Maria [#100407]

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities.

Following Nixon’s efforts to do what dubya has done with unprecedented success, the act was created in 1978 to provide oversight of covert surveillance activities, while maintaining secrecy. The law required a special warrant, issued by the FISA Court, which was specifically created to review requests and issue warrants allowing covert surveillance ... usually within 72 hours.

If the request was considered serious enough to be a national security threat, the warrant could be issued retroactively.

The argument made by so many Constitutional lawyers against the Bush administrations outrageous behavior was that, under the old FISA law, they could have accomplished whatever they needed to accomplish. Which is why U.S. National Intelligence Director McConnell’s remarks are so important. The administrations claim they needed to break the law to protect us is made ridiculous by the reports of this case. Which in itself appears to be questionable, if not ridiculous. And all of this leads, and has led to the obvious conclusion, their behavior has never been about national security so much as it has been about doing things that are clearly illegal ... in absolute secrecy.

In the process of following orders from their little king, the repub controlled congress made amendments to the 1978 FISA law, which among other things specifies interaction between citizens and non-citizens. It is now “legal” in “certain” cases to conduct “illegal” surveillance on citizens phone calls, mail, email, bank records, and just about anything else. The new “standards” are confusing and frankly irrelevant, since the repub controlled congress gave the little king pretty much everything he needed to cover his ass when they gave him the Military Commission Act of 2006.

The real shocker is how little our congress, particularly our republican congresaurs understand and respect Constitutional law!

One expects the average citizen to not understand the law without a refresher course, but there is no excuse for our representatives and senators. Even more shocking is how unconcerned they appear to be about the obvious ramifications of the unconstitutional legislation passed in 2006!

Re: #100271 by Mike Mid-City on 9/13

I mean the Bush Administration is credible right?

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Not to be anal or anything but could you have possibly meant:

I mean the Bush Administration is credible “right”?

I’m sorry, but it just was screaming for “correction”.  I hope you don’t mind.

Maria
Sadly, American politics is hard for American’s to fully grasp.
The Shrub has taken powers that the Constitution did not grant him. For a while, he had a tame Attorney General that ok’d every illegal act Shrub wanted him to ok.
The FISA laws,as I understand them, require 1 party to be outside the US. In the case of both parties being outside the US, I am told that many communication routes, be they land line, cell, Internet or whatever, pass thru a point that can be accessed by Government Agents.
The FISA laws are all but moot, as the Shrub can appeal to a secret court, set up by his people, for any warrent or ruling.
Understand one thing about our Election Process; while the vote for President includes all eligible citizens, that is ignored in a sense, and the Electoral College awards ‘delegates’ based on who got the most votes in each State. The more populous the State, the more delegates.
In 2000, more American’s voted for Al Gore than the Shrub. But Shrubs’ votes came from the more populous States, thus he was declared the winner. No other office in this country is decided in such a manner.
I think there have been 3 or 4 instances where the candidate with less actual votes was declared the winner, none since the 1800’s, except Shrub.
Then, in ‘04, a Rupublican supporter that controlled a voting machine manufacturer supplied machines that insured Shrub would get the most votes, regardless of how people actually voted.
American Democracy has many flaws that are coming to light. The flaws have been there, but no one besides the Shrub was low enough to take advantage of them.
Folks on sites such as this one are working to insure that none of this is repeated.
Our news media is, at times, more concerned about which female celebrity isn’t wearing enough clothes and doesn’t always print or discuss all the real news.
That is why folks such as yourself are appreciated here. Any future news or facts that are uncovered over there will be happily read and considered here.

“It turns out that much of the information used by the Germans was obtained under the old FISA law, which McConnell continues to claim wasn’t effective enough.

Needless to say, he was forced to clarify his testimony.”
***

Then we receive further clarification from Maria, (#100329)

“One journalist commented that if these men were what “terror camps” turned out, there was every reason to let the camps continue, because the “terrorists” would remove themselves before they harmed anybody.”

Thanks Maria!

Perhaps we should use the same approach regarding our various arms of “intelligence” who give clear meaning to the Bush philosophy of speaking and doing in antonyms.

Perhaps there is every reason to let the intelligence people, AKA Bush’s nincompoops continue on in their pursuit of terrorists, because they will no doubt trip each other down the stairs before they have a chance to blow up the world.

We should be so lucky!

Unfortunately, that would require removing the 18 to 20% who still believe these folks actually have intelligence, and of course we cant do that, because we don’t believe in violence.

Maybe we could help them understand the meaning of the word intelligence.

Naw, first we’d have to teach them the meaning of the word understand. A hopeless assignment!

Maria
Thanks for sharing the news from Germany.
If we here in America stop and think, nothing more has been heard of the terrorist’s who were caught while planning an attack on Ft Dix, nor the ones who allegedly wanted to blow up the fuel farm at JFK.
A little disinformation goes a long ways.
As to McConnell getting his facts confused, he’s just following the lead of Shrub who thought he was in Austria at an OPEC meeting instead of being in Australia at an APEC meeting.
As any hard charging DA will tell you, too many facts will destroy a perfectly good case.

In the good old days getting caught in a lie actually had consequences. That doesn’t seem to be true anymore.