easyt65 said:
I asssume you have a link to back up your accusation that he was lying about his LEGAL Classified program that the liberals exposed - a crime, thereby eliminating one of our tools to make this country safe from the perpetrators of 9/11, the program Feingold tried to submit legislation over calling for the President's CENSURE for conducting a LEGAL program?
The program is illegal.
On August 17, 2006, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled on a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of journalists, scholars, and lawyers. She ruled that the program was unconstitutional and imposed an injunction on the program.[25]
Every federal appellate court to rule on the question in other cases has affirmed the President’s authority to conduct signals intelligence programs, but only in regard to foreign and not domestic communications. On the other hand, FISA explicitly covers "electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence information" performed within the United States, and there is no court decision supporting the theory that the President's constitutional authority allows him to override statutory law. This was emphasized by fourteen constitutional law scholars, including the dean of Yale Law School and the former deans of Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School:
"The argument that conduct undertaken by the Commander in Chief that has some relevance to 'engaging the enemy' is immune from congressional regulation finds no support in, and is directly contradicted by, both case law and historical precedent. Every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute. No precedent holds that the President, when acting as Commander in Chief, is free to disregard an Act of Congress, much less a criminal statute enacted by Congress, that was designed specifically to restrain the President as such." (Emphasis in original.)[27]
The American Bar Association, the Congressional Research Service, former Congressional representative of New York Elizabeth Holtzman, former White House Counsel John Dean, and lawyer/author Jennifer van Bergen have also criticized the administration's justification for conducting electronic surveillance within the US without first obtaining warrants as contrary to current U.S. law. [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] President Bush's former Assistant Deputy Attorney General for national security issues, David Kris, and five former FISC judges, one of whom resigned in protest, have also voiced their doubts as to the legality of a program bypassing FISA [34]
I would be interested in reading the piece. Maybe it will even have in it the reason we did not bring the individual who exposed the classified program up on charges. Why is that anyway?
Freedom of the press. First Ammendment of the United States Constitution.
This program was classified yet exposed in an attempt to score a political/partisan hit on Bush and thus gain more support/votes; yet, no charges were filed against the person who broke the law in exposing it.
The program was illegal to begin with. The press have the right to expose government corruption, according to our constitution.
There is nothing partisan about exposing an illegal program to the public.
The program regarding terrorists funding and bank records/transactions was a classified program, too, yet it was also exposed in an attempt to score a political/partisan hit on Bush and thus gain more support/votes. Once again, no charges were filed against the person who broke the law in exposing it.
While talking tough on terrorism these days, the truth - it seems - is they are more concerned with attacking the people who are fighting the terrorists/who are trying to protect this country while simultaneously trying to get their power back.:roll:
1. It doesn't matter whether Bush lied or not, you don't care. You support him no matter what because you are a sheep.
2. The program is by all accounts illegal. FISA makes it clear that this program is illegal. A judge has already ruled that this program is illegal. There is no legal precadent
in the history of this nation which states the president does not have to follow statutory law. All FISA judges have deemed this program to be illegal.
3. The program was completely unnecessary. FISA warrants may be obtained after the fact, and are rarely ever turned down. The administration is making a false statement when it says it had trouble obtaining warrants.
Through the end of 2004, 18,761 warrants were granted,
while just five were rejected (many sources say four). Fewer than 200 requests had to be modified before being accepted, almost all of them in 2003 and 2004. The four known rejected requests were all from 2003, and all four were partially granted after being resubmitted for reconsideration by the government. Of the requests that had to be modified, few if any were before the year 2000.
On May 17, 2002, the court rebuffed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, releasing an opinion that alleged that FBI and Justice Department officials had "supplied erroneous information to the court in more than 75 applications for search warrants and wiretaps, including one signed by then-FBI Director Louis J. Freeh".[3]
On December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that the Bush administration had been conducting surveillance against U.S. citizens without the knowledge of the FISC since 2002.[4] On December 20, 2005, Judge James Robertson resigned his position with the FISC, apparently in protest of the secret surveillance.[5] The government's apparent circumvention of the FISC may also be related to the increase in court-ordered modifications to warrant requests.
Because of the sensitive nature of its business, the FISC is a "secret court": its hearings are closed to the public, and, while records of the proceedings are kept, those records are also not available to the public. (Copies of those records with classified information redacted can and have been made public.) Due to the classified nature of its proceedings, only government attorneys are usually permitted to appear before the FISC. Due to the nature of the matters heard before it,
FISC hearings may need to take place at any time of day or night, weekdays or weekends; thus, at least one judge must be "on call" at all times to hear evidence and decide whether or not to issue a warrant.
So the administration is full of ****. There is no problem obtaining warrants from FISA so long as they have some kind of evidence to support their claims. What the administration did is say "well we don't want to follow the law, so we're not going to," instead of going to congress and asking them to pass a law making his actions
legal.
