A little background.

USA-PATRIOT Act
Section 216 of the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act expanded the definition of a pen register to include devices or programs that provide an analogous function with internet communications. Prior to the Patriot Act, it was unclear whether or not the definition of a pen register, which included very specific telephone terminology, could apply to internet communications. Most courts and law enforcement personnel operated under the assumption that it did, however the Clinton administration had begun to work on legislation to make that clear, and one magistrate judge in California did rule that the language was too telephone-specific to apply to internet surveillance.

The Pen Register Statute is a privacy act. As there is no constitutional protection for information divulged to a third party under the Supreme Courts expectation of privacy test, and the routing information for phone and internet communications are divulged to the company providing the communication, the absence or inapplicability of the statute would leave the routing information for those communications completely unprotected from government surveillance.

The government also has an interest in making sure the Pen Register Act exists and applies to internet communications. Without the Act, they cannot compel service providers to give them records or do internet surveillance with their own equipment or software, and the law enforcement agency, which may not have very good technological capabilities, will have to do the surveillance itself at its own cost.

Rather than creating new laws regarding Internet surveillance, the Patriot Act simply expanded the definition of a pen register to include computer software programs doing Internet surveillance. While not completely compatible with the technical definition of a pen register device, this was the interpretation that had been used by almost all courts and law enforcement agencies prior to the change.

Start making prank calls (*67 your number too) to random people with threats to kill them and see how long it takes the cops to knock at your door. Law enforcement has had this ability since well before Bush took office. Why do so many Liberals believe that everything the government does started after Jan. 20, 2001? I don't agree with this policy but it is not new. Sounds to me like the MSM drive to get the Democrats in control of the House is in high gear.

The legitimate complaint is that there are laws in place - and a Constitution - requiring warrants, and this is done without warrants. If there is reason for them to collect this data, let them ask a judge for approval.

Congress specifically forbid "data mining" when they voted to block the Total Information Awareness. This appears to be that program many times over.

As for whether they are listening to the calls - Atty. General Gonzales refused to rule out that possibility when asked directly if they are monitoring domestic-only calls.

Just so everyone understands, this NSA program means they have installed the technical means to monitor domestic calls as they please - without warrants. This infrastructure - routers to send calls to NSA and the lines to get the data there - was not in place before this.

THe ONLY reason to believe they are not monitoring the content of the calls is trust because there is NO legal oversight to make sure they are not - except they refuse to say they are not.

Brian are you seriously this clueless about the law? No one is contesting that these records already exist with the phone companies. But for anyone else to get hold of these records, they need to have a warrant to justify their invasion of your privacy. In the case you pointed out, the police need a warrant to get these records. That's what this is all about. Getting a warrant to eavesdrop by demonstrating probable cause to some kind of a judicial body. Which the government seems to believe doesn't apply to its activities.

So tell me something, Dave: does your blog have a sitemeter? Does it capture who visits, what IP address they came from, the links they clicked and how long they stayed?

Congratulations! You are just as complicit as the NSA for collecting the exact same kinds of information. I'll assume you know how to frogmarch yourself directly to jail. I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings when they laugh at your confession.

As for your "coulda/shoulda/woulda" arguments, any cop on the street could gun you down, and has the technical capability to do so quite easily. He has the technical means, doesn't he?

And yet Old Glory still waves...

What you folks think you know about law--and the illogical leaps you are willing to make to find conspiracy in every corner--is a never-ending source of amusement.

Keep it up.

CY, so you know for a fact that the phone number called, the phone number called from and the time and length of the call are the total of the information being collected?

Because AT&T continue to say "no comment" in response to direct questions concerning whether they are also passing over customer account information, including names, addresses and SSNs. That doesn't mean such information is being handed over in connection with the call information, but it doesn't mean it isn't either.

So, how is it you are absolutely sure that what you describe is the limit of what is being collected and connected?

And a hypothetical question for the record: If this additional information (e.g., name, address, SSN) is also being collected and connected to the calls for the government, are you completely good with that?

Gawker - ok, you're right but the pessimist in me doesn't think that L.E. is as altruistic as you may think. Courts and L.E. care about your privacy? Local L.E. the already has the right to randomly stop people and check them (under the guise of DUI checkpoints and seat belt compliance checks). Will the courts side with L.E. or with Joe Sixpack? If LE gets phone records without a warrant the only way Joe Sixpack can beat them is with a really good lawyer; e.g. Joe needs some deep pockets. I may be clueless about the law but I am not ignorant about how things really work.

Confederate Yankee:

There is a substantial difference between a private citizen with a blog and sitemeter knowing IP addresses and the government collecting all of the phone calls all Americans make (except in Qwest's area of the country) and compiling them in a huge database.

As a private citizen I can hardly use the paltry data I have against you. The government, should it choose to do so, can use the data about my phone calls to discover aspects of my private life, or use that information against me in court.

If the government wishes to do that, it should have suspicion that I have committed a crime, and have to acquire my records via a court order.

That's the way it is supposed to work.

They shouldn't have the info on hand just in case someone in power decides to use it.

Your answer to Dave is completely illogical. You have absolutely no idea what a constitutional democracy is, do you? It's morons like you that will gleeful follow some charismatic leader into a dictatorship. Hopefully there are a few Republicans who still believe in freedom because the likes of you are ready to give it away at the drop of a hat. No wonder core support of Bush is down to 17%, you guys are way out on the fringe.

Confederate,
You posted this in a comment over at Greenwald's blog:

"You are using this same kind of external customer data for commercial gain, while the NSA is collection it to save your life. I don’t think we need to be lawyers to figure out which use is more constitutionally valid."

I responded there as well, but I thought it deserved cross-posting.

No, Confederate, you don't need to be a lawyer to figure out basic elements of the Constitution, but - and you'll forgive my rudeness here, I'm sure, but this sort of thing gets me riled up - you might want to take a basic civics class. 5th grade civics should do it, I think.

The Constitution is fundamentally not about the relations of private citizens to one another - it's about the relations between GOVERNMENT and private citizens. To even bring up the question of your private business practices as a Constitutional question betrays a serious misunderstanding of the Constitution. My god, have you even read the thing?

CY,

Any comment on why Qwest refused to cooperate with this new NSA data mining operation? Per the article, they asked the NSA to run this past FISA and NSA refused. Qwest asked NSA to get a ruling on its legality from DoJ and NSA refused. Qwest's lawyers aren't nearly as sure as you are that this is legal.

And to answer your question, until very recently NO this is absolutely not what we pay the NSA to do. Historically the NSA has not used its eavesdropping powers on Americans. Only recently did George start ordering them to spy on us. Even if it is legal (which I and many others doubt), it is certainly radical and I'm surprised you're so blase about it.

OK, well, not that surprised since I know you reflexively support George in all his foolish endeavors.

Confederate Yankee : Your argument to Dave might hold more water if Dave actually had a privacy policy on his website which stated that he will not collect the ip address of anyone who logs on, which I am guessing he doesn't. Whereas every phone company does have a privacy policy wherein they declare that they will not provide this information to any third party. eg : Cingular says this :

"Under federal law, you have a right, and we have a duty, to protect the confidentiality of information about your telephone usage, the services you buy from us, who you call, and the location of your device on our network when you make a voice call."

"We release personal information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law or in good faith reliance on legal process (e.g., court orders, subpoenas, E911 information, etc.); enforce or apply our customer agreements; initiate, render, bill, and collect for services; protect our rights or property, or protect users of those services and other carriers from fraudulent, abusive, or unlawful use of, or subscription to, such services; facilitate or verify the appropriate calculation of taxes, fees, or other obligations due to a local, state, or federal government; or if we reasonably believe that an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requires disclosure of communications, or justifies disclosure of records, to a governmental entity without delay."

The NSA database does not come under any of these categories, unless the NSA is going to claim, as does the president, that with respect to national security it is entitled to carry out just about any illegal activity without having to answer to anyone.

Nash asked:

CY, so you know for a fact that the phone number called, the phone number called from and the time and length of the call are the total of the information being collected?

Uh, yeah. Customer information databases with personally identifiable information (name, address, billing, SSN) are keep separate from the call database for reasons both practical (size limitations and data table corruption issues) and legal.

As for whether or not "I'm good with" the government having access to my name address, and Social Security number...dude, where do you think I got my SSN? How do you pay my taxes? How do you think mail gets delivered?

"So tell me something, Dave: does your blog have a sitemeter? Does it capture who visits, what IP address they came from, the links they clicked and how long they stayed?
Congratulations! You are just as complicit as the NSA for collecting the exact same kinds of information. I'll assume you know how to frogmarch yourself directly to jail. I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings when they laugh at your confession."

I wasnt aware that Dave's site could monitor and log all traffic on the internet, irregardless of a site policy stating otherwise.

For those in the cheap seats: you have to navigate to a site to be monitored by it. This NSA program requires no such action.

Gawker quoted the privacy policy from Cingular, but completely misses the point of both the NSA program and the Cingular policy: the NSA is not collecting any personal information about you, so they are complying with the law.

The NSA is collecting network traffic data to analyze patterns by mapping flows of node-to-node contacts, and the USA today article states plainly that no FISA court approval is needed for such data mining.

And again, call metrics data is another set of databases residing on separate servers than your personal information.

CY -

We're talking about powers that the government should or should not have. The Constitution was put in place to try to change history - to bring freedom to the public. It was an experiment, and attempt to change the relationship between people and their governments, by defining limits on what governments could do. It was designed the way it was because of the tyranny and corruption that ALWAYS occurred when governments had too much power.

The idea of warrants is oversight. Yes, we want to listen in on terrorists, and for this reason the government has special powers. BUT we LIMIT those special powers by making sure that there are checks and balances over them. And we grant RIGHTS to citizens.

Warrants exist so that an independent judge can look over the reasons the government seeks to violate what would otherwise be the rights of a citizen and agrees that, yes, the government is operating withing the restraints that protect the rights of all citizens. Warrants are a check on the potentially tyrannical power of government.

The idea of limiting this kind of power is the very basis of conservtaism and the ideals of limited government.

President Bush now claims that he, and he alone, has the power to violate any citizen's rights, for any reason that HE deems appropriate. He REFUSES to seek warrants. THIS is what people are objecting to.

There is no judge in the country that would refuse a legitimate warrant to track the conversations of terrorists. So his refusal to ask a judge to look over what he is doing means we really have no choice but to fear that Bush is monitoring calls for some other reason.

For all the idiots who can't tell the difference between "evesdropping/spying" and the program in question, I'll spell it out for you. This program is an effort to look at what daily phone traffic looks like..
-- On an average day, this many calls originate in LA and this is the typical destinations (locations again not people) where those calls go.

This kind of data could be used to tip off that something was about to happen in a certain area and could lead to a narrowing down to specific areas where something bad is about to happen. This is exactly the type of stuff that "marketers" do to determine when it is best to put new things on the market and which markets are best to sell to and at what time.

But of course the conspiracy theorist can twist anything into the work of the mastermind on 9/11, in their mind our President.

"With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

So, with one phone call, they have your name, address, call to, call time. Anyone who doesn't think the NSA can't bring up your DMV record, SSN, taxes, marriage records, etc. with a few mouse clicks from that point is seriously underestimating their(NSA) power.

Bush said that "if al-Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying."

If the NSA is only tracking "network traffic data to analyze patterns by mapping flows of node-to-node contacts" how do they know you're with Al-Queda? By sampling the voice data and looking for key words.

And, he said, "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities."

We'll be sure to tell that to Valerie Plame.

"Every time sensitive intelligence is leaked," he said, "it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy."
Which enemy is that? Iran? Terrorists? U.S Citizen? Democrats? Liberals? Al-Queda?Russia?

As for whether or not "I'm good with" the government having access to my name address, and Social Security number...dude, where do you think I got my SSN? How do you pay my taxes? How do you think mail gets delivered?

So incredibly clever and facile to take my question of whether you favor having the telecom companies carry out the actual LINKING OF OUR PERSONAL DATA WITH OUR PHONE NUMBERS and hand that over to the government and turn that into some "dude, where do you think SSN numbers and mail come from" joke. Oh, touche, CY, very well played. Now that's how laugh-out-loud sarcasm should be done, folks, none of that Colbertesque crap.

But having to endure that juvenile display of humor was worth the certainty of the remainder:

Uh, yeah. Customer information databases with personally identifiable information (name, address, billing, SSN) are keep separate from the call database for reasons both practical (size limitations and data table corruption issues) and legal.

Sez you. Good to have you on record that the telecoms are most certainly not linking any of our personal information to our phone numbers for the government.

This will be a snapshot worth keeping, because there is exactly one this in this life I take on faith alone, and that's not it.

Ya gotta love these:

"...the NSA is not collecting any personal information about you, so they are complying with the law."

and from the article

"Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said."

Well then, why was I ever concerned When have sources ever lied??? When has CY ever been a pawn?

Never, I say. Never!

Warrants are not really the issue here. The NSA is (we are told) mining Pen Register-type data, not the contents of the communications.

What is at issue is 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3123, which requires a court order for obtaining Pen Register or Trap and Trace information.

So the questions are: Is the NSA complying with 18 U.S.C. 3123? If not, is the NSA relying on some other law that exempts them from compliance?

If not, then this looks like a situation (another situation?) where the Bush administration is asserting its right to ignore laws that it finds inconvenient.

Are there any real conservatives out there anymore?
Or have they all thrown away their principles now that the "right" people are in power?

DJ:

First, the original NSA intercept program that got the left all excited was legal under the constitution because the terminus of one call was international. It is as simple as that. No warrant has ever been (or ever will be, short of a constitutional amendment) required to monitor foreign contact.

Second, collecting calling patterns based on phone numbers does not invade any privacy nor require court order. Digging into the personal information of a citizen as a result of domestic calling would require a warrant. Breathless concerns about this being "all" that is collected notwithstanding (accusation does not equal truth), this is the kind of information gathering that a responsible government would perform.

All you and your ilk seek is another bogus issue against Bush to throw around. So knock yourself out; it just looks as dumb and as ill-informed as the rest of the "issues" invented by the left.

Iconoclast confides exactly half of a great truth:

accusation does not equal truth

Nor does assertion, icono, nor does assertion.

here is how the program works..

they are running sophisticated algorithms to identify patterns consistent with ALREADY OBSERVED DATA from captured and processed terrorist cells. We have a tremendous amount of information from terrorist cells that we have broken up as well as from the 9-11 highjackers.
Each individual in the U.S. probably has a unique call pattern or similar boring call pattern. It is much like credit card monitoring for fraudulent activity. The CC companies know your charge patterns and flag your card if something gets charged out of the ordinary. The government is doing the same thing with your calls. If your call pattern is out of the ordinary of seems to look "terroristy" you get flagged for "listening". Now, they can listen without a warrant as long as they notify the FISA court after the fact (which they probably never do). In this case once they did listen in and determine terrorist activity they could actually file good paperwork with FISA. The court would see that the NSA determined that there was probable cause through call patterns to listen in on the calls. Now, whether this is constitutional or not and whether it actually works is a entirely different matter. We know from previous reporting that the FBI was chasing down an enormous amount of bad leads from the NSA, so maybe it was coming from this program.

Now the scary thing about this is that the government is also funding research on call mining software that can

Iconoclast:

You say that collecting this information does not require a court order. That's exactly what I am trying to figure out.

As I mentioned above, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3123 would require a court order in a normal case. If NSA trys to rely on FISA (50 U.S.C. 1842) instead of Title 18, then there is the problem that FISA also requires a court order.

So, why is a court order not required in this case?

Shorter Nash: I have no answers or even intelligent comment, but I'll annoy those who try to have an adult discussion.

Dryheat,

Orrin Kerr agrees with you on the probability of statutory violations such as 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3123 and perhaps FISA, but Al Maviva notes, Pen registers typically apply to live interecepts, not stored data, and neither may even apply.

This of course, leads us all back to where we personally sit in regard to how we interpret Article II powers of the CIC.

Either you think that the President is operating within the bounds ascribed to the Office in the Constitution to collect wartime intelligence, or you don't.

If it does, the inherent Constitutional authority obviously trumps these statutory laws. If he doesn't, the the CIC powers of the Presidency during wartime will be (IMHO) so diminished as to render the office neutered and all but useless, meaning that the 3 branches of government are improperly imbalanced.

BTW, Kerr stated categorically states that this is not a direct constitutional issue. Only the Fourth Amendment is even in the ballpark, and to this, Kerr states:

The Fourth Amendment issues are straightforward. It sounds like the program involves only non-content surveillance, which means that it presumably doesn't implicate the Fourth Amendment under Smith v. Maryland.

I guess I'm not the one who needs to brush up on my consttutional reading, at least not as much as some.

SO IS THIS ANOTHER RED, I MEAN, "BROWN" SCARE? WHEN BUSH POSES HE CAN INTERPRET AND ENFORCE LAWS (AS HE SEES FIT), HE SPITS IN THE TOMB OF THE FOUNDERS.

"First, the original NSA intercept program that got the left all excited was legal under the constitution because the terminus of one call was international. It is as simple as that. No warrant has ever been (or ever will be, short of a constitutional amendment) required to monitor foreign contact."

FISA specifically requires a warrant for this.

It is against our Constitution to monitor any citizen's conversations without a warrant.

CY's style of "adult conversation":

dude, where do you think I got my SSN? How do you pay my taxes? How do you think mail gets delivered?

I am annoying you, CY? Interesting. You have the thinnest of skin.

Of course, everything you do is a dodge to avoid actually addressing the issue of why we should believe you and "sources". As Icono said, my accusation doesn't make a truth and as I added, your assertion doesn't either. So, if "because I said so" is your idea of adult conversation, good luck with that.

Quick question. At what point does collecting data enter invasion of privacy? As a police officer, I would sit and observe traffic. I would often sit and monitor traffic with radar. In some cases, I would be recording the actual speed of every vehicle approaching. Vehicles that were speeding, would have appropriate action taken. Yet, even the law-abiding citizens, would have their speed recorded. Now, what if I also listed their license plate numbers, along with there speed? Have I invaded their privacy?

And speaking of adult conversation

If it does, the inherent Constitutional authority obviously trumps these statutory laws.

is an assumption as tautology made by CY and his ilk but is strongly rebutted by other more qualified constitutional scholars, e.g., Ed Lazarus, and by actual case law, including Youngstown, where the right of Congress to specifically proscribe one of CY's beloved areas of "inherent Constitutional authority" for the President (as CinC in time of war) was upheld by the Supreme Court.

"It is against our Constitution to monitor any citizen's conversations without a warrant."

How does looking at call data patterns fit into this?

MI DB,

If your example stated that, as a police officer, you were to sit and monitor traffic AND record the speed, direction, plate numbers of all cars passing you then it would be a valid comparison.

In reality, this would be similar to monitoring and recording all traffic within your jurisdiction, regardless of whether they consent to it or not.

MI DB: You should know (you said you were a police officer, right? there is little expectation of privacy in a public place.

"It is against our Constitution to monitor any citizen's conversations without a warrant."

How does looking at call data patterns fit into this?

I believe what he meant to do is point out that even in the case of monitoring conversations between Americans here and bad guys overseas, doing so without a warrant was a bright line violation of FISA. By all means, monitor these conversations, but get a warrant for gosh sakes.

And your question about monitoring speeders is very interesting. Knowing how these things usually get parsed, I'd guess the answer would lie along the lines of how much information you collected and how you used it down the line.

Did you keep the speed and the license number in a file somewhere? Did you use it later for some unrelated reason? I don't know the answers, but these might be the sorts of things a court would consider in deciding how far along the road to draw the line.

So, Justin, what you are saying is that the key is the "expectation of privacy"? Okay, I can see that. I find there are two types of folks that are annoyed at all of this NSA stuff.

1) the Anti-Bush folks, who would tell you it was okay for Clinton, but Bush's intent is different.
2) the libertarians who feel that the government has way too much say in (and way too much information about) our private lives.

Personally, if the risk of having the government listen to my boring phone calls, means stopping another 9/11, then I don’t mind. However, I don’t entirely trust the government (regardless of the president) to limit their activity with stopping terrorism.

1) the Anti-Bush folks, who would tell you it was okay for Clinton, but Bush's intent is different.

Intent has nothing to do with it, MI DB. If it is wrong for President Bush, it is wrong for President Clinton. And if it is right for President Bush, then no one can suddenly say it is wrong for President Clinton when she is in office.

So, Bush, Clinton? I don't think it is strictly legal, but if you are going to allow it for the one, you have to allow it for the other.

I agree with Sluggo_f16

Even though this new leak of National Security information by the shadow government in the CIA to the propaganda news helps our enemy(s), as the President stated [if you need to ask who our enemy is I won't waste time to explain], I have never trusted a phone for privacy. I have many times told someone on the phone that I will talk to them in person when discussing a controversial subject. And this new panic isn't even over phone conversations at all, but linking phone patterns. Only a government looking for another attack on our soil or outright defeat in the current war would not do this type of research.

How do you people who panic when the government is trying to put the pieces together of terrorists within our borders - some even AMERICAN CITIZENS - expect to fight this war? Will you even admit that we are in a war? Will you admit that there is a real enemy that wants to destroy us? Will you admit that there are terrorists within our borders, some even citizens, who would gladly conspire to kill as many of us as they can?

Remind me again: What does the FISA Court of Review Say about Presidential power? Ah yes, I remember; they recognize "the President’s inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

Wow. That is just the opposite of most liberal claims. The court says straight up that Bush has that authority. I wonder why we don't hear this discussing In re: Sealed Case?

I wonder what the individual FISA judges would testify to, say, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

FISA and District court Judge Allen Kornblum: "I think — as a magistrate judge, not a district judge — that a president would be remiss in exercising his constitutional authority to say that, "I surrender all of my power to a statute." And, frankly, I doubt that Congress in a statute can take away the president's authority — not his inherent authority but his necessary and — I forget the constitutional — his necessary and proper authority."

How about FISA and District Judge Harold Baker: "Well, I'm going to pass to my colleagues, since I answered before. I don't believe a president would surrender his power, either."

And FISA and District Judge William Stafford: Senator, everyone is bound by the law, but I don't believe, with all due respect, that even an act of Congress can limit the president's power under the necessary and proper clause under the Constitution.

And it's hard for me to go further on the question that you pose, but I would think that (inaudible) power is defined in the Constitution, and while he's bound to obey the law, I don't believe that the law can change that."

It seems to me that according to the Judiciary and the Executive (including the DOJ), President Bush does seem to have that authority. I guess Nash's buddy Ed Lazarus isn't quite the authority that Nash thinks he is.

OK, let me ask it this way:

Why NOT get warrants? What is the objection to oversight?

FISA is a secret court. The judges go through intensive background checks. They have the highest possible security clearances.

So why NOT get the warrants, if everything is on the up-and-up?

MI DB:
1) What Clinton did was not specifically forbidden (you can say he ignored the spirit of the law, and I agree)
2) the government should maitain the necessary information to perform it's duties and enforce laws. If someone want's to disclose more, that's their prerogative (opt-in).

The problem is not what we keep from being disclosed, but to whom. If we can't keep our moral compass through fire, then they were not that solid after all.

CY:

First, the business about Pen Register laws "typically applying to live intercepts" is a red herring. 18 USC 3127 defines pen register as "a device or process which records or decodes dialing, routing, addressing, or signaling information." The key word is "records." Pen Registers are not live in any sense. They just record the information, which is then periodically given to the case agent, or whoever.

Kerr's claim that this is not a direct constitutional issue is correct only if you carefully limit that claim to the Fourth Amendment and ignore the rest of the Constitution. The actual constitutional issue arises when the executive claims that he need not obey a law passed by Congress, not because it doesn't apply to the situation, but because he has some special status that exempts him from the general duty to follow the law.

Although it may seem obvious to you that the president's authority as CIC provides that status, legal scholars are far from unanimous on that point. Actually, from my reading, they seem to tilt against you.

In any event, I believe that this question needs to be decided, and that the Supreme Court is the entity that should make the decision. Do you agree?

CY:

I think you do the good judges an injustice. From the full transcript, it appears that what they were saying was that a statute that limits the executive's power can go too far and be unconstitutional, and that the courts should make that decision.

For example, here's what you quote from Judge Baker:

MR. BAKER: Well, I'm going to pass to my colleague since I answered before. I don't believe a president would surrender his power either. I don't believe that a president would surrender his power.

But here's what follows right after:

SEN. FEINSTEIN: So you don't believe a president would be bound by the rules and regulations of a statute? Is that what you're saying?
MR. BAKER: No, I don't believe that. If a president --
SEN. FEINSTEIN: That's my question.
MR. BAKER: But, no, I thought you were talking about the decision.
SEN. FEINSTEIN: No, I'm talking about FISA, and is a president bound by the rules and regulations of FISA?
MR. BAKER: If it's held constitutionally and it's passed I suppose he is like everyone else, he's under the law too.

Judge Kornblum also emphasizes that it is the court, not the executive, that decides if a statute has in fact gone too far:

MR. KORNBLUM: Senator, I would also reiterate that the president doesn't have a carte blanche, that the courts are the arm of government that determines what the president's constitutional authority is.

So I guess my hope is that this issue will soon get to the Supreme Court in a clear and direct way so that we can have an authorotative decision. Do you think that would be a good thing, or do you thing the president should make this decision himself?

CY:

I think you do the good judges an injustice. From the full transcript, it appears that what they were saying was that a statute that limits the executive's power can go too far and be unconstitutional, and that the courts should make that decision.

For example, here's what you quote from Judge Baker:

MR. BAKER: Well, I'm going to pass to my colleague since I answered before. I don't believe a president would surrender his power either. I don't believe that a president would surrender his power.

But here's what follows right after:

SEN. FEINSTEIN: So you don't believe a president would be bound by the rules and regulations of a statute? Is that what you're saying?
MR. BAKER: No, I don't believe that. If a president --
SEN. FEINSTEIN: That's my question.
MR. BAKER: But, no, I thought you were talking about the decision.
SEN. FEINSTEIN: No, I'm talking about FISA, and is a president bound by the rules and regulations of FISA?
MR. BAKER: If it's held constitutionally and it's passed I suppose he is like everyone else, he's under the law too.

Judge Kornblum also emphasizes that it is the court, not the executive, that decides if a statute has in fact gone too far:

MR. KORNBLUM: Senator, I would also reiterate that the president doesn't have a carte blanche, that the courts are the arm of government that determines what the president's constitutional authority is.

So I guess my hope is that this issue will soon get to the Supreme Court in a clear and direct way so that we can have an authoratative decision. Do you think that would be a good thing, or do you thing the president should make this decision himself?

Also let me point out that Bobby Inman, former head of NSA, says this - and the other intercept program - should not be happening. He also indicates that this is about more than just records.

Why no warrants? What is your reasoning for accepting this? If they are monitoring "terrorists" then why aren't they getting warrants?

Why NOT get warrants? What is the objection to oversight?

I don't know, Dave... because according to what the lawyers in the NSA, DoJ, and White House Counsel's office to them, warrants weren't needed? Obviously, they think they have legal authority here, and I don't know of any adult what wants to play "mother may I?" if they think they don't need to.

So I guess my hope is that this issue will soon get to the Supreme Court in a clear and direct way so that we can have an authoratative decision. Do you think that would be a good thing, or do you thing the president should make this decision himself?

Ideally I’m sure that would make everyone—well at least one side—happy, but I’m not so sue that is a good idea, and I say that

I read one legal scholar (and I’m heading out the door momentarily, so I’ll have to fine the cite later) that said it would be a bad idea, as far as the balance of powers were concerned, to have the judiciary determine who was right in a squabble such as this between the legislative and executive branches, and to a certain extent, I agree. To say that the judiciary has the deciding power in disputes between the other two branches is to invest too much power in the judiciary, making it “more equal” than the other two.

I don’t know what the proper course is, but I know that in my opinion based upon what I’ve read, the Executive’s Article II powers during wartime for foreign intelligence surveillance are primary in this instance. How to find a consensus for or against that that we can agree on? I don’t know.

CY you gotta do better than the old chestnuts of half-truth that people far better than I have long since swatted out of the park in their sleep.

Remind me again: What does the FISA Court of Review Say about Presidential power? Ah yes, I remember; they recognize "the President’s inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

Wow. That is just the opposite of most liberal claims. The court says straight up that Bush has that authority. I wonder why we don't hear this discussing In re: Sealed Case?

Of course, CY seizes on a phrase taken out of context to draw the opposite conclusion of what the finding actually held:

I highlight in bold or italic the parts that are germane to what the actual finding was and also germane to showing what a dishonest horse's patoot CY is:

We reiterate that Truong dealt with a pre-FISA surveillance based on the President’s constitutional responsibility to conduct the foreign affairs of the United States. 629 F.2d at 914. Although Truong suggested the line it drew was a constitutional minimum that would apply to a FISA surveillance, see id. at 914 n.4, it had no occasion to consider the application of the statute carefully. The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. It was incumbent upon the court, therefore, to determine the boundaries of that constitutional authority in the case before it. We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President’s power by providing a mechanism that at least approaches a classic warrant and which therefore supports the government’s contention that FISA searches are constitutionally reasonable.

So, since I actually think CY knows the truth is against him, I will direct my comments now to anyone who actually doesn't understand and thinks what he spewed was the truth:

This 2002 ruling (In re: Sealed Case No. 02-001) notes that Truong is pre-FISA and therefore did not consider FISA, that Truong and related findings say that the President is inherently empowered to authorize warrantless searches and that Truong also says that future laws may permissibly restrict the power. Indeed, the FISA ruling explicitly avoids addressing that key issue. Again:

assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power. The question before us is the reverse, does FISA amplify the President’s power

As excerpted from NYRB 9 Feb 2006:

ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS By Beth Nolan, Curtis Bradley, David Cole, Geoffrey Stone, Harold Hongju Koh, Kathleen M. Sullivan, Laurence H. Tribe, Martin Lederman, Philip B. Heymann, Richard Epstein, Ronald Dworkin, Walter Dellinger, William S. Sessions, William Van Alstyne

The FISA Court of Review [In re: Sealed Case No. 02-001], however, did not hold that FISA was unconstitutional, nor has any other court suggested that FISA's modest regulations constitute an impermissible encroachment on presidential authority. The FISA Court of Review relied upon United States v. Truong Dihn Hung, 629 F.2d 908 (4th Cir. 1980)—but that court did not suggest that the President's powers were beyond congressional control. To the contrary, the Truong court indicated that FISA's restrictions were constitutional. 629 F.2d at 915 n.4 (noting that "the imposition of a warrant requirement, beyond the constitutional minimum described in this opinion, should be left to the intricate balancing performed in the course of the legislative process by Congress and the President")

Once again, In re: Sealed Case No. 02-001 does not say what CY tells you it says.

Nash,

You have been beat to death on this issue on other sites. Why don't your just crawl back under the Troll Bridge and be a good boy....yes that is a good word.....boy.

Since you want to cite court cases - cite one that actually supports your position. Just one case. Betchya can't. Done deal.

And please rationalize to us why ECHELON under Clinton was OK by you and yours, and the current operation is not. It was a true data mining op and was actually done after FISA was passed. So explain it to all of us.

Sheesh....Much ado about a hairdo....

Why is there such an aversion to truth among Bush worshippers? The Stored Communications Act requires the NSA to obtain a court order from the FISA court in order to gather telephone records from phone companies. Clearely, the NSA has refused to do so. It is quite simply, and obviously, illegal. If some of you support the notion that the president should be able to break laws if he sees fit, please just say so, so others can stop wasting their time trying to appeal to your appreciation of law and democracy.

Youngstown, Specter. Youngstown. Youngstown.

I'll type it for you once more time since you had trouble comprehending it in my previous comment:

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer.

I've beat this to death on other sites? Got cites?

ooh, boy. cut to the quick I am by your wit.

-snicker-

I'll let CY respond on the issue of Youngstown, as he has far more insight on that than I.

As a former member of U.S. Intelligence, however, I hasten to add that you, Nash, know absolutely nothing whatsoever about Intelligence collection or processing or analysis.

Specter is 100% correct. You need to crawl back under that rock and gather some sound and reliable information before making accusations about how the NSA works.

I suggest to CY, because of your insults, he should ban your flabby butt from these discussions.

Nash,

You must be referring to Justice Jackson's minority opinion in the case. Note: Minority opinion - even when concurring - does not make Supreme Court Case Law. It was an opinion by one justice. Get over it. The case was about Truman trying to "seize" the steel company when the union threatened to go on strike. The excuse was we were at war and therefore the President had the power to "seize" the company. The court ruled, properly, that the president did not have the authority to do so. But let's look at the opinions:

Justice Black - Writing the Majority Opinion
The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President's military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though "theater of war" be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities.

But more important was this from Justice Jackson:

Justice Jackson - Minority Concurring Opinion
There are indications that the Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander in Chief of the country, its industries and its inhabitants. That military powers of the Commander in Chief were not to supersede representative government of internal affairs seems obvious from the Constitution and from elementary American history.

We should not use this occasion to circumscribe, much less to contract, the lawful role of the President as Commander in Chief. I should indulge the widest latitude of interpretation to sustain his exclusive function to command the instruments of national force, at least when turned against the outside world for the security of our society. But, when it is turned inward, not because of rebellion but because of a lawful economic struggle between industry and labor, it should have no such indulgence.

What's that Nash? Jackson said that the court should not attempt to circumscribe the powers of the president as CIC? Imagine that? All that time invested and ---- poof I make a quote and your argument is gone.

Try again. Maybe you could score one point.

And it wasn't even hard to do. Keep Hope Alive Nash. The precedents in actual case law regarding the President's powers as CIC have ruled on the side of the President's power each and every time. Youngstown didn't deal with those powers.

Sorry, I've been otherwise occupied.

What was it you wanted to discuss about Youngstown, Nash? Specter covered it rahter well, but I would add that:

...Bush is is acting in "Category I", or at the "zenith" of his powers because Congress has authorized him to "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001"?

That was the Jackson concurrence as cited by the Department of Justice--those same ignorant shills that cited that bit of Sealed Cased '02 you would like to dismiss--and recorded by Opino Juris.

Make of it what you will.

This statement has been added to all of my emails: The left wing politicians are trying to kill a program (NSA) that has been effective in preventing terrorists attacks on America for the past 5 1/2 years. Who would have thought that there were that many traitors in the halls of Congress that want to see thousands die in the streets of America 'again'.

You must be referring to Justice Jackson's minority opinion in the case. Note: Minority opinion - even when concurring - does not make Supreme Court Case Law.

That opinion is universally considered the gold standard (even by the administration). It's been entrenched in other majority opinions (such as Hamdi), making it binding.

This statement has been added to all of my emails

Wow. That'll sure start a ruckus on the Trekkie listserv.

jpe,

it is considered the "gold Standard" only by those who think it can be used in this case. Please go back to the books and note just who is citing it this way. What they failed to do was to read all of Justice Jackson's remarks. I included the part from Jackson that was relevant to the CIC powers - note from Justice Jackson's own words - and you glossed over it. SO if you want to believe that a minority concurring opinion sets the "standard" for case law - go right ahead. Rational people know it does not. But if you decide to follow that path you MUST include all of the Justice's opinion - not just selective parts of it. Simple.

Specter, you pretend as if the Jackson minority concurrence were out of the mainstream of opinions of the other 5 justices with whom he was concurring:

In fact, the words of the other five are in many cases even stronger along these same lines: (have you ever read the other opinions in Youngstown?):

Justice Black (writing for the court):

Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. In the framework of our Constitution, the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.

Justice Frankfurter (concurring):

It cannot be contended that the President would have had power to issue this order had Congress explicitly negated such authority in formal legislation.

[You mean, like FISA, Justice Frankfurter?]

Justice Douglas (concurring):

But the emergency did not create power; it merely marked an occasion when power should be exercised. And the fact that it was necessary that measures be taken to keep steel in production does not mean that the President, rather than the Congress, had the constitutional authority to act.

Justice Clark (concurring):

I conclude that, where Congress has laid down specific procedures to deal with the type of crisis confronting the President, he must follow those procedures in meeting the crisis.

[So the President is obligated to follow FISA, a statute whose revision his own people oversaw and which he then signed into law rather than vetoing as unconstitutional, Justice Clark?]

Justice Burton (concurring):

The controlling fact here is that Congress, within its constitutionally delegated power, has prescribed for the President specific procedures, exclusive of seizure, for his use in meeting the present type of emergency. Congress has reserved to itself the right to determine where and when to authorize the seizure of property in meeting such an emergency. Under these circumstances, the President's order of April 8 invaded the jurisdiction of Congress. It violated the essence of the principle of the separation of governmental powers.

Jackson's concurring opinion is famous not because it went further than the other justices--it is famous because of how clearly he laid out the 3-level test and how he incorporated the common portions of the above justices' arguments.

Oh, and Senators Specter and Graham disagree with you, CY, they say this is a low-ebb level 3, not a high water level 1 situation. As to the AUMF argument, let's look at an excerpt from an analysis of this argument by 14 constitutional scholars that was sent to Congress this winter:

The Department of Justice concedes that the NSA program was not authorized by any of the above provisions. It maintains, however, that the program did not violate existing law because Congress implicitly authorized the NSA program when it enacted the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al Qaeda, Pub. L. No. 107-40, 115 Stat. 224 (2001). But the AUMF cannot reasonably be construed to implicitly authorize warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during wartime, where Congress has expressly and specifically addressed that precise question in FISA and limited any such warrantless surveillance to the first fifteen days of war.The DOJ also invokes the President’s inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief to collect “signals intelligence” targeted at the enemy, and maintains that construing FISA to prohibit the President’s actions would raise constitutional questions. But even conceding that the President in his role as Commander in Chief may generally collect signals intelligence on the enemy abroad, Congress indisputably has authority to regulate electronic surveillance within the United States, as it has done in FISA. Where Congress has so regulated, the President can act in contravention of statute only if his authority is exclusive, and not subject to the check of statutory regulation. The DOJ letter pointedly does not make that extraordinary claim.

Nash,

So where are the charges? Where are the people being frogmarched off to jail? Where is the outrage from the democrats? Where are the hearings? Why didn't Rocky complain at the beginning - and don't give me he wasn't allowed to say crap since it looks more and more like he is the one who leaked it to the press. Gone. See you keep quoting parts of the ruling that deal with the Presidential Powers of the Executive Branch which is different from the Presidential Powers dealing with being Commander in Chief. This was a decision about something completely different. See what Jackson (and remember you are the one who said that Jackson's opinion was the controlling one and should be used) said about the President's CIC powers. You completely ignored that - as usual.

Ohhhh....yea....BTW according to an overnight poll from that left-leaning news organization ABC, 63% of Americans think the new NSA program is a good idea. Just keep harping guys....elections are coming. You took big hits in the polls last time you tried to use this. Bigger hits this time. Great Work....Keep it up.

BTW according to an overnight poll from that left-leaning news organization ABC, 63% of Americans think the new NSA program is a good idea. Just keep harping guys

Promise to report back with the numbers for the same question in precisely 4 weeks, Specter?

As happened with the December/January revelations on NSA, my guess is the numbers will flip and settle at a mid-40s plurality against. But do report back in four weeks and tell me if I'm wrong.

No Nash - the numbers on that issue did not change. Americans have supported these measures at a steady rate....sheesh...

That's right, Nash. You had better check your facts a bit more closely.

The number of people supporting the President's decision to launch the terrorist surveillance program - not some mythical domestic wiretapping program fabricated by the main stream media - has remained steady in excess of 60% since it was first brought up in the New York Times last December.

You can expect the same public support for the monitoring of telephone call patterns pertaining to call activities of al Qaeda and other terrorist-related activities.

Just one question...how much crack do you guys smoke in any given hour...because you have truly lost it! - Because liberalism is a persistent growing democracy that will no longer shelter your hatered of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all men, women and children - even if they don't agree with you saintly robes. I mean lets be real hear..The KKK wore gleaming robes of white under the banner of God. - WAKE UP YOU IDIOTS !!!! The house is on fire.

Our house is not on fire, Truth, but the heat from somewhere has melted your brain, it appears. No one here hates anything - especially not life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are, however, disappointed with the leftie whiners who never have solutions to perceived problems or specific alternative courses of action for the overall good of the nation.

You're the one who needs to wake up and stop being so angry and expressing that anger through feeble projections of your own failures and intellectual impotence onto others. Yours is a serious psychological problem, me thinks.

And what's this idiocy about the KKK? Yes, you do have some very, very serious issues.

Truth,

What? Maybe you could come back after you come down and write some coherent thoughts. Sheesh.

Specter gets punked...

Ohhhh....yea....BTW according to an overnight poll from that left-leaning news organization ABC, 63% of Americans think the new NSA program is a good idea.

new Newsweek poll...

A majority of Americans polled, 53 percent, believe that reports that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone records of U.S. citizens since the 9/11 terrorist attacks to create a database of calls goes too far in invading people's privacy, according to the new Newsweek Poll, while 41 percent feel it is a necessary tool to combat terrorism. In light of this news and other actions by the Bush-Cheney administration, 57 percent of Americans say they have gone too far in expanding presidential power, while only 38 percent say they have not.

Ouch, Spedter, that's gotta hurt.

Nany, Nany, Boo, Boo ... My poll is better than your poll. And my dad can beat up on your dad too!

What a flaming idiot!

So what makes the Newsweek poll more valid or comprehensive than the Washington Post-ABC poll? What makes either one of them more valid than the other?

Tell us, Nash, what were the specific poll questions addressed to those polled in either poll? What was the sampling among Democrats, Republicans and Independents? Was it balanced? Prove it.

How would anyone respond to a question if it is worded something like "Do you favor the Bush Administration's Spies at the NSA invading your personal lives by monitoring your personal and private telephone calls?" Duh! Of course not. But that is not how the program works.

I don't expect any polls to be accurate and valid when they are conducted by pollsters who do not themselves know the difference between a terrorist surveillance program and an incorrectly labeled "domestic surveillance program."

Don't tell us that you know how this entire program works. You don't.

Go back now and clean your soiled pants from all the exitement you felt at learning about the Newsweek poll results.

Retired spy,

It is frightening to see the ghost of McCarthy resides deep within your soul. My anger..No not really ..My tolerance for idiot right wing do goodies who fall in line like zombies under a president who’s lies again and again and again while failing to produce results for the people… and is hailed as a hero of worship…absolutely!!

You are so obviously delusional, Truth, that nothing you write makes any sense at all. Please DO cite all those lies you claim that GWB has told to the American people. But don't just cite the details from your own fabrications and the lunacy of the far Left you are embracing. Show DATA and substance and documented FACT - not empty accusations.

Also, please cite all those things the President himself has failed to produce in the form of results.

Now you refer to McCarthy. Last time you spewed your idiocy it was the KKK. What does Joe McCarthy have to do with my soul? You know nothing about my soul. You know nothing about me or anyone else.

What did I or anyone else here write that would be supportive of Joseph McCarthy? What did I or anyone else here write that would be supportive of the KKK?

You are simply a foolish, foolish little man.

Nash,

Newsweak? C'mon. Get real. They could not report their way out of a paper bag. They are still trying to say that Cheney sent Joey boy. Get over it. Elections are coming.......as Congressional dems sink even lower in the polls. Yeeeehhhaaaah. Or as your Looney Leader would say:

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIYEEEEEEEEEEEE" - Howard Dean

Oh my Mr. Spy,

I have never met someone so obtuse. If I need to cite the lies and mismanagment of GWB for you, then you are indeed lost. Maybe you should hire someone to hold a mirror in front of you. In that maneer you could see the shawdows of William Jennings Bryant right after Clearance Darrow exposed his closed mind in the Scopes trial.

If are unable to see that this administration is slowly tearing away the bill of rights under the cover of the NSA. Then you are indeed blind. Sleep well under the eye of Big Brother..but no complaining when he knocks upon your door...and if you continue on your current path of delusions...he will. I know now that you sir sleep secure in the bed of theives who pad their pockets by exchanging blood for oil.

I have the right to point out the faliure of this pitiful administrations record. I cast my vote into this camp in 2000 for I believed the lies. That I will forever regret.

I have no more for secessionist such as you.

Oh by the way - the information you crave is everywhere - including the GOP. Got a lot of rats jumping ship ole boss. All you need to do is read...but then again that might prove a bit of a challange for you.

I didn't think you had the maturity and intellectual wherewithall to engage in a debate with substance and fact. Now I and others are completely convinced.

Ad hominem attacks from the loony Left ... are we to be surprised? Are you a card-carrying member of the KOS Kiddies too?

The KKK, Joseph McCarthy and now William Jennings Brian? You're so exited that you can't even spell common English words properly. You did manage to spell secessionist correctly, but it is not germane to anything discussed here either.

Too bad we don't know your real name, little boy. Yo Momma needs to teach you some of that thar book learnin'.

You are really a pathetic example of the Left. With boneheads like you on their side the next election will be a walk in the park .....

Yes that is correct sir. A walk out of the Bush and into the light of democracy not piracy.

You my small..small child have proven to all of us who laugh at your mud - that the right is always the ironic - in that it is continuously and historically - wrong.

Thank God for Abraham Lincoln he was the only repulican who stood up for the common man. But the facts show that even that was a bit to much for the stigma of your ancestors.

Oh but I'm sure you want me to show you the facts of the breakdown in the Repulican party from Johnson to Bush because you obviously can do no research on your own.

Sad - Sad - very tragic.

As for my mother - If she were alive she would shake her head in disbelief at your lunitic fringe.

Honestly sir you truly are a misguided one and are to be pitied. But in your world of greed there is no compassion for those to be pitied and I have no compassion for fools.

Sincerly apologize for the typos.

1. Bush: "We went into Russia, we said, 'Here's some IMF money,' and it ended up in Viktor Chernomyrdin's pocket and others."
Fact: "Bush appears to have tangled up whispers about possible wrongdoing by Chernomyrdin -- who co-chaired a commission with Gore on U.S.-Russian relations -- with other unrelated allegations concerning the diversion of International Monetary Fund money. While there has been speculation that Chernomyrdin profited from his relationship with Gazprom, a big Russian energy concern, there have been no allegations that he stole IMF money."
2. Bush: "We got one [a hate crime law] in Texas, and guess what? The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They're going to be put to death ... It's going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death....We're happy with our laws on our books."
Fact: "The three were convicted under Texas' capital murder statute...The state has a hate crime statute, but it is vague."
"The original Texas hate-crimes bill, signed into law by Democrat Ann Richards, boosted penalties for crimes motivated by bigotry. As Gore correctly noted, Bush maneuvered to make sure a new hate-crimes law related to the Byrd killing did not make it to his desk. The new bill would have included homosexuals among the groups covered, which would have been anathema to social conservatives in the state." Washington Post, 10/12/00
3. Bush: bragged that in Texas he was signing up children for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) as "fast as any other state."
Fact: "As governor he fought to unsuccessfully to limit access to the program. He would have limited its coverage to children with family incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level, though federal law permitted up to 200 percent. The practical effect of Bush's efforts would have been to exclude 200,000 of the 500,000 possible enrollees." Washington Post, 10/12/00
4. Bush: "He [Gore] is for registration of guns."
Fact: "Gore actually favors licensing for new handgun purchasers but nothing as vast as registering all guns." Salon, 10/12/00
5. Bush: Said he found Gore's tendency to exaggerate "an issue in trying to defend my tax relief package. There was some exaggeration about the numbers" in the first debate.
Fact: "No, there wasn't, and Bush himself acknowledged that the next day on ABC's Good Morning America when Charlie Gibson pinned him on it." Salon, 10/12/00
6. Bush: "I felt during his debate with Senator [Bill] Bradley saying he [Gore] authored the EITC [earned-income tax credit] when it didn't happen."
Fact: "Actually, Gore had claimed to have authored an 'expansion of the earned-income tax credit,' which he did in 1991." Salon, 10/12/00
7. Fact: Gore noted that Texas "ranks 49th out of the 50 states in healthcare in children with healthcare, 49th for women with healthcare and 50th for families with healthcare"
Bush: "You can quote all the numbers you want but I'm telling you we care about our people in Texas. We spent a lot of money to make sure people get healthcare in the state of Texas."
8. Fact: Gore said, "I'm no expert on the Texas procedures, but what my friends there tell me is that the governor opposed a measure put forward by Democrats in the Legislature to expand the number of children that would be covered ... And instead [he] directed the money toward a tax cut, a significant part of which went to wealthy interests."
Bush: "If he's trying to allege I'm a hardhearted person and don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong."

9. Bush: "The three men who murdered James Byrd, guess what's going to happen to them? They'll be put to death. A jury found them guilty."
Fact: Two of the three are being put to death. The other was given life. Bush Watch, 10/12/00
10. Bush: said he favored "equal" rights for gays and lesbians, but not "special" rights.
Fact: "Bush has supported a Texas law that allows the state to take adopted children from gay and lesbian couples to place the kids with straight couples." Salon, 10/12/00.
"Bush supports hate crime protections for other minorities! So Bush doesn't believe that gays should have the same 'special' rights in this regard as blacks, Jews, Wiccans and others. Employment discrimination? Again, Bush supports those rights for other Americans, but not gays. Military service? Bush again supports the right to military service for all qualified people--as long as they don't tell anyone they're gay. Marriage? How on earth is that a special right when every heterosexual in America already has it? But again, Bush thinks it should be out-of-bounds for gays. What else is there? The right to privacy? Nuh-huh. Bush supports a gays-only sodomy law in his own state that criminalizes consensual sex in private between two homosexuals." New Republic, 10/13/00
11. Bush. "We ought to do everything we can to end racial profiling."
Fact: The Texas Department of Public Safety has just this year begun keeping detailed information about the race and sex of all people stopped by its troopers, the sixth year Bush has been in office. Salon, 10/12/00
12. Bush got caught not giving the full story on Texas air pollution laws. He was correct in saying the 1999 utility deregulation bill he signed into law had mandatory emissions standards.
Fact: "What was missing, as Gore's campaign pointed out, was that many more non-utility industrial plants are not mandated to reduce air quality. The issue is an important one because Texas ranks near the bottom in air-quality standards. Bush instead approved a voluntary program allowing grandfathered oil, coal, and other industrial plants to cut down on pollution." Boston Globe, 10/12/00
13. Bush: About the Balkans, "I think it ought to be one of our priorities to work with our European friends to convince them to put troops on the ground."
Fact: "European forces already make up a large majority of the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Kosovo." Washington Post, 10/12/00
14. Bush: "One of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot of places around the world" and cited Haiti as an example.
Fact: "Though approximately 20,000 U.S. troops went to Haiti in 1994, as of late August this year, there were only 109 U.S. troops in Haiti and most were rotating through as part of an exercise." Washington Post, 10/12/00
15. Bush: "I don't think we ought to be selling guns to people who shouldn't have them. That's why I support instant background checks at gun shows. One of the reasons we have an instant background check is so that we instantly know whether or not someone should have a gun or not."
Fact: "Bush overstates the effectiveness of instant background checks for people trying to buy guns ... The Los Angeles Times reported on Oct. 3 that during Bush's term as governor, Texas granted licenses for carrying concealed guns to hundreds of people with criminal records and histories of drug problems, violence or psychological disorders." Washington Post, 10/12/00
"He didn't mention that Texas failed to perform full background checks on 407 people who had prior criminal convictions but were granted concealed handgun licenses under a law he signed in 1995. Of those, 71 had convictions that should have excluded them from having a concealed gun permit, the Texas Department of Public Safety acknowledged." AP, 10/12/00
16. Bush:"Said the number of Texans without health insurance had declined while the number in the United States had risen."
Fact: " A new Census Bureau report says the number of uninsured Americans declined last year for the first time since statistics were kept in 1987. About 42.5 million people, or 15.5 percent of the population, lacked insurance in 1999, compared with 44.2 million, or 16.3 percent, in 1998, the agency reported. Texas ranked next-to-last in the nation last year with 23.3 percent of its residents uninsured. But that was an improvement from 1998, when it ranked 50th at 24.5 percent." AP, 10/12/00

17. Bush: "Some of the scientists, I believe, Mr. Vice President, haven't they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming?"
Fact: "Bush's dismissive comments about global warming could bolster the charge that he and fellow oilman Dick Cheney are in the pocket of the oil industry, which likewise pooh-poohs the issue. [While] there is no consensus about the impact of global warming, ... most scientists agree that humans are contributing to the rising global temperature. 'Most climate experts are certain that global warming is real and that it threatens ecology and human prosperity, and a growing number say it is well under way,' wrote New York Times science writer Andrew Revkin." Salon, 10/13/00
18. Bush: When Jim Lehrer asked Bush if he approved of the U.S. intervention in Lebanon during the Reagan years, Bush answered a quick "yes" and moved on.
Fact: "Lebanon was a disaster in the history of American foreign affairs. Next to Iran-Contra, it was the Reagan administration's greatest overseas fiasco. Quoting from the Encyclopedia of the American Presidency: '[In 1983] Reagan stumbled into a disastrous intervention in the Middle East when he sent U.S. Marines into Lebanon on an ill-defined mission as part of an international peacekeeping force.' In December, according to Reagan biographer Edmund Morris, 'two days before Christmas, a Pentagon commission of inquiry into the Beirut barracks bombing humiliated [Secretary of State] Shultz [who had backed the intervention], and embarrassed Reagan, by concluding that the dead Marines had been victims of a myopic Middle Eastern policy.'" tompaine.com, 10/11/00
19. Bush: "I thought the president made the right decision in joining NATO and bombing Serbia. I supported him when they did so."
Fact: The bombing of Serbia began on March 24, 1999, and Bush did not express even measured support until April 8, 1999 -- nearly two weeks later. Prior to April 8, 1999, every comment by Bush about the bombing was non-committal. Finally, he offered a measured endorsement: "It's important for the United States to be slow to engage the military, but once the military is engaged, it must be engaged with one thing in mind, and that is victory," he said after being pressed by reporters. A Houston Chronicle story documented the Governor's statements on the crisis and reported that "Bush has been widely criticized for being slow to adopt a position on Kosovo and then for making vague statements on the subject." Houston Chronicle, 4/9/99
20. Bush: Discussing International Loans: "And there's some pretty egregious examples recently, one being Russia where we had IMF loans that ended up in the pockets of a lot of powerful people and didn't help the nation."
Fact: Bush's own vice presidential candidate, Dick Cheney, lobbied for U.S.-backed loan to Russia that helped his own company. "Halliburton Co. lobbied for and received $ 292 million in loan guarantees to develop one of the world's largest oil fields in Russia. Cheney said: 'This is exactly the type of project we should be encouraging if Russia is to succeed in reforming its economy ... We at Halliburton appreciate the support of the Export-Import Bank and look forward to beginning work on this important project.." PR Newswire 4/6/2000.
The State Department, armed with a CIA report detailing corruption by Halliburton's Russian partner, invoked a seldom-used prerogative and ordered suspension of the loan. The loan guarantee "ran counter to America's 'national interest," the State Department ruled. New Republic, 8/7/00
21. Bush "There's a lot of talk about trigger locks being on guns sold in the future. I support that."
Fact: When asked in 1999, if he was in support of mandatory safety locks, Bush said, " No, I'm not, I'm for voluntary safety locks on guns." In March of 2000, Bush said he would not push for trigger lock legislation, but would sign it if it passed [Washington Post, 3/3/00;ABC, Good Morning America, 5/10/99]. When Bush was asked, "when two bills were introduced in the Texas legislature to require the sale of child safety locks with newly purchased handguns, and you never addressed the issue with the legislature, and both bills died. If you support it, why did that happen?" Bush said, "Because those bills had no votes in committee." When asked again if he supported the bills, Bush said, "I wasn't even aware of those bills because they never even got out of committee." NBC, Today Show, 5/12/00

22. Bush: "Africa is important and we've got to do a lot of work in Africa to promote democracy and trade." Fact "While Africa may be important, it doesn't fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them," Bush said earlier. When he was asked for his vision of the U.S. national interests, he named every continent except Africa. According to Time magazine, "[Bush] focused exclusively on big ticket issues ... Huge chunks of the globe -- Africa and Latin America, for example -- were not addressed at all." Time, 12/6/99; PBS News Hour, 2/16/00; Toronto Star, 2/16/00
23. Bush: "There's only been one governor ever elected to back-to-back four year terms and that was me."
Fact: The governors who served two consecutive four-year terms (meeting Bush's statement criteria are): Coke R. Stevenson (2 consecutive 4-year terms) August 4, 1941-January 21, 1947. Allan Shivers (2 consecutive four-year terms) July 11, 1949-January 15, 1957. Price Daniel (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 15, 1957-January 15, 1963. John Connally (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 15, 1963-January 21, 1969. Dolph Briscoe (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 16, 1973-January 16, 1979. George W. Bush (2 consecutive four-year terms) January 17, 1995 to present. Source: Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission.
24. Bush: "We spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in the state of Texas."
Fact: The state of Texas came up with less than $1B for this purpose. $3.5 came from local governments, private providers, and charities, $198M from the federal government, and just less than $1B from Texas state agencies. Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

George W. Bush is a liar. He has lied large and small, directly and by omission. His Iraq lies have loomed largest. In the run-up to the invasion, Bush based his case for war on a variety of unfounded claims that extended far beyond his controversial uranium-from-Niger assertion. He maintained that Saddam Hussein possessed "a massive stockpile" of unconventional weapons and was directly "dealing" with Al Qaeda--two suppositions unsupported then (or now) by the available evidence. He said the International Atomic Energy Agency had produced a report in 1998 noting that Iraq was six months from developing a nuclear weapon; no such report existed (and the IAEA had actually reported then that there was no indication Iraq had the ability to produce weapons-grade material). Bush asserted that Iraq was "harboring a terrorist network, headed by a senior Al Qaeda terrorist planner"; US intelligence officials told reporters this terrorist was operating ouside of Al Qaeda control. And two days before launching the war, Bush said, "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Yet former deputy CIA director Richard Kerr, who is conducting a review of the prewar intelligence, has said that intelligence was full of qualifiers and caveats, and based on circumstantial and inferential evidence. That is, it was not no-doubt stuff.

And after the major fighting was done, Bush declared, "We found the weapons of mass destruction." But he could only point to two tractor-trailers that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded were mobile bioweapons labs. Other experts--including the DIA's own engineering experts--disagreed with this finding.
But Bush's truth-defying crusade for war did not mark a shift for him. Throughout his campaign for the presidency and his years in the White House, Bush has mugged the truth in many other areas to advance his agenda. Lying has been one of the essential tools of his presidency. To call the forty-third President of the United States a prevaricator is not an exercise of opinion, not an inflammatory talk-radio device. Rather, it is backed up by an all-too-extensive record of self-serving falsifications. While politicians are often derided as liars, this charge should be particularly stinging for Bush. During the campaign of 2000, he pitched himself as a candidate who could "restore" honor and integrity to an Oval Office stained by the misdeeds and falsehoods of his predecessor. To brand Bush a liar is to negate what he and his supporters declared was his most basic and most important qualification for the job.

Request of documented Bush administration lies submitted by Retired Spy - Facts recovered and submitted by TRUTH.

This is better than Comedy Central.

It is obvious that you have far too much time on your hands. You really need to get a life.

Nevertheless, thanks for the biased and one-sided history lesson.

While you were busy in your hate-filled writings, I was getting a good night's sleep.

And you call others fools?

Someone needs to pull the plug on your fantasy keyboard.

That entire diatribe of useless information on George W. Bush from "Truth" serves to illustrate just one real fact: "Truth" is capable of copying and pasting text from other more dubious sources. That is easy to discern. The writing styles are totally dissimilar.

When comparing the writing styles and sentence structures of all those so-called facts and those rantings actually written by this Truth-person it is obvious that the latter has the intellect of a gnat.

Aside from all that nonsense with that deranged boob who calls himself Truth....

For all you mothers and husbands and wives and sons and daughters of multiple generations ....

Happy Mothers' Day!

Mr. Spy,

Don't be so upset because someone found your home work. What are ya nuts of course I c&p the source work. I mean it was there. I actually thought you would slam me for looking at articles that were not biased on the right.

But I did not expect the added comments because I recovered the work for you. No matter. I submitted you request and you back fired with double speak about me as you have all along. Expected side stepping.

But on one thing I do agree with you and that is your Happy Mother's Day greeting.

I do hope you have a good day with you and yours.

Thanks for the fire and the discussion.

God Bless

Truth

I have chosen four of your statements at random. Let's review:

24. Bush: "We spend $4.7 billion a year on the uninsured in the state of Texas." Fact: The state of Texas came up with less than $1B for this purpose. $3.5 came from local governments, private providers, and charities, $198M from the federal government, and just less than $1B from Texas state agencies. Source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts.

Let's see now - 1+3.5+.2+1=5.7. So you are right. Bush lied - according to your facts he was too low. Your quote you see does not say that the state of Texas as an entity spends $4.7B - it says Texas spends that much. So much for that lie. Get a grip Truth!

Let's try another one:

21. Bush "There's a lot of talk about trigger locks being on guns sold in the future. I support that." Fact: When asked in 1999, if he was in support of mandatory safety locks, Bush said, " No, I'm not, I'm for voluntary safety locks on guns." In March of 2000, Bush said he would not push for trigger lock legislation, but would sign it if it passed [Washington Post, 3/3/00;ABC, Good Morning America, 5/10/99]. When Bush was asked, "when two bills were introduced in the Texas legislature to require the sale of child safety locks with newly purchased handguns, and you never addressed the issue with the legislature, and both bills died. If you support it, why did that happen?" Bush said, "Because those bills had no votes in committee." When asked again if he supported the bills, Bush said, "I wasn't even aware of those bills because they never even got out of committee." NBC, Today Show, 5/12/00

So maybe Truth you could point specifically to what you think is a lie here. Bush says he supports gun locks. He did not say that he supports mandatory locks even though your tried to imply it. He said he would sign legislation if presented to him (as an aside - remember that he does not create the laws). None was presented. Where is the lie?

Let's try another:

14. Bush: "One of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot of places around the world" and cited Haiti as an example. Fact: "Though approximately 20,000 U.S. troops went to Haiti in 1994, as of late August this year, there were only 109 U.S. troops in Haiti and most were rotating through as part of an exercise." Washington Post, 10/12/00

Again I ask - where is the lie here? Are troops stationed all over the world. Yes - that was the truth. Were there some in Haiti? Yes - that was the truth. So why are you trying to imply this was not the truth?

Last one:

Bush based his case for war on a variety of unfounded claims that extended far beyond his controversial uranium-from-Niger assertion. He maintained that Saddam Hussein possessed "a massive stockpile" of unconventional weapons and was directly "dealing" with Al Qaeda--two suppositions unsupported then (or now) by the available evidence.

Try reading the REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ at http://web. mit. edu/simsong/www/iraqreport2-textunder.pdf (remove the spaces in the first part), or the 2002 NIE Key Judgements here.

Truth - you had better become less uninformed if you want to debate with the big kids. Not one of the things you posted was a lie - except in your own mind. But of course you have spent so much time around the KosKiddies that you are blinded to the truth. Too bad. You should change your moniker. More in next post

More for Truth:

I would also encourage you to read up on Operation Desert Fox and the reasons for it.

President Bill Clinton, CNN, December 16, 1998

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Read the rest here.

More For Truth:

Check out this speech and the one in the next post:

Senator Hillary Clinton, Floor of the Senate, October 10, 2002

In 1998, the United States also changed its underlying policy toward Iraq from containment to regime change and began to examine options to effect such a change, including support for Iraqi opposition leaders within the country and abroad.

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

~snip~

Over eleven years have passed since the UN called on Saddam Hussein to rid himself of weapons of mass destruction as a condition of returning to the world community. Time and time again he has frustrated and denied these conditions. This matter cannot be left hanging forever with consequences we would all live to regret. War can yet be avoided, but our responsibility to global security and to the integrity of United Nations resolutions protecting it cannot. I urge the President to spare no effort to secure a clear, unambiguous demand by the United Nations for unlimited inspections.

Find Sen. Clinton's full speechhere

More For Truth:

Heeeeere's Rocky:

Senator Rockefeller, Floor of Senate, October 10, 2002

Mr. President, we are here today to debate one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my 18 years in the Senate. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein is a despicable dictator, a war criminal, a regional menace, and a real and growing threat to the United States. The difficulty of this decision is that while Saddam Hussein represents a threat, each of the options for dealing with him poses serious risks, to America’s servicemembers, to our citizens, and to our role in the world.

~ snip ~

But a new battle against Saddam Hussein, if it comes to that, will be a different and more difficult battle. U.S. victory might be quick and painless -- one hopes so. But it might not. The American people need to know that a war against Saddam will have high costs, including loss of American lives.

~ snip ~

We also have to acknowledge that any military operations against Saddam Hussein pose potential risks to our own homeland, too. Saddam’s government has contact with many international terrorist organizations that likely have cells here in the United States.

~ snip ~

But it is equally clear that doing nothing and preserving the status quo also pose serious risks. Those risks are less visible, and their time frame is less certain. But after a great deal of consultation and soul-searching, I have come to the conclusion that the risks of doing nothing -- for our citizens and for our nation -- are too great to bear.

~ snip ~

There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources -- something that is not that difficult in the current world. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.

When Saddam Hussein obtains nuclear capabilities, the constraints he feels will diminish dramatically, and the risk to America’s homeland, as well as to America’s allies, will increase even more dramatically. Our existing policies to contain or counter Saddam will become irrelevant.

~ snip ~

Americans will return to a situation like that we faced in the Cold War, waking each morning knowing we are at risk from nuclear blackmail by a dictatorship that has declared itself to be our enemy. Only, back then, our communist foes were a rational and predictable bureaucracy; this time, our nuclear foe would be an unpredictable and often irrational individual, a dictator who has demonstrated that he is prepared to violate international law and initiate unprovoked attacks when he feels it serves his purposes to do so.

~ snip ~

But this isn’t just a future threat. Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East.

And he could make those weapons available to many terrorist groups which have contact with his government, and those groups could bring those weapons into the U.S. and unleash a devastating attack against our citizens. I fear that greatly.

We cannot know for certain that Saddam will use the weapons of mass destruction he currently possesses, or that he will use them against us. But we do know Saddam has the capability. Rebuilding that capability has been a higher priority for Saddam than the welfare of his own people -- and he has ill-will toward America.

~ snip ~

The President has rightly called Saddam Hussein’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction a grave and gathering threat to Americans. The global community has tried but failed to address that threat over the past decade. I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the threat posed to America by Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction is so serious that despite the risks -- and we should not minimize the risks -- we must authorize the President to take the necessary steps to deal with that threat. And so I will vote for the Lieberman/McCain resolution.

The rest of Rocky's speech is here.

I know - Bush used the well known "Fitzgerald-Comey" Mind Rays to telepathically control the minds of the Senate and the House. He must be very strong in the "Force". Or is it that based on the intelligence data then, everybody believed what had been reported in the 2002 NIE? Think logically now. Then Get A GRIP!

Truth has been getting a GRIP. That's just the problem. He needs to develop a hands-free logical thought process and not quote the likes of David Corn from meanderings and nonsense found on the pages of The Nation or from his book. Corn is as bad as Al Franken. We all know what a flaming liar Franken is - and that is very well documented.

Thanks for the info, Specter. I could not take it upon myself to present additional arguments. I just needed to refrain from conducting warfare with a totally unarmed opponent.

Let's see if there is more tripe posted by this twit on the KKK, William Jennings Bryant, Joseph McCarthy, secession, greed or any other vacuous and specious arguments of little or no merit.

This guy is delusional ....

Mr. Specter,

Thank you so much for this information. We will indeed review all postings.

Mr. Spy - this was actually a class project dealing with tolarance. Thank you for your comments. They indeed showed that prejudice and hatred are alive and well.

We were hoping that would not be the case. I am sorry you proved us wrong.

They indeed showed that prejudice and hatred are alive and well.

Thank you for admitting your own shortcomings ...

Yes sir I agree. It seems we all have a lot of road to travel.

Again thank you for your time and thoughts.

Maria Mendoza

What it showed Ms. Mendoza, is how educators have lost perspective by teaching that if you want to make somebody castigate you, make a bunch of false and misleading statements, and then blame the reaction on intolerance.

Debate is the art of arguing viewpoints using logic and fact. It is not the attempt to anger others to the point of losing control by stating what you know to be falsehoods.

If you are truly a teacher, and if this truly was a class project, then you should be ashamed of yourself. The reasons are manyfold but begin with the fact that you just taught your students that lying is acceptable. What else have you brainwashed them to think?

I am not a teacher.

This project dealt with observations of how quickly ones position can move across many different thoughts patterns. I began our post with intolerance. The hope was to find someone who would rise to the occasion and through patience and tolerance - lead in the direction of calm correspondence.

Mr. Specter you were our closest fit and we honestly, sincerly and respectfully thank you.

We also found that the fire is just as hot in the camp on the left.

Our conclusion is that there is a strong a divide in this country that seems to be drifting further apart. Red vs. Blue. - We were attempting to find Red - White and Blue.

Again our deepest appreciation.

Final entry.

Social Unrest within the United States.
Project 3

Well - thank you for being honest. I am also glad that you talked about finding the same on both sides. I have seen as much. There is a term called a "troll" when one talks about internet communication. A troll is a person who comes in to a discussion simply to make trouble. Both sides will claim that other people are "trolls". You can usually tell the trolls by those who completely disintegrate into swearing, other vulgarity, and name calling.

I just don't have much to say these days, but so it goes. Today was a total loss. I guess it doesn't bother me.