For the longest time, those advocating the expanded surveillance powers have claimed that these powers have "kept us safe". Instead, as Lichtblau and Risen point out, abuses merely have continued and/or expanded. It's time to force disclosure of any terrorist activities that have occurred with information gained through this massive illegal surveillance. Force these guys to provide even one verifiable example of a legitimate threat defused through illegal means.

In the meantime, we can't let the timing of this leak divert attention from what Holder and Obama do on the torture memos. I'm pulling for release of four memos (three Bradbury 2005 memos and loss of redaction on the Bybee August 1, 2002 memo).

Fuck the democrats. Queue up chomsky on "two factions of the business party" and I'm out.

It should be very interesting to see the kind of self-serving, back peddling comments that will be made by our fearless leaders in Congress today, should anyone bother asking them their views about this NYT story. I hope if anyone sees any of these comments that they will post them here for all of us to ridicule.

And speaking of self-serving comments, did everyone see the interview with Armitage where he said that he hoped he would have had the "courage" to resign if he had known at the time about the Bush administration torture, while at the same time he was calling for no accountability for the torture crimes? It was nauseating.

And in keeping up with my theme today about self-serving comments. Here is a link to my blog piece where I wrote about the interview of Armitage.

http://wwwdemocracity.blogspot.com/2009/04/armitage-against-following-rule-of-law.html

And, once they knew that the Times had learned of and was preparing to write about these abuses, Obama officials claimed in response that the abuses are being corrected and that eavesdropping activities are now in compliance with the safeguards of the law.

Put another way: "We do it until you catch us, then we'll claim it was a mistake and that 'corrective action' is being taken to ensure it never happens again."

Shorter: "Trust us."

Shortest: "FU."

....oh crap, i can't even finish the line. this was exactly what was expected, indeed, it was what was sought. and the BEST face you could put on the passage of this piece of garbage "law" last year was that dems caved merely because of their election-season concerns.

let's get real: the dems are now as complicit if not more so than the reps on the evisceration of our civil liberties, starting with the 4th amendment. (and obama really is no better than a 21st century clinton, formerly known as the best republican president of my lifetime.) the executive will not yield in its accrual of power, which is now essentially unchecked by either the legislative or judicial branches. and the folks running the government are hostage to the military-intelligence complex (sic).

o brave new world of vanishing rights and protections. i'm not sure this was ever as great a country as we remember, but even that pretense is gone.

"Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over...."

"... because we just made all the illegal stuff legal!!!"

Thanks. Thanks loads. Way to 'fix' things up.

Cheers,

[Glenn, from the post]: Imagine that: if you gut even the minimal oversight provisions designed to check presidential eavesdropping abuses, abuses will not (as Democrats and Obama surrogates claimed) decrease, but will actually increase substantially. Who could have guessed?

[...]

(1) The abuses which Risen and Lichtblau report last night are far from comprehensive. These are just isolated slivers that they are able to describe as a result of individuals leaking portions of what they know. Indeed, while the article emphasizes that the abuses are "significant and systemic" and "went beyond the broad legal limits," there are exceedingly few specifics in their story detailing exactly what the abuses were. In other words, most of the information about the NSA's abuses remain concealed. We have learned only a small fraction of what took place.

One might imagine that newer, more permissive laws (such as this) would move at least some of the acts from the "illegal" category to the "legal" one (by moving the line, not changing the acts. And it might even encourage less (currently or newly) illegal acts by giving as wider range of legal options ... as well as being a moral reminder to act properly.

Sad to say, though, it looks like this is the classic case of "give them an inch, they'll take a mile". Which is why civil liberties need to be vigourously defended at all times, particularly when "men of zeal" are around (click sig). Yes, who couldda guessed....

Cheers,

Just watched the Amy Goodman interview live. Timms is a hero, a persecuted one.

The distinction you made between these memos (due to be released in some form today) as "legal documents" instead of "intelligence documents" is a crucial one.

These are legal memos from the DOJ that helped define permissable actions under the laws and treaties of the U.S.

If these memos are kept secret, then America has a set of secret laws to help govern it. If that is the case, we add one more brick in the growing foundation of tyrannical rule.

You can bet that coverage of the issue will be about the political justifications of a decision to redact or withhold, not about the continued erosion of our battered, crumpled piece of paper called the Constitution.

Going to get some tea bags . . . .

Errata regretted.

Of course this is the inevitable result. At the risk of overage,I'm bringing forward part of the last coment I left on the previous thread because a key piece is not being addressed:

I have been chewing over my response to Gen. Taguba and why I reacted to GG's comment about his being great.

I admire and respect what General Taguba has done. I have some personal notion of what it's like to have entire system resources brought to bear in a malicious and retaliatory way against an individual. I also know the double betrayal of having not only the system in which one is invested, fail at the most fundamental level, but to realize that in standing up to it, that one's peers and source of support remain silent and do not move to support or to protect the individual from the retaliation/punishment.

But Gen. Taguba is much like Capt. Sullenberger: both extremely competent and professional at what they do and how they do it. They are not heroic actors.

What is different is that the systems in which they toiled are so fundamentally broken, that when they managed to prevail, it was against barriers which should never have been in place at all. It makes the contrast between professionalism and competence and the failed system so glaring that we mistakenly apply the term, hero.

What must happen is for a large number of people, sufficient to bring significant counter pressure to bear - to directly support people, like Gen. Taguba, Tamm, Siegelman, the wrongly fired attorneys, private sector whistleblowers, etc. with a way to earn an income (almost all are fired and blacklisted and ostracized from their professional peers - they work, if they work at all, in menial jobs unrelated to their areas of professional expertise). That pressure must also be applied collectively to the broken system and actors to hold them publicly and consistently until they provide evidence of fundamental course correction.

It is not all right to read that someone is being threated with imprisonment for writing to the president. It is not all right for JAG officers to be taken off cases simply for advocating for their clients due to the malfeasance of the government. It is not all right for private sector whistleblowers to be made permanently destitute, discredited by those who perpetrated the malfeasance, and to have them be unable to contribute further to their respective professional fields.

But as long as you remain in place and take no action, you, too, are perpetuating this passive support of broken and malicious systems. At some point, you too, will be in the whistle blower's shoes. And unless you act to advocate for others, you, too, will stand alone against the tsunami of resources brought to bear to assure your demise. You will not have been a hero. You will simply have been an ethical actor in a decidedly unethical up is down world.

It is as though living as already dead, and I think the resigned expression on General Taguba's face throughout his presentation and interaction with others, told me to what extent he is standing alone.

I would humbly suggest that actively and collectively protecting whistleblowers so as not to divide and further dilute and diminish the citizenry's power to dissent and to hold officials accountable, is the necessary first step. Rather than gun and ammunition acquisition, this will really protect you by keeping the people who have evinced the highest levels of activism and advocacy in a condition where they are able to continue to do just those things - for all of us.