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Liar! Last Ditch Fearmongering for Spying and Telecom Immunity

Liar! Last Ditch Fearmongering for Spying and Telecom Immunity

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Keith Olbermann Countdown Special Comment on FISA: “President Bush Is A Liar And A Fascist”

The lot of you, are the symbolic descendants of the despotic middle managers of some banana republic, to whom “Freedom” is an ironic brand name, a word you reach for, when you want to get away with its opposite.

Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as “protecting America.”Thus, Mr. Bush, your panoramic invasion of privacy is dressed up as “protecting America.”

Thus, Mr. Bush, your indiscriminate domestic spying becomes the focused monitoring, only of “terrorist communications.”

Thus, Mr. Bush, what you and the telecom giants have done, isn’t unlawful, it’s just the kind of perfectly legal, passionately patriotic thing for which you happen to need immunity!

Richard Clarke is on the money, as usual.

That the President was willing to veto this eavesdropping, means there is no threat to the legitimate counter-terror efforts underway.

As Senator Kennedy reminded us in December:

“The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity.

No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he’s willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.”


[youtube width=”400″ height=”330″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEcBjpsP1bU[/youtube]

5 Things Specter Won’t Say about Cheney-Specter Spying Bill

5 Things Specter Won’t Say about Cheney-Specter Spying Bill

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  1. The Cheney-Specter bill makes following the protections in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act totally optional. The bill would change the law so that foreign intelligence surveillance of Americans could be conducted without following FISA’s requirement of individualized judicial review of wiretaps. The bill would change the law to allow the president to ignore FISA’s protections and unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap, indefinitely and without any mandatory check to protect individual rights. The bill also gives President Bush support for his currently untenable argument that FISA does not apply in wartime by deleting the provisions saying FISA does apply in wartime. If the bill passes, presidents will have multiple avenues to circumvent the statute, rendering moot its protections for Americans’ civil liberties.
  2. The Cheney-Specter bill does not require President Bush to get a warrant for every wiretap of every American currently subject to the NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping. President Bush’s so-called “concession” to submit a “program” to the FISA court to approve is not required by the bill—it’s conditional. Only if the bill passes exactly as it was written by the White House or with additional White House changes has President Bush “promised” that he will submit one of his secret surveillance programs to the FISA Court. Nothing in the bill requires him to do so, and the Cheney-Specter bill has stacked the deck so that the court will hear only the administration’s arguments and is directed to approve surveillance without ever knowing the name of every American wiretapped and any facts supporting such surveillance. Nothing in the bill requires any future president to get approval of programs of surveillance let alone actual warrants based on evidence a particular American is conspiring with al Qaeda.
  3. The Cheney-Specter bill legalizes President Bush’s illegal spying although Congress doesn’t really know all that he has directed the NSA to do regarding people in the US. The bill rewrites FISA to legalize the surveillance President Bush is currently conducting in defiance of the law. Yet, the administration has stonewalled congressional attempts to learn the true scope and nature of all of the illegal surveillance the administration has secretly authorized. Specter, himself, has called President Bush’s NSA program illegal “on its face,” yet his bill provides statutory power to do more than the president has admitted and it expands the NSA’s power to search Americans’ calls, e-mails, and homes without any warrant under FISA.
  4. The Cheney-Specter bill allows law enforcement to enter Americans’ homes and offices without a warrant. Landlords, custodians and “other people” would be required to let law enforcement officers to access Americans’ computers and telephones, and no warrant is required, simply government say-so—under the expanded powers in the bill. This measure flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure.
  5. The Specter bill does not enforce the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause stating with particularity the things to be searched and seized. Specter’s bill so broadly redefines whom can be spied on without a warrant that countless Americans would be subject to secret NSA surveillance. All international phone calls and emails would be subject to warrantless surveillance under the bill’s changes to the law. Plus, emails and other Internet traffic would be subject to monitoring if the government did not know the physical location of every recipient of an American’s email. Furthermore, the bill creates a new type of generalized surveillance power, which, while it requires court approval, does not require the government to identify each target in the US, the basis for such surveillance or the method of monitoring each American—wiretaps, bugging or other devices. Under this exceedingly low threshold, the NSA could win approval for conducting surveillance of countless Americans while keeping secret from the courts and Congress who is being monitored and even whether the spying approved actually helps protect against terrorism.

A federal judge has already ruled that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program violates the Constitution and must stop. But instead of listening to the judge, the White House and its allies are continuing to pressure Congress for new, expanded and unchecked government spying powers. Help convince Congress to support the rule of law, not limitless executive power.

Take action! Tell your members of Congress to oppose the Specter-Cheney Bill and other dangerous proposals that threaten your rights.

(ACLU – American Civil Liberties Union)

A view on NSA Spying

A view on NSA Spying

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The New York Review of Books: ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS

Vol 52, no 2, Feb. 9 2006

A collection of constitutional law scholars and former government officials published this letter to Congress in the New York Review of Books. I would love to post the whole thing, but I don’t want to run afoul of their permissions rules.

The administration’s argument that the 2001 AUMF authorization of the use of force somehow grants permission for the NSA spying program fails for many reasons.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has admitted that the administration didn’t even seek to amend FISA because it was advised Congress would reject such amendment. How can he argue that Congress authorized it already when they were clearly conscious that Congress would say no if they asked? (Isn’t that called premeditation?)

The clear and specific view of Congress in the language of FISA isn’t trumped by an implicit or unstated one. Domestic surveillance during wartime has been specifically addressed under FISA as the exclusive means under which it may not be a criminal act. The power to do what has been done under the NSA Program has been explicitly withheld. Congress has already spoken, and used their power to regulate the exclusive means by which domestic surveillance can be conducted. Absent any evidence that Congress intended to repeal those provisions, they take precedence.

It makes criminal any electronic surveillance not authorized by statute, id. § 1809; and it expressly establishes FISA and specified provisions of the federal criminal code (which govern wiretaps for criminal investigation) as the "exclusive means by which electronic surveillance…may be conducted," 18 U.S.C. § 2511.

The FISA statue specifically allows for wartime domestic electronic surveillance – but only for the first 15 days of a war. (Again, where is the declaration of war?) They further maintain that the President (even in his role as Commander in Chief) can only act against FISA where his authority is exclusive (not subject to the check of statutory regulation). This is not the case for domestic spying. In addition, both the constitutional protections of probable cause and judicial order and/or oversight have been ignored by this program.

The letter goes on to discuss all of this in some detail. I missed it when it first came out, so here’s a deep bow to TJJA (as always) for alerting me.

My reaction to the State of the Union Address

My reaction to the State of the Union Address

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I somehow made it all the way through the State of the Union address last night. Much as I disagree with the Bush administration, I even found him unusually appealing.

I actually had the thought, “Well, maybe most of this administration’s ugliness is Cheney. Maybe Bush means some of what he is saying here.” I thought he really tried to appeal to our hopefulness at a very sour time – that showed some good leadership. But that’s about it.

So many platitudes, so little straight talk.

He opened with the death of Coretta Scott King. At least he kept his remarks short and honored her as best he could, considering everything.

Isolationist? I haven’t heard anyone advocating that America should be isolationist or retreating from the world. I guess everyone can get behind that – attack a position no-one holds. Actually, it seems that this administration might benefit from more open debates on how to engage with the rest of the world in more effective ways. The costs of our invasion of Iraq – all the costs (ethical, diplomatic, financial, etc.) – have yet to be justified. I sincerely hope that his view of Iraq is not as simplistic as his few comments suggest. Probably just dumbing down.

Ditto for terrorists, but this is even more troubling. He seems to view the terrorists as a singular force, when it is really a mutating, changing and global set of loose alliances. He hasn’t got at what it will take to defeat them if he is concentrating on nations.

Interesting that he went back and forth from inaccurate representations of Democratic views to words about bipartisanship and working together. He suggests that they are soft on terrorism? Please. In my darker moments, I wonder how far this administration would go to bolster those claims.

The Rule of Law – I can’t believe he’s trying to wrap his illegal surveillance of Americans in 9/11 again. The claims he is making on the NSA spying scandal are pretty much to be expected – and really it’s probably all he can do right now. Of course, everything he said is problematic from a variety of perspectives, but that’s all playing out elsewhere. Personally, I believe this president violated federal law, but feels secure enough about it to brag. Bad sign.

“Human-animal hybrids”? What? Is there some room from O Lucky Man hiding in North Carolina? Is there an island of Dr. Moreau off New York? Maybe they mean Plum Island?

Well, good to see the value of life expressed. I think about the lives of those people who died in the aftermath of Katrina, the lives of the people of Fallujah or in Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or in our huge domestic prison system which still carries out barbaric if sterile executions, or the lives of people around the world who get HIV for lack of real educational programs beyond “just abstain” and die from it for lack of support for generic drugs. It’s easy to see the values of “life” in cutting anti-poverty programs, in cutting education, in cutting healthcare. Or maybe the value of all our lives is measured in terms of profits and cannon fodder. I felt sorry for that military family standing there. I felt sorry for that soldier’s wife and his parents. What did he die for? Invasion and occupation wasn’t the only option. I’ve now heard rumours of dropping nukes on Iran. Evidently civilian killings are planned to represent our support of their liberty too.

I liked the “switch grass” – it added spice, although I’m not sure where the marshlands could be retrieved for growing it. Can you see the slogan? “Grow Grass for Bush.” Actually, I think the clean reliable and safe energy he’s planning on is primarily nuclear energy. Has that really registered? Do we really want to give terrorists even more underdefended targets here?

I’m not sure I can really believe that an administration so closely tied to oil and gas (and who always supports industry over consumers) will be the ones who will move us out of a petroleum-based economy. He said that the US would replace 75% of our Middle East oil imports by 2025, but only 20% of our imports come from the region anyway, and he gives it about 20 years to happen. The White House has been against efforts to tighten fuel economy standards, and the tax system actually gives SUV drivers an incentive. He pledged support for alternative fuel technologies in previous State of the Union addresses, too, just like every other President I ever remember. Let’s see how it pans out.

Line item veto? Maybe it was a joke? He did grin. Anyway, that power was granted to Clinton but then overturned by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

On the economy, let’s remember that he inherited a $281 billion budget surplus that is now a $400 billion deficit. The national debt is up 44% (trillions and trillions of dollars, folks), but he wants to keep those tax cuts to the rich. The gap in America between the rich and the poor grows.

We’ve created “more jobs than Japan and Europe combined”… and they are all at Halliburton. Seriously, I don’t know if the claim about job creation is true or not, but it is my understanding that in both Japan and most of Europe, there is healthcare whether or not you are employed, a free college education, weeks and weeks of vacation, and generous pension plans. Part-time jobs at Walmart don’t really compare. Let’s also compare the worker populations. I wonder how many new workers entered the market in that time? No mention of how many jobs India or China have created in the same amount of time…. Anyway, there was a reason he didn’t cite the figures from the beginning of his presidency – it would have cut his total by more than half. 2 million jobs over a five-year period isn’t really much to brag about, especially when you look at the jobs.

Healthcare. Again, Bush would rather cut Medicare than allow, for example, negotiated drug prices. A closed-door session just gave away another $22 billion benefit to insurance companies, and some $140 million was spent by drug and insurance companies to lobby Republicans on the Medicare drug benefit alone. How about looking at some of the systemic issues?

Yes, we need to have a debate on healthcare, one that bases decisions on the common good of all Americans – is he really going to have that debate? I hope so. We need everyone’s ideas on this one. He didn’t really make any move toward fixing the current mess that privatizing the drug benefit (or is it “penalty”?) has caused. There seems to be no move (while he’s in the mood to cut needed programs all over, like Pell Grants and Medicare), to optimize or reform the healthcare system or to watchdog the health/drug/insurance industries. Any administrative assistant at any healthcare facility in the country can tell you where the fat is, where the corruption is. How about this as one small measure – insurance companies have to pay bills within 30 days, like the rest of us. Don’t wait around to hear such measures suggested by the Bush administration.

The Patriot Act? How about if we lose some of these provisions, such as the criminalization of protesters (carrying punishments of up to ten years in prison)? Or perhaps the Congress should consider cutting back on the wholesale authority to wiretap your phone, monitor your e-mail and demand your medical, financial and student records from banks, vendors, doctors‚ offices, and libraries – those required to turn over your records are prevented from ever telling you, even if the records turn up no wrongdoing.

The Bush administration has worked hard – to subvert America’s laws regarding open government while it infringes on your constitutional rights. This administration has done everything in its power to block and stall and hide from investigations into 9/11, the way we entered into the Iraq war, the Katrina aftermath, and the outing of Plame. It is a very very secretive administration. It has promoted cronyism at such levels as to have become actual security threats to our nation, and blocked meaningful debate by simply shutting down the conversation.

Just the little detail that adds insult: Cindy Sheehan was arrested and taken away in handcuffs for the crime of wearing a teeshirt that said “2245 How Many More?”. She was an invited guest. She wasn’t the only one in trouble either. Beverly Young (wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida, chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee) was removed from the gallery for another teeshirt considered to be a “protest.” It read, “Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom.”

So while I feel the President has, with practice, improved on his speech delivery skills, we’re still just being had.

Of course, I wasn’t that impressed with the Democrat’s response either, which had a few good points but was dumbed-down wayyyy too much.

I did like the brief comments I saw from Barack Obama. Maybe he should run in 2008. I’d vote for him over anyone else at this point.

So here’s his statement, which makes me a lot more hopeful than any words from this President’s speech:

Tonight, the American people know our union should be stronger. They know we can defeat terror and keep our shores safe. And they know that we can be competitive in a 21st century economy where every hardworking family prospers, not just some.

But the American people are wondering if this Administration can lead us there. Because after five years of the same timid solutions to great national challenges, Americans are more anxious about their future and more uncertain about the direction of the country we love.

They’ve seen their wages go down as their medical, gas, and tuition bills go up. They’ve seen jobs go overseas and wonder if our children will be prepared to compete in a global economy. And they’ve seen scandal and corruption take hold of a Washington that helps high-priced lobbyists at the expense of hardworking families.

Americans everywhere want a leader who speaks to their hopes for a better future and then acts on them.

But tonight, the President barely mentioned his health care plan for people who can already afford health care, ignoring bold, bipartisan proposals that can guarantee affordable and available health care for every American.

He identified America’s addiction to oil, but ignored his Administration’s addiction to oil-industry giveaways that won’t free us from our dependence on fossil fuels.

And after forty-six minutes of speaking, the President used less than sixty words to tell us how he’d clean up Washington and restore the American people’s faith in a government that works for them, not just big donors.

We can have this kind of government in America, face the future with hope, and move our country in the direction of progress. But we need strong leadership to get there – leadership that isn’t afraid to think big, try new ideas, and reach out to Americans of all political stripes. This is how we will restore the American people’s faith in our union and truly make it stronger.