Month: December 2005

Don’t let this issue get swept under the rug like every other crime this administration has committed.

Check this out.

For years, Bush (and Cheney) have defended the Patriot Act, by saying that fears are unfounded, because wiretaps would require court orders and warrants.

Bush, on April 19th, 2004: “..Everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example.”

Bush, on the very next day, April 20th, 2004: “Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. (….) Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

Bush, on July 14th, 2004: “A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order. What the Patriot Act said is let’s give our law enforcement the tools necessary, without abridging the Constitution of the United States, the tools necessary to defend America.”

Cheney, at a Kansas City appearance in June 2004, where he said that “all of the investigative tools” under the law “require the approval of a judge before they can be carried out. And similar statutes have been on the book for years, and tested in the courts, and found to be constitutional.”

These were all things that were said while the motherfuckers KNEW that they had ordered surveillance with no warrants, and had done since 2002.

Tell everyone you know. Call your Representatives and Senators. Write to the local newspaper. Don’t let the administration get away with ANOTHER crime, and don’t let the Media help them dodge the issue by re-framing the issue. For example– No questions like “Should the President be allowed unusual authority in the post-9/11 world, or should he give in to political pressure?” Mark my words….this is how it will start being framed. I can see it coming.

Enough is enough.

Yesterday when and I were downtown, I was stopped by a reporter doing “man-on-the-street” interviews. This has happened to me before (and in the same block, too….reporters are apparently lazy, and don’t want to wander too far from the office).

I was hoping to be asked about Bush and spying without a warrant…..but no. I was asked about snow.

But I made it into the paper, and the website.

Fame. It’s a heady cocktail.

Read this article on the Newsweek website.

An excerpt, which gets right down to the crux of the issue that I’ve mentioned previously:

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

And the part that gives me hope:

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

Hell, Congressman John Conyers isn’t even waiting. Go to his website and take a look at the report he just issued, and the call for action.

This situation distills nearly everything that has been going wrong in this country since the administration took over: The paranoia, the secrecy, the slow erosion of our freedom, the arrogance of an administration who believes that they are above the law, and the complicity of the media. It’s like a Greatest Hits collection for Outrage.