SubscribeGEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Host, ABC’s 'This Week': You know, if the president did break the law or circumvent the law, what’s the remedy?
SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER (R., PA): Well, the remedy could be a variety of things. A president — and I’m not suggesting remotely that there’s any basis, but you’re asking, really, theory, what’s the remedy? Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price. [video]
"Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) added his name to the growing list of conservatives who have expressed disapproval of Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, further undermining the right-wing spin that the only critics of the program are liberals. On ABC’s This Week:"GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Host, ABC’s 'This Week': Are you confident that the administration has acted lawfully in this case?
BROWNBACK: I think we need to hold hearings on it and we’re going to. Both in the intelligence committee, there will be closed hearings and then the judiciary committee will have open hearings.
I think we need to look at this case and this issue. I am troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did these on, the legal basis, and I think we need to look at that far more broadly and understand it a great deal.
I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can or cannot do.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think the 9/11 resolution gave the president the authority for this program?
BROWNBACK: It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution." [video]
Can we also be clear that if equilibrium is re-established it isn't re-established magically or by god? Instead, it takes human effort and initiative. It takes people organizing against the disequilibirum.
Republican as well as Democratic members of Congress should support the bipartisan call of the Liberty Coalition for the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the criminal issues raised by warrantless wiretapping of Americans by the President.Did you read the speech?
Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security.
Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed.
Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens.
"But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.and explained why. One, it's been going on for years. Two, it's supposedly a neverending conflict. Three, the technology is at a level never before seen.
There are reasons for concern this time around that conditions may be changing and that the cycle may not repeat itself. "
dios: This would be a rather telling thesis if he wanted to look at the problem in a historical perspective:So, I guess your case woudl be that it's ok until the conflict and turmoil subside.
But in each of these cases, when the conflict and turmoil subsided, the country recovered its equilibrium and absorbed the lessons learned in a recurring cycle of excess and regret.
"In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans' international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy.
...'We'd chase a number, find it's a school teacher with no indication they've ever been involved in international terrorism - case closed,' said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. 'After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.'
...F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips 'would always say that we had information whose source we can't share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative.' He said, 'I would always wonder, what does "suspected' mean?"' [New York Times | January 17, 2006]
"The two lawsuits, which are being filed separately by the American Civil Liberties Union in Federal District Court in Detroit and the Center for Constitutional Rights in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the first major court challenges to the eavesdropping program.Christopher Hitchens and Greenpeace! Who knew?
Both groups are seeking to have the courts order an immediate end to the program, which the groups say is illegal and unconstitutional.
...Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who has written in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Barnett R. Rubin, a scholar at New York University who works in international relations; Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at The American Prospect; the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers; Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country's largest Islamic advocacy group."
KING: Back to former Vice President Gore asking for a special counsel to investigate, would you object to that?So, the President's lawyers tell him it's legal and that makes it so, apparently. That's the nation's top law enforcement officer, a Bush crony who stonewalls. Incidentally, despite the initial reports that Gonzales would be called before Congress to testify, he now says he won't.
GONZALES: Well, I don't know why -- I don't know why there would be a need for a special counsel at this time, Larry, because what I can tell you is that from the very beginning, from its inception this program has been carefully reviewed by the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration and we firmly believe that the president does have the legal authority to authorize electronic surveillance in order to gather up foreign intelligence particularly, Larry, when we're talking about foreign intelligence of the enemy in a time of war.
eustacescrubb: When is Philip K Dick going to write ...When he comes back from the dead?
The Administration's response to my speech illustrates perfectly the need for a special counsel to review the legality of the NSA wiretapping program.
The Attorney General is making a political defense of the President without even addressing the substantive legal questions that have so troubled millions of Americans in both political parties.
There are two problems with the Attorney General's effort to focus attention on the past instead of the present Administration's behavior. First, as others have thoroughly documented, his charges are factually wrong. Both before and after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was amended in 1995, the Clinton/Gore Administration complied fully and completely with the terms of the law.
Second, the Attorney General's attempt to cite a previous administration's activity as precedent for theirs - even though factually wrong - ironically demonstrates another reason why we must be so vigilant about their brazen disregard for the law. If unchecked, their behavior would serve as a precedent to encourage future presidents to claim these same powers, which many legal experts in both parties believe are clearly illegal.
The issue, simply put, is that for more than four years, the executive branch has been wiretapping many thousands of American citizens without warrants in direct contradiction of American law. It is clearly wrong and disrespectful to the American people to allow a close political associate of the president to be in charge of reviewing serious charges against him.
The country needs a full and independent investigation into the facts and legality of the present Administration's program.
"SEAN HANNITY:This is not about domestic spying, because that’s the way it’s being portrayed by people on the left and by the news media…You spin me right round, baby, right round!
MARY MATALIN: …And just using the words 'domestic spying' is how the left frames these debates. I looked this up a couple of weeks ago when this argument first started. There are 104,000 hits on references to signals intelligence, which is what this is, electronic surveillance of terrorists. There was 1.5 million references to domestic spying. People hear, 'Domestic spying.' It’s completely not that.
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posted by squirrel at 10:44 AM on January 16, 2006