Bush Caves on Warrantless Wiretaps

[Darth Rotor]

I don't see it as my windmill so much as Dick Cheney's and David Addington's. In fact, today, Alberto Gonzales claimed that courts should have no part in decisions on "national security". So yes, I see this as a crucial question which doesn't involve a "conspiracy" so much as a cabal of neocons with contempt for our system of government. And it requires our attention, whether I end up appearing silly or not.

You seem to think that only Cheney/Bush have wrestled with the Congress and the Courts on how the balance of power sways and shifts. I'll suggest this struggle has been going on since Burr and Hamilton got into a duel.

DR

 

[Luke T.]

The

You think? I disagree. The NSA suit is a request for injunctive relief. If the US goes into court and avers that the program is dead, then the case seems moot to me. What would the plaintiffs need beyond that?

If I am going to cut down a tree in both our yards, you sue for an injunction, I lose and appeal (not sure if I could appeal a case like that, though), then I walk into court and tell the judge I won't cut down the tree, wouldn't my appeal be thrown out?

Sounds like you are thinking of the ACLU case. I am talking about the Oregon Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation case, although I don't know where it currently sits and if it will go all the way or has stalled.

 

[Luke T.]

The State Secrets Privilege: Selected Case Files

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

That would be a travesty, of course, because I really think we need to bring this question to a conclusion. We need to decide as a country whether or not we have a king, and to me it's obvious what Bush though the answer to that question was likely to be.

If Bush thought he was a king, he would have pulled an Andrew Jackson and told the courts who ruled the program unconstitutional to go to hell. Obviously, he didn't do that, he is abiding by the court's ruling, and as far as I can tell, has dropped his appeal. It's not like this is the first time a President has had an action or law declared unconstitutional. It happened to Lincoln (his suspension of habeus corpus), Clinton (line item veto), and FDR (several times, including the National Recovery Act), amongst others. That's what the judicial review process is for.

Well, I have to admit that I'm a little more than peeved at this tactic by Bush. They break the law, lose in court, lose the Congress, and then try to weasel out before this question can be settled in the courts.

Before what is settled by the courts? A Federal Court in Detroit ruled the program unconstitutional. The Bush Administration was going to appeal the decision, but as far as I can tell, he isn't now. I agree it renders the NSA suit moot, but that strikes me as completely irrelevent, since the current ruling is that the program is unconstitutional anyway. For all practical purposes, the case is decided.

Edit: For clarity's sake, I was referring to the ACLU case, not the case Luke T. cited below.

 

[Luke T.]

The Al-Haramain case is in that last link. Looks like it is still going. The government's case to dismiss was denied:

The government’s Motion to Dismiss or, in the Alternative, for Summary Judgment (#58) is denied, but the government has leave to renew its Motion for Summary Judgment. The government’s Motion to Prevent Plaintiffs’ Access to the Sealed Classified Document (#39) is
granted. Plaintiffs’ Motion for Order Compelling Discovery (#35) is denied with leave to renew.
Oregonian Publishing Company’s Motion to Intervene was previously granted, but its Motion to
Unseal Records (#7) is denied.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated this 7th day of September, 2006.
/s/ Garr M. King
Garr M. King
United States District Judge

 

[Luke T.]

Also in that last thing I linked is a class-action lawsuit against AT&T for giving phone records to the government. "Hepting v. AT&T, A Class Action Lawsuit Alleging Complicity in Illegal Domestic Surveillance"

I believe there is a similar one against Verizon.

 

[Unabogie]

i

You seem to think that only Cheney/Bush have wrestled with the Congress and the Courts on how the balance of power sways and shifts. I'll suggest this struggle has been going on since Burr and Hamilton got into a duel.

DR

I certainly don't think it's a new issue. Richard Nixon claimed similar powers when he famously opined that "when the President does it, it means it's not illegal". That seems to have been a defining moment for Dick Cheney, and he's been a driving force behind the current push to rectify what he thinks is a diminution of executive power.

However, I can't think of a situation where a president had such a perfect storm of complicity in usurping so much power. After 911, both parties in Congress were willing to grant Bush practically any powers he asked for. And yet at the same tie as Bush was pushing through legislation to strengthen FISA, he was ordering the NSA to ignore it. The news media was reluctant to challenge Bush on anything, and indeed the NYT sat on this story for over a year before releasing it. The Congress was in lockstep behind Bush and refused to hold any meaningful hearings or to force the issue, so we ended up with a situation where a President was asserting absolute, unchecked power and no one was fighting him on it,

Flash forward a couple of years, and we now have that same question unanswered. Can the President ignore a law if he doesn't like it? If so, what are the limits, and if not, what are the consequences?

Without that question answered in regards to this President, we're left on shaky ground as a country.

 

[Pardalis]

Bush caved? What kind of a dictator is he?

 

[Darth Rotor]

i

I certainly don't think it's a new issue. Richard Nixon claimed similar powers when he famously opined that "when the President does it, it means it's not illegal". That seems to have been a defining moment for Dick Cheney, and he's been a driving force behind the current push to rectify what he thinks is a diminution of executive power.

However, I can't think of a situation where a president had such a perfect storm of complicity in usurping so much power. After 911, both parties in Congress were willing to grant Bush practically any powers he asked for. And yet at the same tie as Bush was pushing through legislation to strengthen FISA, he was ordering the NSA to ignore it. The news media was reluctant to challenge Bush on anything, and indeed the NYT sat on this story for over a year before releasing it. The Congress was in lockstep behind Bush and refused to hold any meaningful hearings or to force the issue, so we ended up with a situation where a President was asserting absolute, unchecked power and no one was fighting him on it,

Flash forward a couple of years, and we now have that same question unanswered. Can the President ignore a law if he doesn't like it? If so, what are the limits, and if not, what are the consequences?

Without that question answered in regards to this President, we're left on shaky ground as a country.

Does it occur to you that the root of this "problem" is that both houses of Congress were of the President's party? Funny, FDR enjoyed that, as did Lincoln when he suspended habeus corpus. (I don't recall the balance when Jackson was Pres, per RubberChicken's post.)

See a pattern?

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution for fifty, Alex, where the House and President were Democrat. (I forget where the Senate fell out in 64)

ETA: another good example of the system working was the challenge to Iran Contra.

DR

 

[Unabogie]

Before what is settled by the courts? A Federal Court in Detroit ruled the program unconstitutional. The Bush Administration was going to appeal the decision, but as far as I can tell, he isn't now. I agree it renders the NSA suit moot, but that strikes me as completely irrelevent, since the current ruling is that the program is unconstitutional anyway. For all practical purposes, the case is decided.

Edit: For clarity's sake, I was referring to the ACLU case, not the case Luke T. cited below.

Sorry if I was unclear. This particular issue will have been decided if Bush does withdraw his appeal, but I'm sure you agree that if this had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, then the larger issue of executive power would likely have been the central focus.

If the case is declared moot, then that question remains unanswered. If that question were decided (again, since it's already been answered during Watergate) then you'd see a range of consequences ranging from warrantless mail opening, wiretapping, habeas corpus, signing statements, etc.

 

[Ziggurat]

I was responding to an affirmative statement that you made, wherein you claimed:

"That's something the administration has not claimed, and has in fact made explicit that they do not believe was the case."

I provided a quote where Bush did exactly what I said he did: made explicit that there was no connection. So I backed up my claim. Now you want to change your claim from Bush stating there was a connection to Bush implying there was a connection. Well, it's not going to fly: that is a different claim, one that (given your bait-and-switch) I'm not interested in debating you about. You were simply wrong, and you don't have the guts to face it.

They did this so often and with such regularity that at the time of our invasion, 70% of the public thought Iraq was behind 911,

Why am I not surprised you can't get your facts straight? This is not actually what the poll you refer to indicated. The poll showed that 69% of respondants thought that it was at least likely that Saddam was involved. Rounding off 69% to 70% is fine, but you are wrong about what that percentage indicates. The percentage of people who thought he WAS involved, and not just likely, would be lower than 69%. Once again, you substitute one claim for another, perhaps because you think I won't notice if they have some similarity.

Furthermore, you have demonstrated no causal link, and there's no data to support that either. A Time/CNN poll on 9/13/2001, before the administration even started talking about Iraq, showed that 78% of respondants suspected Iraq of being involved. Every indication is that this was a spontaneous suspicion, born of commonly-known enmity between Saddam and the US, and that this belief DECREASED over time, including over the time period Bush was supposedly making all these insinuations.

But if your contention is that Bush was "making it explicit that they didn't believe it to be the case," then you're not engaging in lazy thinking, you're engaging in revisionism.

I showed you an example of him making that explicit. You ignored it. That's not revisionism on my part, that's willful blindness on yours.

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

Sorry if I was unclear. This particular issue will have been decided if Bush does withdraw his appeal, but I'm sure you agree that if this had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, then the larger issue of executive power would likely have been the central focus.

If the case is declared moot, then that question remains unanswered. If that question were decided (again, since it's already been answered during Watergate) then you'd see a range of consequences ranging from warrantless mail opening, wiretapping, habeas corpus, signing statements, etc.

I don't agree that this case would suddenly decide huge issues regarding executive power and the Unitary Executive Theory. I think it would be similar to the Hamdan Case -- it would have some implications regarding the power of the President, but it wouldn't be a sweeping ruling changing or defining the President's powers vis a vis the laws passed by Congress, etc. The Supreme Court could have just as easily done that during Hamdan, but they didn't, and I don't see any reason to think they would do it here. We could debate this point more, but at this point the situation is hypothetical, so I'm not sure it is worth going into more deeply. I just don't see that even this case is going to necessarily be the definitive answer you are looking for.

 

[Tony]

AP reports

"As a result of these orders, any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court"

IMO, this is just more evidence that this program, one that was called "vital" and "legal", was clearly neither.

My prediction is that Bush is reacting to the new Senate's upcoming hearings or the upcoming appeal on Judge Taylor's finding that Bush violated the law and the Constitution, and the next step is that Bush will argue that the point is moot (just like in the Padilla case) and that neither Congress nor the courts can make any final ruling on what Bush did.

That would be a travesty, of course, because I really think we need to bring this question to a conclusion. We need to decide as a country whether or not we have a king, and to me it's obvious what Bush though the answer to that question was likely to be.

Question to the righties who accused critics of Bush's warrantless spying of being traitors, does this action put us all in grave danger, as Bush's apologists claimed before?

Why does Bush hate america?

 

[Unabogie]

I showed you an example of him making that explicit. You ignored it. That's not revisionism on my part, that's willful blindness on yours.

They simply played a game where they would make statement after statement where people in the Cabinet would make claims like "there's no doubt Saddam is an ally of Al Qaeda", then make infrequent and contradictory statements claiming they don't have any evidence of that.

They fed false information to Judith Miller, then referenced her articles and used them as evidence. The result is that people can point to the contradictory statements and claim the larger PR offensive was not undertaken. We see the same tactic in the "did Bush claim Iraq had WMD", and when you look at the statements, they're all carefully parsed to preclude a charge of outright lying.

Yet any rational person agrees that they left the impression they were sure of WMD's in Iraq, just as any rational person understands they conflated Iraq and 911 and left the impression Iraq was involved.

Sorry, but I don't find your argument persuasive.

P.S. In 2005, two years after we invaded Iraq, 47% of respondents still said they thought Iraq had a hand in 911

• 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
• 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
• 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

 

[Darth Rotor]

Why does Bush hate america?

Because it hasn't merged with Mexico and Canada yet.

DR

 

[Ziggurat]

They simply played a game where they would make statement after statement where people in the Cabinet would make claims like "there's no doubt Saddam is an ally of Al Qaeda",

Which, as I've said and you keep trying to ignore, is a DIFFERENT claim than the claim that Saddam was involved in 9/11. Stop trying to blame me for the fact that you cannot distinguish between two logically different propositions.

Sorry, but I don't find your argument persuasive.

You've demonstrated an incapacity to grasp what I'm arguing in the first place, so why should that surprise me? Hell, you can't even keep track of what your OWN argument is.

P.S. In 2005, two years after we invaded Iraq, 47% of respondents still said they thought Iraq had a hand in 911

As I said: the percentage has been going down fairly steadily over time since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when most people reached a conclusion WITHOUT input from the administration. Thank you for backing up my point.

And you left out this rather telling quote before those last statistics:
"More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president" (emphasis mine)

Why'd you drop it? Oh yeah, because it contradicts the point you were trying to make. Hmmm... maybe people make up their minds based upon information from sources other than the president or the administration. You certainly have, haven't you?