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TITLE: Safire and Taylor on wiretaps–and my radical wish for 2006
BLOG NAME: Fruits and Votes
William Safire was on Meet the Press today. I did not see it, just like I missed the drop kick (though maybe I will catch both later). Safire is not exactly a fire-breathing radical–or maybe he is (more on that later). I recommend Steven Taylor&…

Brian,

Actually, I have noticed that Bush has repeatedly stated that he has done nothing illegal under FISA. After carefully reading the NYT articles to see what the facts are (as opposed to the various spins people place on them) I think that may be true – the only evidence we have that Bush violated FISA is anonymous claims published by a reporter who, coincidentally, has a book being published this week on this very subject.

In other words, we have nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors on the one hand and Bush’s denials on the other. All attempts to connect dots with Ashcroft or anything else are pure speculation.

and blaze said:
Bush didn’t need the AG’s approval, he only needed a FISA warrant (even retroactively).

blaze, you didn’t actually read the FISA law, did you? It explicitly states that certain kinds of wiretaps only need the AG’s approval they DO NOT NEED A WARRANT.

It’s clear that Comey had it in for the Bush administration — his opinions on NSA surveillance and his decision to appoint Fitzgerald are proof enough of that. He made a cold, calculated decision to get back at the Bush administration, national security be damned.

So, DougJ, you’re basically accusing Comey of doing what the Bush admin has done countless times in the last five years: making a cold, calculated decision to get back at a perceived enemy, national security be damned (see: Paul O’Neill, Eric Shinseki, Richard Clarke, Robert Wilson, Major General John Riggs, Army Spc. Thomas Wilson, Larry Lindsey, Jeffrey Kofman, Jose Bustani, Bunnatine Greenhouse, David Kay, et al).

Never mind that somehow this leak is a threat to national security, but leaking an undercover CIA operative’s name isn’t — despite the boy king’s assurances that he “takes all leaks seriously”. That is, seriously enough to stonewall for two years.

And your expert analysis of the Bush admin’s economic efforts is laughable at best. It took Bush three years to outspend Clinton’s eight. There has been no debt reduction (8.18 TRILLION and counting…), no deficit reduction, no fiscal restraint, no billionaire left behind.

Please, give us a break. You’ve earned your pay for today, Bush shill.

Who’s to say it wasn’t Ashcroft that was the leaker? You obviously have no proof to back up your claims. It seems to me that anybody who would appoint a non-partisan like Fitzgerald (also prosecuting uber-Dem Richard Daly in Chicago), in defiance of the venomous attack-all-enemies/deny-all-wrongdoing atmosphere of BushCo politics is laudable.

And you have a problem with someone who stands up for honesty and accountability. Typical.

In an unrelated note, please- I grow weary of all the right-wingers claiming Barry Goldwater as their patron saint. If Barry Goldwater were alive today, he’d punch Bush in the throat, kick him in his tiny little balls, then spit on him while the coward was curled up on the ground crying. And then maybe kick him once or twice more, for good measure. There’s no way Barry Goldwater would’ve stood for this shameful, treacherous and idiotic behavior in the name of “conservatism”.

No it isn’t. According to the Economic Policy Institute:

Data in the Administration’s own Mid-Session Budget Review indicated that the Bush tax cuts have played a larger role than all other legislation enacted since the start of 2001 in the emergence of the current sizable budget deficit, and that the tax cuts account for the majority of the current deficit.

* The Mid-Session Budget Review, released July 30, 2004, showed that the tax cuts (later increased and extended) accounted for 57 percent of the cost of all legislation enacted since the Bush Administration took office. The tax cuts thus have contributed more to the worsening fiscal picture than all other new government policies combined — more than the sum of the costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on terrorism, increases in homeland security, and all domestic spending increases.

* The Mid-Session Review data also show that the tax cuts account for well over half of the 2004 deficit.

* These findings were consistent with later CBO data. The CBO is non-partisan.

I’ll grant that the effective cost of terrorism is nevertheless underrepresented in Bush’s budgets, since his administration doesn’t bother to include all those costs on budget, asking for supplemental appropriations time and again. Remember when, during the ’04 campaign, Kerry said the cost of the Iraq war would soon hit $200 billion? He was criticized for hyperbole, and yet as of this month the estimated cost for the war will shortly approach HALF A TRILLION.

Now, EVEN GIVEN that the war in Iraq and/or anti-terrorism spending has forced Bush to engage in a spending spree, Bush INSISTS on paying for it by borrowing heavily. Why? Just eliminating tax cuts for the richest one percent of Americans would bring us close to breaking even, but the rich can’t be bothered to pay for this war, so they lay a credit card bill on all our doorsteps and Bush proclaims his fiscal responsibility and yet continues to cut programs that aid the poor, disabled and elderly. For shame.

Finally, even if we were to ignore reality and pretend that Bush’s record deficits are all because of terrorism, that’s to give his administration far more credit than it deserves. Arguably, the money he HAS appropriated to fight terrorism — domestically and in Iraq and Afghanistan — has been wildly misspent. To take just one example, outfits like Halliburton have been cleaning taxpayer pockets while not delivering on their contracts, and yet the Bush administration doesn’t have the gumption to insist on careful accounting and independent audits. BILLIONS of dollars have simply disappeared in Iraq, where the rebuilding effort has lagged badly. Here at home, hamlets in Idaho have received far more anti-terrorism funds per capita than New York City. It’s madness.

If anyone is a RINO, it is the Bush administration gangsters and anyone who chooses their criminality over the principles of a Republican Party that is truly committed to the welfare of the United States.

This is not a political party, it is a cult of personality.

“Does anyone have anything actually relevant to say about the possibility that Bush was actually complying with FISA and that’s why he was trying to get the AG’s approval?”

Bush didn’t need the AG’s approval, he only needed a FISA warrant (even retroactively).

If any permission was requested from Ashcroft, it was Justices’ support in a circumvention of the law and the Constitution. Ashcroft must have been very sick because it actually seems that he stood tall for the principle of law.

You notice the President hasn’t been using this defense? The reason: because it has a lot of flaws. The largest of which is that the attorney general has to certify under oath the following:

A) the electronic surveillance is solely directed at—
(i) the acquisition of the contents of communications transmitted by means of communications used exclusively between or among foreign powers, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title; or
(ii) the acquisition of technical intelligence, other than the spoken communications of individuals, from property or premises under the open and exclusive control of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a)(1), (2), or (3) of this title;
(B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party;

You notice that spoken communication is explicitly excluded. And paragragh B rules out any surveillance of Americans.

Reference this at:
Cornell Law Reference

Service does not make you a patriot. Look at Murtha. Look at Kerry. They served, and even won medals, and now they’re stabbing the president in the back and urging us to cut and run.

Does anyone have anything actually relevant to say about the possibility that Bush was actually complying with FISA and that’s why he was trying to get the AG’s approval?

Irony. Yes, that’s the way to look at it. By gum you’re right, sir. The scales have dropped from my eyes. Irony. Why didn’t I think of that before?

Now we Americans can have 3 communities: the faith based community, recognized by their symptoms of clinical paranoia, the reality based community, marked by large holdings of gold and foreign currency, and the irony based community. You can tell members of the irony based community by their one permanently arched eyebrow. I think they use botox to keep it that way.

I’m one of those fellows with the foreign holdings. What keeps me going is investment property. In Tasmania.

Now to the latest outrage, I believe what we’re seeing is a qualitative change in Bush’s behaviour. We’ve grown so accustomed to Bush lies we’re all having trouble coming to grips with this change. Bush is telling the truth. Caught with an illegal and eminently impeachable offence, something worse than anything Clinton or even Nixon did, Bush has simply said, yeah, I did it, and I’m going to keep doing it, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so buzz off.

There is nothing we can do about it. There is no point in taking a political stand. There is no point in standing up to be counted by anyone or proposing any reaction to this. If you’re reality based, the only thing you can do is to leave the country. While you still can.

The irony based community will no doubt have a good chortle at the expense of we nouveau Tasmanians. In return I vow we’ll raise a glass to your memory – “they are gone, but their sarcastic quips and apathetic skits will live until the last DVD has perished” …

I could have just made a direct comment on the paranoia leaking around the edges (and middle) of your post (foreign masters, China, World War coming, and they will take your children away, too!)

I guess you will next be telling us that the UN white tanks will be coming any day, our Bilderberg masters will declare the New World Order, and the Illuminati will openly rule us all!

Given the obvious depth of your doom and gloom pessimism making like chicken little here, what keeps you going? The knowledge that you have a multi-year supply of beans, dried meat, and ample water supplies and ammunition to hold you out for the years of anarchy, when the cities empty and chaos reigns> Then you and the people’s militia can triumphently exit your shelters, and re-establish a true Republic in Free Montana?

That’s one of the cancers at the core of our culture – everything’s a joke to us. The deaths of millions of innocents, the systematization of torture, our own bankruptcy – haha, oh boy, that is funny, bud. I haven’t laughed so much since I cut my own nuts off with a potato peeler. Hoo! Did I cry!

We got here by making everything a joke, all of us just kids laughing while the school burns down. We chuckleheads have a whole lot of yucks ahead of us, plenty of them in 2006 and a regular laugh riot in the years of deprivation and horror to follow. Ha! Ow! My sides are splitting!

Ours is the first genocide to come with a laugh track.

911 changed everything. Most of those increases are related to defense and national security.

Well, golly, it’s because, just like the FISA law requires, wiretaps that don’t have a warrant must be approved by the AG. Ashcroft apparently had been approving other wiretaps in the past; but changed his mind during 2004 – and according to the NYT,

What is known is that in early 2004, about the time of the hospital visit, the White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against abuses.

So, golly, rather than running roughshod over the FISA law, Bush appears to have followed it – by asking the AG’s approval – and when the AG wouldn’t approve, he suspended the program until modifications were made that passed the AG’s requirements.

Yeah, that sounds like “wiretaps gone wild” all right.