Letters to the Editor
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copy ed
particularly the high likelihood that the pre-2004 eavesdropping program was even far broarder
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@jojo++ I guess I had Hilary Duff on the brain - sorry
Hillary the president. Hilary not-the-president.
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@e_five
It's not the minority they control that is the problem. It's the moderates along-side them. Hitler had only a third of the Reichstag when the Enabling Act was issued - he got his 2/3 super-majority by expelling the Communists and getting the nice, moderate, middle and upper-class center right to go along with him. Don't know the details of Mussolini's take over, but I bet it was the same acquiescence and active participation by nice, moderate folks to fend off those evil socialists that tipped the balance.
So that 28% won't do anything by themselves. But they keep on talking to their nice, moderate neighbors. They go to parties and drop memes among reasonable people who just want everyone to get along, and not think too hard about the consequences of their alliances. Kind of like how the theocratic 28% has been in bed with libertarians, businessmen and a whole lot of nice quiet cubicle types.
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Lanny Davis Should Spill the Beans
People forget that as part of the Dept. that Lanny recently quit over the White Houses rewriting of a report on what maybe these exact same issues, Lanny has been briefed on the details. Let me repeat that. Lanny Davis ( dino ) has been briefed into the NSA matter. It's time for Lanny to answer some hard questions from Congress and us.
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@Harold
I actually worry more about Hillary than our current Doofus in chief. At the end, I trust in his own incompetence to do him in. I can easily see a number of times that with a bit more intelligence and ambition, he could really have "extended" his presidency.
But Hillary? She's smart and ambitious, and now has had the ground-work laid for her. All the precedents that she couldn't get done on her own, have already been created by our current God-King-Boy. Even Giulian would be ham-strung by a Democratic Congress. But Hillary - she'll keep on pushing it, she's been very careful not to repudiate Bush's precedents, but solely to blame the failures on his incompetence to properly wield those powers.
So, after eight-years of HRC, the following presidency will be a completely different animal. And then a crisis will happen - there's so many on our plate developing over the next decade or so. We'll probably see someone smarter and more ambitious than Bush, with precedents entrenched and expanded over almost two decades.
All your Bush nightmares will then become true.
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Re: L.W.M. @ 2:05 PM
Thank you for that link to Charlie Savage's telling of the tale.
http://boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/16/senate_hears_of_split_over_wiretaps_in_04
Mr. Savage accomplishes what Diane Powe was asking for - - his lede is the threat of mass resignations, not the scene in the hospital room. By leading with the resignation threat, he makes it clear that the story is about major legal and constitutional issues.
The rest of Mr. Savage's story makes it clear, even to (the vast majority of) people who've never heard of the "OLC" that an OLC review is a big deal. A big enough deal to prompt the threat of mass resignations, which in turn was a big enough deal to make the White House hesitate and then change course.
Which leaves us with the conclusion that either
(1) the old (illegal) version of the warrantless surveillance program was essential for national security, but the White House changed course and abandoned the old program anyway,
or (2) the old version of the warrantless surveillance program *wasn't* essential for national security.
Either the White House broke the law without a compelling reason, or they abandoned an essential national security program rather than taking the necessary steps to legalize the program.
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It all ties together II
Just an Observer: "But FBI Director Robert Mueller was a central player in the drama -- he even met personally with President Bush -- and also was one who threatened resignation. This indicates that, whatever was going on before the program was modified, those activities were being conducted by the FBI, not just the NSA."
Of course the FBI has been involved in the domestic version of NSA data mining program, among other illegal activities in order “to keep us safe”. We know that the NSA equipment and software has been installed at many of our domestic communication centers managed by companies like AT&T (and discussed on PBS the other night) These NSA programs do not exist in a vacuum, they require input of search criterion into the various filters (which requires local knowledge) and the results must be analyzed, and follow-up reports and investigations result. Using either the NSA or the FBI creates legal problems, since the NSA is not allowed to do domestic investigations and the FBI is not allowed to investigate without such legal niceties as probable cause, search warrants etc. However, NSA has neither the expertise nor the manpower to do domestic investigations, the FBI does, and for practical reasons, are undoubtedly deeply involved in the NSA equipped domestic spy program.
For instance, if the government is doing key word data analysis on a wide net search of domestic electronic communications, what key words do you put in to filter all of that data with? Well, things like bomb of course, but also more specific criteria are added to the list, the names of a particular mosque perhaps, and perhaps a code name known to be used by a suspected domestic terrorist cell. The more accurate and specific the search criteria, the better (and less overwhelming) the results. Organizations and people already involved with investigating domestic spying would be the logical people to create the input filters and do the follow-up analysis and investigations based on the program’s results. That means FBI, not NSA.
Among the many problems with any program that it is done in secret and extra-legally, it will have fewer rules and procedures open to oversight, and no enforceable requirements for record keeping, which is a situation that just begs for abuse. I was very struck by testimony before congress that there have an estimated 70,000 NSL’s issued, but the FBI claimed they could not produce a list because of poor record keeping. The sheer number of NSL’s, a powerful but usually an illegal instrument for investigation of private information, tells us that, unless there are a lot more terrorists in this country than I had imagined, and judges unwilling to give search warrants when asked, abuse is already rampant.