are eavesdropping on them with warrants already?
Or are you saying someone on the FISA court is telling our enemies that the US has a warrant to eavesdrop on their calls?
March 15th, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Quick hint for the right - when your position requires you to lie about the past or the present, or take someone’s word about something you cannot verify as the literal truth, then you have a weak position. The mark of people who can think is that they discard weak positions and either find strong ones that can accommodate their beliefs or find new beliefs. It’s called the scientific method, and it works really well for not being a dumbass.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
As several people have pointed out, you seem to be confused.
All I have to ask is a simplequestion: What does Bush have to fear from an investigation if he has nothing to hide?
Hell, if Bush has done nothing wrong, him and his fellow Republicans should be welcoming an investigation, in the exact same way that the Dubai ports company was willing to undergo a 45-day review.
Just remember, any powers you hand off to Bush will eventually be handed off to a Democratic President. But don’t worry, by that point all the leaks will have been plugged and nobody will know if the President is doing anything illegal or not.
March 15th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
What I don’t get is why the Bushies didn’t bother with FISA in the first place. Hasn’t the FISA court only denied something like 3 warrant requests since its inception?
It could be that they didn’t bother with FISA because:
a. They are too lazy and didn’t feel like doing the paperwork.
b. Assumed that the authorization to fight in Afghanistan implied power to gather information on American citizens, in America.
c. Didn’t think they needed to…just because they didn’t think they’d get caught.
Full disclosure: I voted for Gore, Kerry and Clinton twice. Still, I have no preternatural disposition to have Bush figuratively drawn and quartered in front of the American public in an impeachment proceeding.
What I don’t understand is this remarkable monomaniacal and undying disposition to take anything coming out of the White House at face value. I don’t get it.
March 15th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
FISA provided for very minimal judicial involvement.
Circumventing it means only one thing, that they dont even want THAT. Which means that they know they are doing shit that no court, not even a kangaroo court that they could appoint would approve (you know, like spying on political enemies, no court would approve that, and they dont want more people in the mix knowing what they are doing, because its illegal. If it was legal, they’d get the approval, since it doesn’t take any more time, you just get a flunky attorney to run down a piece of paper describing the activity, and get a judge to stamp his name on it and keep it in a top secret file for nobody to ever see).
March 16th, 2006 at 3:38 am
What presidents may have done before 1978 is irrelevant. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Title 50 USC 36, Section 1809 says that “A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionallyâ€â€
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute [i.e., with a warrant] . . .[and that each] offense . . . is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.”
Suggest the idiot that wrote this article read the legislative history of the Act. Congress made clear that FISA was providing bright-line guidance on what constituted legal electronic surveillance by the government. They passed the law. The president of the United States acquiesced by signing the bill into law. Indeed, the president’s signing statement further expounds that FISA represents a “clarification” of the general protections of the 4th Amendment.
The issue on Bush’s wiretapping is not a Constitutional question. The president intentionally broke the law - the law that binds every American - FISA does not speak to any exemption for delusional monarchs. Bush is a common criminal.
His approval rating is now at 33% - and its headed lower. When the villagers with the pitchforks and torches surround 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there will be no place for this incompetent fool to hide. Impeachment is merely a matter of time, and you heard it here first.
March 16th, 2006 at 8:34 am
President Bush did not apply for warrants because of the huge scale of tapping. They are almost certainly doing “data mining” - tapping the lines for ALL calls to certain regions, and auto-filtering for keywords.
Since they don’t know in advance who will place the calls, they have to tap ALL lines. No court is going to issue a warrant to tap all 260 million of us. Result: Bush breaks the law by ignoring the requiredment for a warrant.
He needs to resign before he is impeached.
March 16th, 2006 at 10:37 am
More Bad News for the Chimp:
New poll shows majority of Americans favor plans to censure Bush, while 42% favor actually impeaching the President.
A March 15, 2006 poll from American Research Group says among all adults, 46% favor Feingold’s plan to censure Bush, while just 44% are opposed. Approval of the plan grows to 46% in favor of the Senate censuring the sitting president when the sample is narrowed to voters.
Just 57% of Republicans are opposed to the move, with 14% still undecided and 29% actually in favor. 70% of Democrats want to see Bush censured.
The poll found 43% of voters in favor of impeaching the Chimpresident; just 50% of voters are opposed. 61% of Democrats and 47% of Independents reported they wanted to see the House move ahead with the Conyers (D-MI) resolution to impeach.
March 16th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
Amazon.com mines data all the time, as do American Express, Google, Boeing and the two-bit brokerage house around the corner. What data are they mining?
Are they mining data to look for patterns and then finding people who are talking about killing people? From the perspective of technology, this is no different from Google targeting ads based on clickstreams.
I’m OK with Google keeping track of my clicks, as long as I am not individually identifiable. What I’d be pissed off about is if Sergey Brin then called me up in the middle of the night to ask why I hang out at conservative blogs.
So, if there is the NSA has access to all the traffic that goes through the major connection points of the Internet backbone and they loook for weird patterns, fine by me.
What I’d really have a huge problem with is tracking individual actions. What if in 12 years (God strike me down for even thinking this) there is a Rick Santorum/Tom Delay combo in the White House and they decide to use the NSA to data mine for what “liberals” are saying on the internet.
I don’t know that I have any sort of answer for this, but I really can’t accept this “trust us, we know best” BS. Not from this bunch or nut bags anyway. That even the most ardent of Bush supporters do not want to even discuss this in the congress is highly disturbing.
I think that this debacle with wiretapping is simply emblematic of the atrocious levels of incompetence at this White House. They run elections well, and they slander people well.
They don’t do wars, hurricanes or spelling bees so well. And apprently they don’t do prosecutions of lunatic, self-admitted terrorists (witness Moussaoui) who plead guilty and ASK to be put to death so well either.
I’d want to make sure that they don’t get data mine and land mine confused.