NYTimes: Congress Raises Questions, but Spy System Necessary

I don't disagree at all with Basso's highlighted portion. As long as there are checks on the abuse of the system, it probably is valuable in catching the people mentioned. Without those checks, it's another story.

What I find depressing about this piece is how far the GOP Congress has fallen in oversight and integrity. If you're concerned about this stuff when Clinton's President, why isn't there oversight and criticism when Bush is President? Instead of "worries" or "questions" we now have verifiable abuses yet we only seem to get a defense of the Administration's malfeasance, not investigations or even a little moral outrage.

 

(For some reason, the second half od my previous post was not transmitted, so add this to the one above.)

I would welcome the return of a Republican Party based on conservative principles just as I would welcome the return of a robust Democratic Party based on liberal principles. Our current elected officials, regardless of what side of the aisle they sit, have forfeited their heritage. Repubs have been reduced to obsequious Yes-men used to prop up the administration and game they system for "their side" while Dems are so timid and afraid of criticism they can only offer milquetoast bromides in defense of their beliefs.

Neither party is serving the country well and we are all the lesser for it.

 

Al Gore's going to raise some questions on Monday after being introduced by... Bob Barr.

I honestly don't know why every American who can read and chew gum at the same time isn't screaming for Bush's head over this.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/2...ONZG1c__8QF;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-

Gore to Address "Constitutional Crisis"

John NicholsFri Jan 13, 11:01 AM ET

The Nation -- It sounds as if Al Gore is about to deliver what could be not just one of the more significant speeches of his political career but an essential challenge to the embattled presidency of George W. Bush.

In a major address slated for delivery Monday in Washington, the former Vice President is expected to argue that the Bush administration has created a "Constitutional crisis" by acting without the authorization of the Congress and the courts to spy on Americans and otherwise abuse basic liberties.

Aides who are familiar with the preparations for the address say that Gore will frame his remarks in Constitutional language. The Democrat who beat Bush by more than 500,000 votes in the 2000 presidential election has agreed to deliver his remarks in a symbolically powerful location: the historic Constitution Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. But this will not be the sort of cautious, bureacratic speech for which Gore was frequently criticized during his years in the Senate and the White House.

Indeed, his aides and allies are framing it as a "call to arms" in defense of the Bill of Rights and the rule of law in a time of executive excess.

The vice president will, according to the groups that have arranged for his appearance -- the bipartisan Liberty Coalition and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy -- address "the threat posed by policies of the Bush Administration to the Constitution and the checks and balances it created. The speech will specifically point to domestic wiretapping and torture as examples of the administration's efforts to extend executive power beyond Congressional direction and judicial review."

Coming only a few weeks after U.S. Representative John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, introduced resolutions to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and to explore the issue of impeachment, Gore in expected to "make the case that the country -- including the legislative and judicial branches and all Americans -- must act now to defend the systems put into place by the country's founders to curb executive power or risk permanent and irreversible damage to the Constitution."

Don't expect a direct call for impeachment from the former vice president. But do expect Gore to make reference to Richard Nixon, whose abuses of executive authority led to calls for his impeachment -- a fate the 37th president avoided by resigning in 1974.

Gore's speech will add fuel to the fire that was ignited when it was revealed that Bush had secretly authorized National Security Agency to monitor communications in the United States without warrants. Gore will argue that the domestic wiretapping policy is only the latest example of the administration exceeding its authority under the Constitution.

With a Congressional inquiry into Bush's repeated violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act scheduled to begin in February -- and with Bush already preparing to pitch an Nixon-style defense that suggests it is appropriate for the executive branch to violate the law when national security matters are involved -- Gore will articulate the more traditional view that reasonable checks and balances are required even in a time of war. And he will do so in a bipartisan context that will make it tougher for Republican critics to dismiss the former vice president's assertion that the Constitution is still the law of the land.

Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican who served as one of the most conservative members of the House, plans to introduce Gore. Barr, an outspoken critic of the abuses of civil liberties contained in the USA Patriot Act critic who has devoted his post-Congressional years to defending the Bill of Rights, refers to the president's secret authorization of domestic wiretapping as "an egregious violation of the electronic surveillance laws."

Count on Gore, who has pulled few punches in the speeches he has delivered in recent months, to be at least as caustic.

 

I can't either. Especially those that support the president's raitonale for the war #246, fighting for liberty. How is it worth killing and dying for thousands of miles away, yet it is given away here at home. I know we aren't talking the same magnitude, but we are talking about the same principles.

On a related note, It doesn't make sense to me, that I actually support either of these two, let alone both of them.

It doesn't make sense that I am on the same side of the Iraq war as one of the congressman who coined the phrase 'freedom fries'.

 

For those who read history, since the fall of the Soviet Union there have been a number of books written by KGB and based on their archives documenting that the "red scare" was real. The KGB handler of the British moles including Philby wrote a book about handling the five top UK spies in British Intelligence. Archives have documented Alger Hiss's involvement which he denied to his death.

So I am sure in the millions of citizens/immigrants legal and illegal there is not a single collaborator with Al Quaeda. Knowing that our intelligence system has limited resources which can be aimed at me, I am quaking in my boots that the NSA will point its resources at me and monitor my communications here on clutchfans.net.

 

Due to the shocking salient facts outlined above-- that out of the millions of citizens and immigrants there is at least one collaborator.and also the Soviet Union had some spies in the US in the past, I must submit to the following necessary conclusion.

George Bush, as the Commander in Chief of The Homeland, is mandated by the Constitution to suspend the Constitution as he sees fit to protect The Homeland.

All who don't accept this are traitors to The Homeland and givecomfort to our enemies. They should be dealt with as the Commander in Chief of The Homeland deems necessary.

 

The Imperial Presidency at Work

Published: January 15, 2006

You would think that Senators Carl Levin and John McCain would have learned by now that you cannot deal in good faith with a White House that does not act in good faith. Yet both men struck bargains intended to restore the rule of law to American prison camps. And President Bush tossed them aside at the first opportunity.

Mr. Bush made a grand show of inviting Mr. McCain into the Oval Office last month to announce his support for a bill to require humane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and other prisons run by the American military and intelligence agencies. He seemed to have managed to get Vice President Dick Cheney to stop trying to kill the proposed Congressional ban on torture of prisoners.

The White House also endorsed a bargain between Mr. Levin and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, which tempered somewhat a noxious proposal by Mr. Graham to deny a court hearing to anyone the president declares to be an "unlawful enemy combatant." The bargain with Mr. Levin removed language that stripped away cases already before the courts, which would have been an egregious usurpation of power by one branch of government, and it made clear that those cases should remain in the courts.

Mr. Bush, however, seems to see no limit to his imperial presidency. First, he issued a constitutionally ludicrous "signing statement" on the McCain bill. The message: Whatever Congress intended the law to say, he intended to ignore it on the pretext the commander in chief is above the law. That twisted reasoning is what led to the legalized torture policies, not to mention the domestic spying program.

Then Mr. Bush went after the judiciary, scrapping the Levin-Graham bargain. The solicitor general informed the Supreme Court last week that it no longer had jurisdiction over detainee cases. It said the court should drop an existing case in which a Yemeni national is challenging the military tribunals invented by Mr. Bush's morally challenged lawyers after 9/11. The administration is seeking to eliminate all other lawsuits filed by some of the approximately 500 men at Gitmo, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to pose any threat.

Both of the offensive theories at work here - that a president's intent in signing a bill trumps the intent of Congress in writing it, and that a president can claim power without restriction or supervision by the courts or Congress - are pet theories of Judge Samuel Alito, the man Mr. Bush chose to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

The administration's behavior shows how high and immediate the stakes are in the Alito nomination, and how urgent it is for Congress to curtail Mr. Bush's expansion of power. Nothing in the national consensus to combat terrorism after 9/11 envisioned the unilateral rewriting of more than 200 years of tradition and law by one president embarked on an ideological crusade.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/opinion/15sun2.html

 

Well, now we have the unelected government declaring that nobody in the Congress has a high enough security clearance to here testimony about our intelligence.

so much for elected government.
*****
The National Security Agency has warned a former intelligence officer that he should not testify to Congress about accusations of illegal activity at NSA because of the secrecy of the programs involved.
Renee Seymour, director of NSA special access programs stated in a Jan. 9 letter to Russ Tice that he should not testify about secret electronic intelligence programs because members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees do not have the proper security clearances for the secret intelligence.
Miss Seymour stated that Mr. Tice has "every right" to speak to Congress and that NSA has "no intent to infringe your rights."
However, she stated that the programs Mr. Tice took part in were so secret that "neither the staff nor the members of the [House intelligence committee] or [Senate intelligence committee] are cleared to receive the information covered by the special access programs, or SAPs."
etc.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060111-112622-2876r.htm

 

There have been well documented cases that guns are used in crimes. Therefore shouldn't the government take away all guns? There has been documentation of people illegally abusing prescription drugs therefore government should take away prescription drugs?

Just because there is document proof that there have been enemies of the US in the US doesn't mean that we start doing away with our freedoms. A free society is by no means a safe society since under it we have to tolerate all sorts of risks. That said would you rather be safe or live under a police state?

 

only when they print articles you dont like, right?

 

Or perhaps it's when the President, Rep or Dem, breaks the law. Nothing in the NYTimes article you cite has any mention of broken laws, just worries that there's the potential for such. Now we have not only evidence of the administration breaking the law, we have the President admitting it and we still don't have the whole story on the targets.

By the way, Gore's on CSPAN right now.

 

I wouldn't call those that claim to fight for Iraqi freedoms abroad while defending our loss of freedoms that happened from this NSA activity at home, hyperventilating, but it is certainly hypocritical. I will give you that.

 

Except that this article appears to be a straight up news article and not an editorial. I have no sense if the NYTimes is offended or approves of this program. You argument would have more merit if you could find a NYTimes editorial praising Echelon.

 

That is the times laying out the current situation. It doesn't advocate one side or the other or editorialize.

I found the bold part of your statement to be true, and not taking a side.
Most do believe we need a spy program. = accurate

Many are concerened that it could be abused = accurate

What part of that paraphrasing or the Times actual wording is editorializing?

 

That's not being attributed to the NYTimes and the statement in itself if it is editorializing contradicts itselfs since it states both sides of the argument. Its a general statement.