For some time, many have alleged that the Patriot Act violated the , which prevents phone companies from handing out personal information. This week, a judge that part of the Patriot Act:
A federal judge yesterday struck down the parts of the recently revised USA Patriot Act that authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to use informal secret demands called national security letters to compel companies to provide customer records.
The law allowed the F.B.I. not only to force communications companies,including telephone and Internet providers, to turn over the recordswithout court authorization, but also to forbid the companies to tellthe customers or anyone else what they had done. Under the law, enactedlast year, the ability of the courts to review challenges to the ban ondisclosures was quite limited.
Last year, the USA Today reports that three phone companies illegally gave out information on their customers to the government. :
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phonecall records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided byAT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of thearrangement told USA TODAY.
With this Administration, no law is considered precedent unless it was made by them.
Evidence right here proves that Alberto Gonzales not only lied to Congress about the Ashcroft hospital visit, but that Gonzales and Andrew Card harassed Ashcroft to the point that he felt threatened and told his security detail to intervene.
Notes written by FBI Director Robert Mueller, recently turned over to Congressional investigators, indicate that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was pressured from his hospital bed by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping program. That part we have known for quite sometime, even though last month Gonzales about it ever happening.
What is particularly interesting about these notes is they show that after the sneaky hospital visit took place, Attorney General Ashcroft ordered his security detail to not let anyone, except family, into his hospital room.
Here are FBI Director from that day:
Wednesday, 3/10/04:
@1920: Called by DAG while at restaurant with wife and daughter. He is at AG's hospital with Goldsmith and Philbin. Tells me Card and J. Gonzales are on the way to hospital to see AG, but that AG is in no condition to see them, much less make decision to authorize continuation of the program. Asks me to come to AG's hospital to witness condition of AG.
@1940: At hospital. Card and J. Gonzales have come and gone. Comey tells me that they saw the AG and were told by the AG that he was in no condition to decide issues, and that Comey was the Acting AG. All matters were to be taken to him, but that he supported the Acting AG's position. The AG then reviewed for them the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told them that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH. Comey asked me to meet briefly with the AG to see his condition. He also asked that I inform the detail that no visitors, other than family, were to be allowed to see the AG without my consent. (I so informed the detail.)
Let me paint this picture as best I can. There are three angles to this internal feud:
President Bush, who was uninformed about the inner struggle within his own Administration to install the warrantless wiretap program.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- all of whom were against the program.
Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card -- all of whom supported warrantless wiretaps.
The program needed to be authorized by Attorney General Ashcroft, who was in following a gallstone emergency. So and Card to pressure a sick Ashcroft from his hospital bed to authorize the program. When heard they were on their way to the hospital, he was furious:
"I was angry," Comey testified. "I thought I just witnessed an effortto take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers ofthe attorney general because they had been transferred to me."
So as we learned from Robert Mueller's notes above, Comey quickly called the FBI Director and told him to get down to the hospital and intervene immediately. It was too late. Although Gonzales and Card did not convince Ashcroft, they certainly did harass him to the point that he eventually decided to give new orders to his security detail.
Of course, following true to form, Alberto Gonzales went under oath last month and that he and Card pressured Ashcroft on that specific program that day. These notes prove otherwise. That is perjury.
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With a straight face, White House Press Secretary tried reasoning to the media that FBI Director Robert Mueller did not the testimony of Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales that in 2004 he did not heavily sedated and bed-ridden then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to go forward with the warrantless eavesdropping program. He said they spoke about something else. However, yesterday in front of that same Senate panel, Robert Mueller said the hospital conversation between Gonzales and Ashcroft did include the topic of the warrantless eavesdropping program. In other words, Gonzales may have lied under oath.
Today, Tony Snow said Gonzales didn't lie under oath, because Gonzales and Ashcroft had different definitions of the phrase 'terrorist surveillance program.' Unbelievable! Here is the video:
In response, reporter Helen Thomas said to Snow, "." You think?
Fine then. The Senate Judiciary Committee should call Robert Mueller back and ask him even more specifically.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) went on the ABC News' show "This Week" and called for to be "more widely" used throughout the country to protect from terrorism:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), the chairman of the Senate Committee onHomeland Security and Governmental Affairs, said Sunday he wants to“more widely†use surveillance cameras across the country.
“The Brits have got something smart going in England, and it was partof why I believe they were able to so quickly apprehend suspects in theterrorist acts over the weekend, and that is they have cameras all overLondon and other of their major cities,†Lieberman said.
“Ithink it’s just common sense to do that here much more widely,†headded. “And of course, we can do it without compromising anybody’s realprivacy.â€
At the very least, Benjamin Franklin would have a problem with that idea. As Franklin once said, "Those who desire to in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
It is one thing to put cameras in Washington D.C., New York and on the border, as well as in commercial areas, but when the government starts blanketing neighborhoods with warrantless surveillance it takes the phrase 'big brother' to an unprecedented level.
Also, it's very difficult to compare England's situation to our own. Leaders over there tend not to abuse their power we ours do. We have an Administration that consistently ignores subpoenas and makes up its own laws. So even if it is legal, you have to ask whether you feel comfortable with our government exercising that power under the current political leadership we have in place?
Patrick Leahy wants pertaining to the White House's warrantless wiretap program:
The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and VicePresident Dick Cheney's office today for documents relating toPresident Bush's controversial eavesdropping program that operatedwarrant-free for five years.
Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy,D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.The four parties have until July 18 to comply, according to a statementby Leahy's office.
So you can't say this is all about Democrats trying to put Cheney under the hot seat. Congress has been trying to get this information for quite some time. Enough is enough.
A from Leahy gets into more detail of what his Judiciary Committee wants:
The subpoenas seek documents related to authorization and reauthorization of the program or programs; the legal analysis or opinions about the surveillance; orders, decisions, or opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) concerning the surveillance; agreements between the Executive Branch and telecommunications or other companies regarding liability for assisting with or participating in the surveillance; and documents concerning the shutting down of an investigation of the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) relating to the surveillance.
, a USA Today blog, says there are no signs the White House will comply. This could prompt a showdown in the courts.
All roads point to Dick Cheney. In 2004, when Alberto Gonzales was to awkwardly argue with hospital-bound John Ashcroft about warrantless wiretaps, Dick Cheney may have been the one it all:
Vice President Dick Cheney told Justice Department officials that he disagreed with their objections to a secret surveillance program during a high-level White House meeting in March 2004, a former senior Justice official told senators yesterday.
The meeting came one day before White House officials tried to get approval for the same program from then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who lay recovering from surgery in a hospital, according to former deputy attorney general James B. Comey.
This was all revealed during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday.
Dick Cheney is a product of the post-Watergate era when officials in the Ford Administration had to work with limited executive power. That really frustrated Cheney. Ever since then, he has been on a to reestablish White House power the way it was under Nixon. So far, he has been quite successful.
is like the of the Blogosphere. Greenwald has from our government and major corporations for theAmerican people, he deserves an "atta-boy". If Alberto Gonzales wasn'tworried before, he should start getting worried. Greenwald and have done it again with a new video and in assisting "us" in getting rid of the lying sack of "unknowledge"
'The President won't fire him--but you can'
Bonus Vid:Jack Kingston owned by Greenwald. Kingston never seems like he knows what hes talking about
President Bush's new bill that has been sent to Congress would amend the -- the law that requires spy agencies to get a warrant from the a before wiretapping anyone inside the United States. The Administration's goal, should the bill pass, is to allow the NSA to spy on our soil without a warrant.
Now let's put aside the fact that the NSA should not be spying on us anyway, since it is their job to conduct foreign surveillance. Also ignore for a minute that the Bush Administration is currently in violation of that '78 law. Those two points are very important. But they are not my number one concern regarding this new bill.
My question is why does the Bush Administration would want to bypass the FISA courts? According to the , the FISA courts sided with the Administration 2,176 times in 2005. And how many warrants did the FISA courts not approve? Only one.
So if the FISA courts rule in the Administration's favor 99.95% of the time, how can Bush sit there and argue that the existing FISA law restrains the intelligence community's ability to keep our country safe?
More than anything, this bill appears to represent an unprecedented excuse to increase Executive power -- coming from a President that campaigned on a platform of smaller government.
In my younger years I considered myself a Republican, I wasn't sure why, butit probably had something to do with my traditional points of view, even though my ways ofthinking were liberal. I suppose the bottom line was Ihad no clue. As I grew older I learned how to understand my views and combine andmold them into what turned out to be mainstream liberal. I'm not easilyconvinced or swayed about everything left, I need to see it, hear it andunderstand it before I hop on any band wagons. That's why when I saw the title , I was taken back a bit and thought another (nutty) conspiracytheory. Then I read it.
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there arecertain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutionalfreedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to betaking them all
I knew Bush did some evil things, andshould be impeached (and flogged), but how are they going to equate Bush toHitler?
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the couptook a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list.In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down:the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residentialareas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press,tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
NowI had to keep reading, I had to see how this British paper was going to tie U.S.policy to that of a military coup in Thailand.
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy -After we were hiton September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weekslater, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that hadlittle chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. Wewere told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "globalwar" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe outcivilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the USaccepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincolndeclared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands ofJapanese-American citizens were interned.
2. Create a gulag - Once you have got everyone scared, the next stepis to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wantedthe American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal"outer space") - where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste - Thugs in America? Groups of angry youngRepublican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workerscounting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you canimagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the nextelection day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election;history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a pollingstation "to restore public order".
4. Set up an internal surveillance system - In 2005 and 2006, whenJames Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret stateprogramme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and followinternational financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans thatthey, too, could be under state scrutiny.
5. Harass citizens' groups - The fifth thing you do is related to stepfour - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a churchin Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, founditself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches thatgot Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, havebeen left alone.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release - In 2004, America'sTransportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list ofpassengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried tofly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peaceactivists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member ofVenezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; andthousands of ordinary US citizens.
7. Target key individuals - Bush supporters in state legislatures inseveral states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fireacademics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants,the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spokeup for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publiclyintimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening tocall for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
8. Control the press - You won't have a shutdown of news in modernAmerica - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and SidneyBlumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false informationthat is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth fromuntruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying.When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands foraccountability bit by bit.
9. Dissent equals treason - Cast dissent as "treason" andcriticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as itelaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expandthe definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, thepublisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush calledthe Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", whileRepublicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, andrightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason"drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that onepenalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution
.10. Suspend the rule of law - The John Warner Defense AuthorizationAct of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This meansthat in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers todeclare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that hehas declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and itscitizens.
Special Thanks to granny for pointing us to this information.
My thought's quickly changed. These steps are much more detailedin the article and can be .
2 other far left conspiracy theories that after seeing the information I was (conservatively) 65% convinced were true. Alex Jones's '' (w/ VIDEO), and Robert Greenwald's Iraq For Sale: ''.
The and bills were passed late yesterday, as most of you certainly know by now. I was thinking about writing a huge piece on it, and exposing what senators were influenced by whom -- and so forth. Although, you've heard all that. All that really needs to be said is that if this doesn't fire our base up for November, then we have a disorder. The fact that moderate Republicans, some of which are in close election battles, could sneak this one past us really is a testament to how radical the Republican Party has become.
With 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan, they should know that this detainee bill will put our soldiers in greater danger. The bill goes to show how disconnected the politicians in Washington are from real soldiers on the ground who are putting their lives on the line every day.
And how about those warrantless wiretaps? They should know that this power will eventually be used to smear political opponents, and has little to do with protecting the nation from terrorism.
Enough said. Want two more years of this? Want two more years of reading blogs like this one complain about the status quo? Or do you want bloggers like myself working hard each day to rally support for progressive bills that our Democratic majority needs passed? The choice is yours. But if you do want change, you have to get involved. You can't leave it to the Washington establishment Democrats to get it done. They have a record of losing, and they are good at doing just that. The grassroots needs to get its game face on, and from now until the election we need to do our part as individuals:
Calling radio shows
Holding up signs on street corners on the weekend
Passing out pins and stickers outside grocery stores
Registering students to vote
E-mailing the editor of your local newspaper
Texting your family and friends on election day, reminding them to get out to the polls
Posting comments on popular non-political blogs
In the end, it's all about people powered democracy. That is the only way we can get this done on November 7th.
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