"How Bad Gonzales Is" Part Two
I should have gone with my first instincts on this. I knew somethng smelled. You guys say I call you liars; no. Rather your sources frequently are.
Dishonest libs strike again:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010084
Key excerpts:
Democrats and former Deputy Attorney General James Comey put on quite a Senate show Tuesday over the National Security Agency's wiretapping program. With New York's Chuck Schumer directing, the players staged a full length docudrama to create the impression that the Bush Administration broke the law in reauthorizing the program to eavesdrop on al Qaeda.
Senate hearings can be boring, so we'll assume the press corps dozed through select parts. That would explain why no one reported on the discussion as Senator Arlen Specter questioned Mr. Comey on how the great covert operation actually went down. News stories have suggested a pattern of White House misdeeds to accomplish an ultimately illegal end. The transcript tells a different story.
...
What's really going on here is a different form of political theater: Democrats are trying to whip up an aura of "illegality" to create the political leverage to strip a Republican President of his surveillance authority in wartime. They've tried to do this since the program was revealed, and back in 2006 Russ Feingold compared it to Watergate. But unfortunately for the Democrats, wiretapping aimed at America's terrorist enemies is politically popular.
So, rather than arguing the legal merits, Democrats are spinning a yarn about shady deeds perpetrated in a hospital room at night. They are using half-truths to achieve a partisan goal that is dangerous policy, and they shouldn't get away with it.
9 comments:
That is such fucking bullshit.
THE PRESIDENT HAS SURVEILLANCE AUTHORITY!
HE JUST HAS TO GO TO A COURT AHEAD OF TIME, OR WITHIN X NUMBER OF HOURS, AND GET IT APPROVED!
The only reason not to go to the FISA court is that you don't think even _their_ rubberstamp will sign off on it.
We could debate this issue but that wasn't the point of the post. The point was yet another manufactured controversy.
It's not a manufactured controversy.
It's the Executive Branch trying to break the law. Generally, people who break the law wind up in jail.
"But unfortunately for the Democrats, wiretapping aimed at America's terrorist enemies is politically popular."
If it _were_ aimed at the terrorists, it would have been a slam dunk for FISA to authorize it, and this wouldn't have been a controversy. This is something they didn't think even their pet court would sign off on, which is why they needed the DoJ, part of the Executive Branch, to provide cover for them.
Connect the dots, Gonzo. This wasn't surveillance of Al-Qaida.
No one broke the law, Garrett.
The Executive's ability to wiretap is, yes, in dispute but a legal challenge AFAIK has not been filed. Some scholars argue that it's illegal, others argue that it's within the power of the Presidency.
If one assumes, and read the word "assume" carefully, that the President broke the law then I grant you this follow a "connect the dots" scenario.
But since that determination has not been made it wasn't an illegal move. Bad political theatre maybe but...
A legal challenge can't be filed, because nobody has standing to do so. They haven't charged anybody under this program.
Actually, whether the president has the right to do what he wants, not go to a FISA court is NOT in dispute. The law was created specifically to prevent the president from doing just that. And as someone here mentioned, if the reasons for wiretapping were legit, the FISA court almost always said ok, even after the fact. There was no *legitimate* reason for Bush to do what he did, even "to protect us from terrorists"!!!! He could do that WITH the warrants.
This "dispute" is kinda like when you say there is still a "dispute" about global warming.
Heh. Looks like I was mistaken about nobody who had standing knowing about it. :-)
This could prove interesting. At the very least it may solidify the line of what can and can't be done.
Post a Comment