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You Ready for This? (pg. 2)
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| MisterOpus1 |
Well since our dear Q5 gave us a short ride down that tangential road, I hope we can stear things back on track. Froomkin's press briefing is pretty good today. Some choice quotes:
| quote: | Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, who voted for Bush in both Presidential elections, and who served as associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan Justice Department, said that Addington and other Presidential legal advisers had ’staked out powers that are a universe beyond any other Administration. This President has made claims that are really quite alarming. He’s said that there are no restraints on his ability, as he sees it, to collect intelligence, to open mail, to commit torture, and to use electronic surveillance. If you used the President’s reasoning, you could shut down Congress for leaking too much. His war powers allow him to declare anyone an illegal combatant. All the world’s a battlefield — according to this view, he could kill someone in Lafayette Park if he wants! It’s got the sense of Louis XIV: ‘I am the State.’ (from a New Yorker piece not yet available online)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...5041100879.html |
Why does Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist who worked for the Reagan administration who voted for Bush twice turn on his country and hate America so much?
And if you haven't noticed, Bush is really in a tiff along with his Right Wing echo chamber about the NYTimes printing off more of their highly questionable without the proper oversight. Hey, didn't the Wall Street Journal also print this sucker out too? Oh well, it's always the fault of the NYTimes I guess. Anyway:
| quote: | As far as I can tell, all these disclosures do is alert the American public to the fact that all this stuff is going on without the requisite oversight, checks and balances.
How does it possibly matter to a terrorist whether the government got a court order or not? Or whether Congress was able to exercise any oversight? The White House won’t say. In fact, it can’t say.
By contrast, it does matter to us.
This column has documented, again and again , that when faced with a potentially damaging political problem, White House strategist Karl Rove’s response is not to defend, but to attack.
The potentially damaging political problem here is that the evidence continues to grow that the Bush White House’s exercise of unchecked authority in the war on terror poses a serious threat to American civil liberties and privacy rights. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that an American president used the mechanisms of national security to spy on his political enemies.
The sum total of the administration’s defense against this charge appears to be: Trust us. Trust that we’re only spying on terrorists, and not anyone else.
But what if the trust isn’t there? And what if they’re breaking the law?
That’s why it’s better to attack. It makes for great soundbites. It motivates the base. And perhaps most significantly, it takes attention away from Bush’s own behavior. |
Trust us, like the wonderful authoritarian figure we are that puts a roof over your head and tucks you in at night. Nevermind that I beat the living out of your mother, occasionally in my drunken stupor I beat the living out of you, I damage the house, I've tanked nearly all companies that have employed me, I other women at random, and none of the ing bills are ever paid. Oh, and on occasion, I tend to stretch the truth so it fits my version of events, and I don't give a flying if it fits yours.
So trust me and shut the up you little . |
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| occrider |
Well the secret as to why bush never fights to veto a bill has come to light. He simply ignores the laws he signs by using special signing statements ...
As can be expected, some unpatriotic republican members of congress are upset.
| quote: |
Bush ignores laws he inks, vexing Congress By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 52 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday defended President Bush's frequent use of special statements that claim authority to limit the effects of bills he signs, saying the statements help him uphold the Constitution and defend national security.
Senators weren't so sure.
"It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," said Arlen Specter, a Republican whose Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the issue. "There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview."
At the White House, Press Secretary Tony Snow said, "There's this notion that the president is committing acts of civil disobedience, and he's not. It's important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions."
The bill-signing statements say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds. Some 110 statements have challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.
Snow said presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton have issued such statements.
"The president has done the same thing that his predecessors have," he told reporters. "Presidents generally had the same concerns about defending the presidential prerogatives when it comes to national security."
In addition to Specter's objections, Democrats called the signing statements an example of the administration trying to expand executive power.
"I believe that this new use of signing statements is a means to undermine and weaken the law," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) of California. "If the president is going to have the power to nullify all or part of a statute, it should only be through veto authority that the president has authorized and can reject — rather than through a unilateral action taken outside the structures of our democracy."
Defending Bush, a Justice Department lawyer said the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks had made it prudent for the president to protect his powers with signing statements more than did his predecessors.
"Even if there is modest increase, let me just suggest that it be viewed in light of current events and Congress' response to those events," said lawyer Michelle Boardman. "The significance of legislation affecting national security has increased markedly since Sept. 11."
"Congress has been more active, the president has been more active," she added. "The separation of powers is working when we have this kind of dispute."
The exchange came during a midterm election year in which Specter, some fellow Republicans and many Democrats are highlighting concerns about the administration's use of executive power. Specter's personal list includes Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, the administration's checking of phone records and the sending of officials to hearings but saying they cannot answer lawmakers' questions on national security grounds.
The session also was aimed at countering any influence Bush's signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record), R-Texas., a former state judge.
"The president is entitled to express his opinion. It's the courts that determine what the law is," he said. "I don't know why the issue of presidents issuing signing statements is controversial at all."
Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is trying an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency's sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto, which could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.
"The president is not required to," Boardman said.
"Of course he's not if he signs the bill," Specter snapped back.
Other presidents have used signing statements for administrative reasons, such as instructing an agency how to put a certain law into effect. They usually are inserted quietly into the federal record.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060627...ning_statements
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| MisterOpus1 |
I love it when Specter pretends like he actually gives a about this Administration pushing the Constitutional boundaries, then turns around and gets bitchslapped by Cheney into submission.
It happens every ing time. Quotes like these are always his preliminary words:
| quote: | | "It's a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution," said Arlen Specter, a Republican whose Senate Judiciary Committee opened hearings on the issue. "There is a sense that the president has taken signing statements far beyond the customary purview." |
And he'll say other like their actions are "questionable", "troubling", and then he'll throw around the threat of a subpoena or two. And when it's all said and done, his vote, his words written in new bills, and sometimes his words right out of his mouth clearly say otherwise.
I think bastards like these piss me off more than any extremist. At least with an extremist you will always know where they stand. But bastards like Specter who want so desparately to appear like they are moderate or can come to compromises and seemingly are not afraid to challenge authority, only to fall right in line when the whip is cracked are beyond frustrating. They're just pathetic.
So in short, sorry Arlen, we've heard it all before. And we also know where you will be in the end of all this. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I love it when Specter pretends like he actually gives a about this Administration pushing the Constitutional boundaries, then turns around and gets bitchslapped by Cheney into submission.
It happens every ing time. Quotes like these are always his preliminary words:
And he'll say other like their actions are "questionable", "troubling", and then he'll throw around the threat of a subpoena or two. And when it's all said and done, his vote, his words written in new bills, and sometimes his words right out of his mouth clearly say otherwise.
I think bastards like these piss me off more than any extremist. At least with an extremist you will always know where they stand. But bastards like Specter who want so desparately to appear like they are moderate or can come to compromises and seemingly are not afraid to challenge authority, only to fall right in line when the whip is cracked are beyond frustrating. They're just pathetic.
So in short, sorry Arlen, we've heard it all before. And we also know where you will be in the end of all this. |
Huh? I think Specter has taken a moderate stance on a number of issues and stood up when he didn't have to at all on the basis of diminishing returns. This is no small issue to deviate from party lines considering the complexity of it all unlike the easy PR issues. Easy PR issues where I've seen many democrats blow in the wind as opposed to holding to principle.
But I'm curious, what exactly do you have on specter that demonstrably indicates that he has not strived for compromise? |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Huh? I think Specter has taken a moderate stance on a number of issues and stood up when he didn't have to at all on the basis of diminishing returns. This is no small issue to deviate from party lines considering the complexity of it all unlike the easy PR issues. Easy PR issues where I've seen many democrats blow in the wind as opposed to holding to principle.
But I'm curious, what exactly do you have on specter that demonstrably indicates that he has not strived for compromise? |
Oh I certainly don't deny that doublespeak is a trait with high occurrence with a healthy number of Dems. Christ, people who worked in Kerry's campaign complained often about his inability to stick squarely with one side of an issue.
In regards to Specter, however, I outlined one of his biggest and most current doublespeaks here with the wiretapping issue:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...threadid=353906
I'm off to bed, so I'll dig up some more tomorrow.
Oh yeah, one just popped up before I'm off - didn't he bring up through his committee the vote on gay marriage just recently? Now I'm not sure, but if I remember right I thought he voted down the issue on the full Senate. I'll look it up tomorrow. |
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| LazFX |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
>link<
hey, the man said he'd do anything to protect his country. this is incredible. |
You know something and this is the conservitive coming out of me, but that was pretty stupid to let this out. NYT did a stupid thing. After thinking about this in a cloud of smoke, :crazy: I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder..... |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by LazFX
You know something and this is the conservitive coming out of me, but that was pretty stupid to let this out. NYT did a stupid thing. After thinking about this in a cloud of smoke, :crazy: I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder..... |
Yeah, I read that in the conservative blogs as well as heard numerous wingnutters in Congress and on Faux News call for "treasonous" acts against the NYTimes for revealing such crucial information too.
Too bad that it is entirely based on nothing shy of complete bull and disinformation.
Wanna know why?
Because the information that was given in the NYTimes was NOTHING new. There was not one shred of information purported by the Times to which has not been reported in the past, much of which was given by, are you ready for this - this ing Administration itself.
The Boston Globe just ran a piece today that explains this in detail:
| quote: | But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.
"There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. "The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."
Indeed, a report that [former State Department official Victor] Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...ome_say/?page=1 |
Wow, no . Really? You mean to tell me that these conservative ing echo chamber pundits are once again putting out these incredible straw men arguments and are attempting to scare the bejesus out of everyone about how that darn "liberal" media is hurting America? Scary stuff, ain't it?
As one blogger had asked:
"What, specifically, would a terrorist have been willing to do on June 22 [the day before the banking story was published] that he would not do on June 23 as a result of the Times' article?"
The Globe goes further:
| quote: | Victor D. Comras , a former US diplomat who oversaw efforts at the United Nations to improve international measures to combat terror financing, said it was common knowledge that worldwide financial transactions were being closely monitored for links to terrorists. ``A lot of people were aware that this was going on," said Comras, one of a half-dozen financial experts UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recruited for the task.
``Unless they were pretty dumb, they had to assume" their transactions were being monitored, Comras said of terrorist groups. ``We have spent the last four years bragging how effective we have been in tracking terrorist financing." |
But that's not Dubya's authoritative-protecting roll to us little American children, is it? We smart, they dumb, right?
Trust us, we know how to protect you and will never abuse our authority, right?
Continuing:
| quote: | ndeed, a report that Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into. The system, which handles trillions of dollars in worldwide transactions each day, serves as a main hub for banks and other financial institutions that move money around the world. According to The New York Times, SWIFT executives agreed to give the Treasury Department and the CIA broad access to its database.
SWIFT and other worldwide financial clearinghouses ``are critical to processing international banking transactions and are rich with payment information," according to the 33-page report by the terrorist monitoring group established by the UN Security Council in late 2001. ``The United States has begun to apply new monitoring techniques to spot and verify suspicious transactions. The group recommends the adoption of similar mechanisms by other countries."
Some worry that the new disclosures will nonetheless hamper US counter-terrorism efforts.
``I worked this stuff and I can guarantee that [revealing the SWIFT] information made a difference," said Dennis Lormel, a retired FBI special agent who helped establish the bureau's Terrorist Financing Operations Section before leaving government in 2003. ``The disclosure will have an adverse impact on investigations. It was used in two specific instances where it helped to track terrorists. We also used it for lead value."
But the White House has also been very public about its efforts to track the overseas banking transactions of Americans and other foreign nationals.
Less than two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Bush signed an executive order calling for greater cooperation with foreign entities to monitor money that might be headed to terrorist groups. The executive order was posted on the White House website.
The document called for ``cooperation with, and sharing information by, United States and foreign financial institutions as an additional tool to enable the United States to combat the financing of terrorism."
Richard Newcomb , the head of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control at the time, later publicly credited the president for enabling US law enforcement and intelligence agencies to nab suspected terrorists, including followers of ``Hambali, " Al Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia. The New York Times report said Hambali's capture in 2003 came with the aid of information gleaned from SWIFT.
Administration officials have said this week that the disclosure of such details were particularly damaging to US security.
Nevertheless, in July 2003 -- a month before Hambali was captured -- Newcomb told the Senate Government Affairs Committee in detail about a program initiated after 9/11 between his office and the Pentagon to track Hambali's financial network in Southeast Asia. The scope of the project included Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore, focusing on the finances of Jemaa Islamiyah , the Al Qaeda group run by Hambali that was responsible for deadly bombings in Bali in 2002.
He said the operation ``identified the key leaders, fund-raisers, businessmen, recruiters, companies, charities, mosques, and schools that were part of [Jamaa Islamiyah] support network. Thus far, we have imposed sanctions against two of these key nodes, and are coordinating action against several others," Newcomb told the committee.
Other public documents have also detailed post-9/11 efforts to follow terrorist money.
The Patriot Act approved by Congress after the attacks emphasized providing new authorities for the Bush administration to track and choke off terrorist funds around the world. One part of the act, dealing specifically with terrorist money, was described by the Treasury Department as the most ``significant [anti-money-laundering] law" since a 1970 law requiring banks to report cash transactions over $10,000.
That section of the Patriot Act required the Bush administration to ``adopt regulations to encourage further cooperation among financial institutions, their regulatory authorities, and law enforcement authorities" to track terrorist-related money laundering.
In testimony before Congress in early 2002, Juan C. Zarate , deputy assistant Treasury secretary in charge of terrorism and violent crime, discussed how the global exchange of information was a key element in choking off their source of funds.
He cited a special international meeting hosted a month after the attacks by the international Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, ``to eliminate existing impediments to exchanging information" between financial institutions and to find solutions to the challenges of tracking terrorist funds. |
Well hot diggity, whadya know about that? Why is it that whenever someone calls into question the actions and legalities of this Administration, all of the sudden there's a monumental backlash by the echo chamber to cut off their ing heads for even asking such a question?
It's as if challenging the actions of this Administration is akin to being unAmerican, being with the terrorists, being unpatriotic.
Too bad many of those ing echo chamber twits not know a whit about what it really means to be patriotic, what it means to fight for our liberties and freedoms, and what exactly our freedom and Democracy entails by our forefathers. Is it really so wise to go after the press in such a manner? Would you Conservative shills enjoy a government-controlled press instead? Seems like some of you refuse to answer such a question:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts...talk-show-host/
And how exactly would you separate such a concept from, say, China, and other totalitarian regimes if you would enjoy such a concept? Or perhaps to flip it the other way, what exactly would you say if Bill Clinton were in the same spot as Bush? Would you be cheerleading behind him and calling out treasonous traitors who disagree with him?
Ya know, somehow I doubt that. Perhaps then you would examine the facts and try to judge them on the merits before you attempt to pick up an argument and run with it like a ing headless chicken through the media outlets.
Here's some more material of Bush's treasonous acts that seemingly go unreported:
| quote: | Bush administration officials have been lining up to condemn The New York Times for revealing a program to track financial transactions as part of the war on terrorism. But if the Times’ revelation about a program to monitor international exchanges is so damaging, why has the administration been chattering about efforts to monitor domestic transactions for nearly five years?
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, many journalists — including this one — were briefed by U.S. Customs officials on Operation Green Quest, an effort to roll up terrorist financiers by monitoring, among other things, "suspicious" bank transfers and ancient money lending programs favored by people of Middle Eastern descent.
I interviewed Marcy Forman, director of Green Quest, at her Washington offices in December 2001, when I was a writer for Government Executive magazine. Our meeting was sanctioned by Customs' public affairs office, and came at a time when the White House was eager to talk about all the work federal agencies were doing to hunt down terrorists. Forman told me the kinds of people, transactions, even locations that the government was targeting. (These are details, it should be noted, that the recent Times piece did not reveal.) Among the potentially sensitive items Forman told me, which were published:
“Operation Green Quest is focusing on the informal, largely paperless form of money exchange known as hawala, which is Arabic for ‘to change.’”
“Few undercover agents can penetrate Middle Eastern communities and money laundering rings because they look like outsiders and don't speak the language…. As a result, Green Quest has to be more clever, by setting traps on the Internet and working to flush currency traffickers out of their hiding places.”
“Treasury and FBI investigators have identified hawala as a means by which the alleged Sept. 11 terrorists may have received money from overseas.”
“Green Quest investigators, who've spent their careers dismantling money laundering rackets, were blindsided by the existence of the system. ‘Most of us couldn't spell hawala’ before Sept. 11,’ Forman said.”
“The agencies' [involved in Green Quest] cooperative efforts have recently culminated in raids of alleged money laundering operations that aid suspected terrorist networks.”
“Green Quest also wants to lower the threshold at which bank deposits and electronic funds transfers must be documented. Dropping the ceiling from $10,000 to $750, Forman said, may force money traffickers to try to get their cash out of the country by hand. They would then be subject to capture by a beefed-up cadre of Customs Service officers at border crossings, airports and seaports.”
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002546.html |
And this is why when it's all said and done, there ain't gonna be done to the Times.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the Wall Street Journal and LATimes too. Dang, why do I keep forgetting about them?
But of course this was never Rove's plan in the first place. This is never how the echo chamber works. The only plan is to spread the disinformation as quickly and as hard-hitting as possible, enough to hit everyone right between the eyes. And then when it's all said and done and the smoke clears, it's all but too late to refute the utter bull because now the idiot minions are once again scared and pissed off at those darn terrorists.
And of course, scared and pissed off at that darn "librul" media too. |
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| Groundhog Boy |
| quote: | Originally posted by LazFX
You know something and this is the conservitive coming out of me, but that was pretty stupid to let this out. NYT did a stupid thing. After thinking about this in a cloud of smoke, :crazy: I think that they just blew a good weapong used against the terrorists, hmmm I wonder..... |
Can someone explain to me why the NY Times is taking all the flack from this? The White House singles them out, all the bloggers are singling them out. It wasn't just them that ran that story. Why isn't the Wall Street Journal, that bastion of liberal viewpoints, and LA Times taking any heat.
Oh, wait, it's to single them out because they criticize the administration all the time. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Groundhog Boy
Oh, wait, it's to single them out because they criticize the administration all the time. |
this is now a pattern with the NYT, for one. two, they-NYT-were the ones that broke the story online before the WSJ. the L.A.T. got the scoop also but was not approached by arguments not to, neither the WSJ. in effect it was a race to them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/27/AR2006062701708_2.html |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Q5echo
this is now a pattern with the NYT, for one. |
And it's also a repeated pattern by the Bush administration to disclose far greater and substantive information pertaining to its own intelligence PRIOR TO any NYTimes story was ever printed. I already discussed this Administration in detail earlier with this thread topic, but who could forget that darn Times story on wiretapping some months ago?
Well lo and behold, once again our Administration had been delving into detailed info. much much earlier than the Times ever did:
Bush on "roving wiretaps", Columbus, Ohio in June of '05:
| quote: | One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications. These wiretaps must be approved by a judge, and they have been used for years to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Yet, before the Patriot Act, agents investigating terrorists had to get a separate authorization for each phone they wanted to tap. That means terrorists could elude law enforcement by simply purchasing a new cell phone.
The Patriot Act fixed the problem by allowing terrorism investigators to use the same wiretaps that were already being using against drug kingpins and mob bosses.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050609-2.html
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Bush in Maryland, July '05 talking about changes in our eavesdropping techniques on cell phones:
| quote: | Before the Patriot Act agents could use wire taps to investigate a person committing mail fraud, but not specifically to investigate a foreign terrorist carrying deadly weapons. Before the Patriot Act, investigators could follow the calls of mobsters who switched cell phones, but not terrorists who switched cell phones. That didn't make any sense. The Patriot Act ended all these double standards.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050720-4.html |
Same speech telling terrorists that we are eavesdropping on their phones:
| quote: | | The judicial branch has a strong oversight role in the application of the Patriot Act. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, or to track his calls, or to search his property. |
In 2004 telling terrorists we're tracking them through their "money trails":
| quote: | Before September the 11th, law enforcement could more easily obtain business and financial records of white-collar criminals than of suspected terrorists. See, part of the way to make sure that we catch terrorists is we chase money trails. And yet it was easier to chase a money trail with a white-collar criminal than it was a terrorist. The Patriot Act ended this double standard and it made it easier for investigators to catch suspected terrorists by following paper trails here in America.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20040419-4.html |
Bush opining on how we track terrorists via emails and internet coms:
| quote: | Third, we need to renew the critical provisions of the Patriot Act that updated the law to meet high-tech threats like computer espionage and cyberterrorism. Before the Patriot Act, Internet providers who notified federal authorities about threatening e-mails ran the risk of getting sued. The Patriot Act modernized the law to protect Internet companies who voluntarily disclose information to save lives.
It's common sense reform, and it's delivered results. In April 2004, a man sent an e-mail to an Islamic center in El Paso, and threatened to burn the mosque to the ground in three days. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could have spent a week or more waiting for the information they needed. Thanks to the Patriot Act, an Internet provider was able to provide the information quickly and without fear of a lawsuit -- and the FBI arrested the man before he could fulfill his -- fulfill his threat.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050609-2.html |
Bush detailing threat priorities of Homeland Security Dept. in July of '05:
| quote: | That's what Mike Chertoff recommended to me after the London bombings. In other words, he took a look at the situation and said, let's enhance our security and infrastructure points, and he raised the threat level.
We're widening the use of explosive detection teams and nearly doubling the number of rail security inspectors. We're targeting assets and resources to our infrastructure. We're accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies to rapidly detect biological, radiological and chemical attacks. That's what Mike announced last week. We're going to continue to make sure that we assess our weaknesses and strengthen our transportation systems.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/rele...20050720-4.html |
And let's also not forget this article by the National Review of all places detailing before us how we monitor al Qaeda's phone calls, use roving wiretaps, examine their library records, use "sneak-and-peak" searches of their apartments, and read their e-mails:
http://www.nationalreview.com/edito...00512140926.asp
And please make note of the date - it was written before the Times article too.
Now since the Times were discussing these intelligence "secrets" and thus harming national security, does it not stand to reason that this Administration and their editorial board at NRO were effectively doing the same BEFORE the times printed their piece revealing and questioning the legality of Bush's actions?
Or is the double standard valid just against anyone who doesn't cheerlead for this Administration?
And if that's not the case either, then what specifically is the philosophical difference between what the Times revealed versus what this Administration and the NRO revealed to those terrorists who want to kill us? And shall we continue to be dumb enough to believe the terrorists were that stupid enough to not know exactly what was occurring prior to what the Times reported?
Irrelevant. If there was a breach of "national security", and if such treasonous acts were committed by the Times, then the WSJ and LATimes committed the exact same error by copycatting their piece for even more folks to read.
Or shall we assume that only al Qaeda reads the NYTimes? Or perhaps even more Limbaughish - maybe, just maybe al Qaeda has already infiltrated the Times?.
Damn, now I know why Bush hates the media so much. I didn't even piece it together until now. They're all terrorists, damnit!
Well, everyone except the NRO, of course. |
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| josh4 |
| quote: | House vote slaps news organizations
Resolution blasts stories on terrorist tracking program
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House on Thursday approved a Republican-crafted resolution condemning news organizations for revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing, saying the disclosure had "placed the lives of Americans in danger."
The resolution, passed 227-183 on a largely party-line vote, did not specifically name the news organizations, but it was aimed at The New York Times and other news media that last week reported on a secret CIA-Treasury program to track millions of financial records in search of terrorists.
Most Democrats opposed the measure, protesting language in it that asserts that the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was "rooted in sound legal authority" and that members of Congress had been appropriately briefed on the program.
...
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06...s.ap/index.html
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This is ridiculous. So basically the government is telling the media its bad and wrong to give the American public the right to know. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| quote: | Originally posted by josh4
This is ridiculous. So basically the government is telling the media its bad and wrong to give the American public the right to know. |
+1 |
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