wiretaps

[BWahlberg]

somthing to think about

senitors reid (D) and McCain (media ) are all out saying that "if president bush needs the tools he should ask and we shall deliver" *this is a paraphrase*

any comments?

Ask, yes. Ask the courts for that warrant, it's what he should've done.

Ask for congress to give him warrantless wiretaps, no way. He needs to be held accountable within the law. If Reid and McCain want him to have the power to do warrantless wiretaps then I firmly disagree with them.

[Hell's Bells]

somthing to think about

senitors reid (D) and McCain (media ) are all out saying that "if president bush needs the tools he should ask and we shall deliver" *this is a paraphrase*

any comments?

Ask, yes. Ask the courts for that warrant, it's what he should've done.

Ask for congress to give him warrantless wiretaps, no way. He needs to be held accountable within the law. If Reid and McCain want him to have the power to do warrantless wiretaps then I firmly disagree with them.

that was what they are saying
although i hope i am reading you wrong....although that is a different topic for a different day

[SonomaCat]

somthing to think about

senitors reid (D) and McCain (media ) are all out saying that "if president bush needs the tools he should ask and we shall deliver" *this is a paraphrase*

any comments?

Ask, yes. Ask the courts for that warrant, it's what he should've done.

Ask for congress to give him warrantless wiretaps, no way. He needs to be held accountable within the law. If Reid and McCain want him to have the power to do warrantless wiretaps then I firmly disagree with them.

I think what their original comments were leading to was that if Bush doesn't like the current laws, he should ask Congress to change the laws. He shouldn't simply ignore them ('cuz that may well be an impeachable offense). Then a public debate could ensue, and we as a representative democracy could decide what is best in terms of balancing civil liberties and state police power.

EDIT: Congress would never pass such a law (allowing for unlimited wiretaps with zero oversight), as it as a body would never want to weaken its own power by giving the executive branch the authority to do whatever it wanted. Selfishness in this case is a very good thing in terms of checks and balances.

[BWahlberg]

somthing to think about

senitors reid (D) and McCain (media ) are all out saying that "if president bush needs the tools he should ask and we shall deliver" *this is a paraphrase*

any comments?

Ask, yes. Ask the courts for that warrant, it's what he should've done.

Ask for congress to give him warrantless wiretaps, no way. He needs to be held accountable within the law. If Reid and McCain want him to have the power to do warrantless wiretaps then I firmly disagree with them.

that was what they are saying
although i hope i am reading you wrong....although that is a different topic for a different day

Sorry my mind is a little scattered today. Basically I was saying that any president is above the law, and if they want to "go over it" they'd better get permission first. Coattailing on that I would hope that any president would never be given that permission by congress or by the courts.

[Stevicat]

Here is an interesting editorial from the today's Opinion section of the WSJ regarding FISA and wiretapping.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial ... =110007891

Here are some paragraphs that I find particularly interesting and supportive of my position.

Despite this history, some members of Congress contend that this process-heavy court is agile enough to rule on quickly needed National Security Agency (NSA) electronic surveillance warrants. This is a dubious claim. Getting a FISA warrant requires a multistep review involving several lawyers at different offices within the Department of Justice. It can take days, weeks, even months if there is a legal dispute between the principals. "Emergency" 72-hour intercepts require sign-offs by NSA lawyers and pre-approval by the attorney general before surveillance can be initiated. Clearly, this is not conducive to what Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, calls "hot pursuit" of al Qaeda conversations

The Senate will soon convene hearings on renewal of the Patriot Act and the NSA terrorist surveillance program. A minority of senators want to gamble with American lives and "fix" national security laws, which they can't show are broken. They seek to eliminate or weaken anti-terrorism measures which take into account that the Cold War and its slow-moving, analog world of landlines and stationary targets is gone. The threat we face today is a completely new paradigm of global terrorist networks operating in a high-velocity digital age using the Web and fiber-optic technology. After four-and-a-half years without another terrorist attack, these senators think we're safe enough to cave in to the same civil liberties lobby that supported that deadly FISA wall in the first place. What if they, like those lawyers and judges, are simply wrong?

Meanwhile, the media, mouthing phrases like "Article II authority," "separation of powers" and "right to privacy," are presenting the issues as if politics have nothing to do with what is driving the subject matter and its coverage. They want us to forget four years of relentless "connect-the-dots" reporting about the missed chances that "could have prevented 9/11." They have discounted the relevance of references to the two 9/11 hijackers who lived in San Diego. But not too long ago, the media itself reported that phone records revealed that five or six of the hijackers made extensive calls overseas.

NBC News aired an "exclusive" story in 2004 that dramatically recounted how al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, the San Diego terrorists who would later hijack American Airlines flight 77 and fly it into the Pentagon, received more than a dozen calls from an al Qaeda "switchboard" inside Yemen where al-Mihdhar's brother-in-law lived. The house received calls from Osama Bin Laden and relayed them to operatives around the world. Senior correspondent Lisa Myers told the shocking story of how, "The NSA had the actual phone number in the United States that the switchboard was calling, but didn't deploy that equipment, fearing it would be accused of domestic spying." Back then, the NBC script didn't describe it as "spying on Americans." Instead, it was called one of the "missed opportunities that could have saved 3,000 lives."