PLAMONDON
Burn this name into your brain and never forget it. Any bells? A tickle?
Strap yourself in for a head-cracking ride.
PUN PLAMONDON you are going to like, a bunch.
~Follow me as I traipse along trying to keep up with StopVotePirates, picking up his trail of pocorn at hartmanwatchwatch. Right into the sun, Pirate. Thank you for the door~
mmmmooooouuuuwwwwwwwwaaaaasssssssspweeet~
<<ding>>
We saw a blip on the time machine today.
A burp back up from the main memory hole.
Here is ON NSA SPYING: A LETTER TO CONGRESS,
by 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, and William Van Alstyne, which the rest of the world will learn on February 9, 2006 when they read the New York Book Review's Volume 53, Number 2.
Now, while that letter may indeed be the silver bullet needed, what we didn't get there, still, was the
name.
PUN PALMONDON.
I don't know why we would.
It's a tough name to articulate, no?
I don't remember reading it in any American History Textbooks, ever. A name like that would've stuck with me, echoing, as it does now.
If you're the Go-Directly-to-the-Guy type, then go directly to
,Pun Plamondon's website, where you can check out his memoir,
Lost from the Ottawa: The Story of the Journey Back
Go also
here, but do it last. Pull down the Supreme Court caselaw, and prepare for some of the finest legal opinions on domestic wiretapping
you've never read before.
Speaking of
names, during yesterday's SOTU address, George W. Bush said the name
'Katrina' a total of how many times? ZERO TIMES my friends. ZEEEEEEERROOOOOOO! Katrina is EASY to say and he could NOT bring himself to call it by its
name.
Katrina's almost gone away down the same old memory hole, in record time. An exchange, perhaps? A blood sacrifice to save the homeland?
Here is the creamy niblet that Robert Downes, aka StopVotePirates has hurtled into the field, after a HUGE amount of research, for me to learn and chew on. Maybe it will also be completely news to you.
The letter.
There are MANY more leads for others to follow contained within the full letter:
The principle that ambiguous statutes should be construed to avoid serious constitutional questions works against the administration, not in its favor. Interpreting the AUMF and FISA to permit unchecked domestic wiretapping for the duration of the conflict with al-Qaeda would certainly raise serious constitutional questions. The Supreme Court has never upheld such a sweeping power to invade the privacy of Americans at home without individualized suspicion or judicial oversight.
The NSA surveillance program permits wiretapping within the United States without either of the safeguards presumptively required by the Fourth Amendment for electronic surveillance --individualized probable cause and a warrant or other order issued by a judge or magistrate. The Court has long held that wiretaps generally require a warrant and probable cause. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). And the only time the Court considered the question of national security wiretaps, it held that the Fourth Amendment prohibits domestic security wiretaps without those safeguards. United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972). Although the Court in that case left open the question of the Fourth Amendment validity of warrantless wiretaps for foreign intelligence purposes, its precedents raise serious constitutional questions about the kind of open-ended authority the President has asserted with respect to the NSA program. See id. at 316-18 (explaining difficulty of guaranteeing Fourth Amendment freedoms if domestic surveillance can be conducted solely in the discretion of the executive branch).
Indeed, serious Fourth Amendment questions about the validity of warrantless wiretapping led Congress to enact FISA, in order to "provide the secure framework by which the executive branch may conduct legitimate electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes within the context of this nation's commitment to privacy and individual rights." S. Rep. No. 95-604, at 15 (1978) (citing, inter alia, Zweibon v. Mitchell, 516 F.2d 594 (D.C. Cir. 1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 944 (1976), in which the court of appeals held that a warrant must be obtained before a wiretap is installed on a domestic organization that is neither the agent of, nor acting in collaboration with, a foreign power).
Now
that is an important historical document, so save it for your kids.
One central and very REAL story here, that I know you will just love, is the story of PUN PLAMONDON. Oh, yes...PUN
A PUN of a very high order. Here is the deal.
The warrantless wiretapping cases that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and George Bush are preparing to defend have already been decided against their position, in the case that nobody ever heard about, because of what happened the very next day. Are you there yet?
PLAMONDON
Even less well known as UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), our case referenced so strongly in the New York Book Review article snipped from above.
The case is long and merits a concerted reading, but save that for after the following is absorbed. PLAMONDON was a Landmark Supreme Court wiretap case, and it led to a cascade of decisions that continue to plague and promise us still today.
The PLAMONDON decision on Friday June 19, 1972 was to be kept secret until it hit the Federal Register on Monday, June 22, 1972.
Instead the decision was leaked to the Nixon White House,
where it triggered the Plumbers' hurried bug REMOVAL expedition on Saturday June 20, 1972 from the DNC Rooms at the Watergate Hotel.
This protected who? from violation of the constitution under the new decision...AFTER...the PLAMONDON decision had been made.
Plamondon was an 8-0 decision of the Supreme Court with multiple previous landmark precendents and incidents cited, way back to 1675. Rhenquist not participating one whit,
POWELL, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which DOUGLAS, BRENNAN, MARSHALL, STEWART, and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined.
DOUGLAS, J., filed a concurring opinion, post, p. 324.
BURGER, C. J., concurred in the result.
WHITE, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 335.
REHNQUIST, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
The concurring opinions are some of the most profound that I have ever read: AGAINST unwarranted domestic surveillance, and FOR the continuance of the experiment, .
The Supreme Court held, in unison on Friday June 19th, 1972, that:
1. Section 2511 (3) is merely a disclaimer of congressional intent to define presidential powers in matters affecting national security, and is not a grant of authority to conduct warrantless national security surveillances. Pp. 301-308. [407 U.S. 297, 298]
2. The Fourth Amendment (which shields private speech from unreasonable surveillance) requires prior judicial approval for the type of domestic security surveillance involved in this case. Pp. 314-321; 323-324.
(a) The Government's duty to safeguard domestic security must be weighed against the potential danger that unreasonable surveillances pose to individual privacy and free expression. Pp. 314-315.
(b) The freedoms of the Fourth Amendment cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances are conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch without the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate. Pp. 316-318.
(c) Resort to appropriate warrant procedure would not frustrate the legitimate purposes of domestic security searches. Pp. 318-321.
Here then, is the excellent story of
PUN PLAMONDONby Mr. Robert Downes:
The Last Outlaw: Pun Plamondon's Radical Odyssey
He is still alive today, if you can believe it.
Finally, as Robert asks,
Did PUN PLAMONDON</b> bring down Richard Nixon?
It sure looks like he did, by some incalculably diabolic invisible force of life and time.
Just as importantly, will PUN PLAMONDON also bring down George W. Bush and company?