The Bu$h malAdministration announced today that it will retreat from its dictatorial and totalitarian position that they can wiretap any American, under any circumstances, at any time they feel like it, without FISA Court authorization.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 17 — The Bush administration, in a surprise reversal, said on Wednesday that it had agreed to give a secret court jurisdiction over the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program [emph added] and would end its practice of eavesdropping without warrants on Americans suspected of ties to terrorists.
The Justice Department said it had worked out an "innovative" arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that provided the "necessary speed and agility" to provide court approval to monitor international communications of people inside the United States without jeopardizing national security.
The decision capped 13 months of bruising national debate over the reach of the president’s wartime authorities and his claims of executive power, and it came as the administration faced legal and political hurdles in its effort to continue the surveillance program.
This was a keystone element of the unitary executive fantasy originally invented by John Yoo when he worked in the Office of Legal Counsel, US DoJ. Anyone with an IQ higher than room temperature who has spent the past six years watching the US Constitution slowly turned into a museum exhibit surely understands we are once again watching Bu$hCo kabuki theater. Despots never surrender the keys of power and oppression without a fight. The only question to ask is "Why make this public statement?"
The new Democratic-led Congress has pledged several investigations. More immediately, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales is expected to face hostile questioning on Thursday from the Senate Judiciary Committee on the program. And an appellate court in Cincinnati is scheduled to hear arguments in two weeks on the government’s appeal of an earlier ruling declaring the program illegal and unconstitutional.
Some legal analysts said the administration’s pre-emptive move could effectively make the court review moot, but Democrats and civil rights advocates said they would press for the courts and Congress to continue their scrutiny of the program of wiretapping without warrants, which began shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Ah. They have been expecting to get their tallywhackers smacked. Obviously, considering form more important than substance, a political decision was made to appear to pull in their horns and pretend the rule of law really does obtain in Washington.
The Judiciary Committee is headed by Senator Patrick Leahy. The senior Democratic member is Ted Kennedy, and the next senior member on the oxygen-breathing side of things is Joe Biden, who despite his faults seems to have finally figured things out. Each of these men has recently given some clear indication that they believe we must once again become a nation of laws rather than a third rate banana republic, and we wish them well in their efforts to protect us. On the Fascist side, the senior member is Arlen Specter who has a more than passing knowledge of how to destroy the US Constitution. He’s the man who cleverly finessed an ex post facto law making Mr Bu$h’s serial wiretap lawbreaking legal while pretending he was sorrowfully going to have to come down hard on Mr Bu$h’s errant knuckles.
One can but hope that Inquisitor General Gonzalez will testify under oath now that the Judiciary Committee is being operated under the Constitution. We know he will still lie like a cheap Persian rug in a third rate Algerian bordello, but if he is sworn in, there could be some possible retribution legal consequences when his lies are exposed in a week or so.
Because Bu$hCo, with all its malignancy and evil, tends towards overreaching incompetence, and as surely as day follows night we will soon learn that like leopards nothing changes. Despite pledges to reform and adhere to the law, they will be exposed and revealed as still monitoring Americans innocent of anything more than legitimate political dissent.
In fact,
Deep into an updated Army manual, the deletion of 10 words has left some national security experts wondering whether government lawyers are again asserting the executive branch's right to wiretap Americans without a court warrant.
The manual, described by the Army as a "major revision" to intelligence-gathering guidelines, addresses policies and procedures for wiretapping Americans, among other issues.
The original guidelines, from 1984, said the Army could seek to wiretap people inside the United States on an emergency basis by going to the secret court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, or by obtaining certification from the attorney general "issued under the authority of section 102(a) of the Act."
That last phrase is missing from the latest manual, which says simply that the Army can seek emergency wiretapping authority pursuant to an order issued by the FISA court "or upon attorney general authorization".[emph added] It makes no mention of the attorney general doing so under FISA.
Well, what do you know. The US Army isn’t bound by the FISA law any longer. What a surprise.