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By Robert M. Utley
$30.00
By Anne Boston
$11.16
$40
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supremecourtus.gov
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The Supreme Court rejected an appeal related to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program on Tuesday, offering no explanation. The American Civil Liberties Union and others have had a hard time proving the plaintiffs were spied on because the evidence they need is considered a government secret.
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Attention, China: The U.S. military will soon be staging a bit of sky theater in trying to shoot down an inoperative American intelligence satellite. So, what does this show of atmospheric pyrotechnics have to do with China? Read on.
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By Marie Cocco — The president and other fear mongers love to harangue Americans with the specter of terrorism when their pet projects (and our freedoms) are on the line, but when it comes to the basic programs that protect us from disaster, money talks louder than threats.
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By Eugene Robinson — The campaign for the White House is great fun, but it can also be a distraction. While the leading contenders to replace Bush continue to duke it out, the president and his lieutenants are still trying to justify torture in the name of protecting this once great democracy.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — It’s not enough for George W. Bush’s government to eavesdrop on phone calls, monitor financial transactions and sneak a peek at other people’s e-mails. Now the administration says it needs to monitor all Internet activity in the United States. That means you and everything you do online.
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npr.org
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America’s intelligence czar, Mike McConnell, drops a few eyebrow-raisers in a new interview in The New Yorker. He admits he wants the ability to access all U.S. Internet traffic, and says of waterboarding: “Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”
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hoinews.com
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Sen. Chris Dodd is preparing to take to the Senate floor with a filibuster to thwart the legislative advancement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it doesn’t include his proposed amendment, co-sponsored with Sen. Russ Feingold, that would prevent the Bush administration from retroactively letting big telecom companies off the hook for allowing the government to conduct warrantless surveillance on their networks.
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By Ellen Goodman — Pretty soon, we’re going have to amend the favorite mom and dad moniker of the moment. Those much vaunted helicopter parents are turning into black-helicopter parents. The image of parents hovering over their kids is morphing into the darker image of parents spying on their kids.
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By Elliot D. Cohen — The “Last Days of Democracy” author warns that Congress is about to aid the Bush administration with its Orwellian plans by granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications giants for helping the government spy on Americans.
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By Marie Cocco — The nominee for attorney general doesn’t know “what is involved” in waterboarding, and he appears to back Bush’s usurpation of power. Isn’t it time for the Democrats to grow some spine?
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By Joe Conason — The senator rarely surrenders a juicy quote without a struggle. Yet her familiar preference for caution over candor is gradually changing with each step that she takes toward her party’s presidential nomination.
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Under pressure from Congress, Verizon has provided some insight into the government’s domestic surveillance program. The telecommunications giant defended the legality of its actions, but admitted complying “as expeditiously as possible” when federal officials, without a subpoena, asked for telephone and Internet records.
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By Amy Goodman — John Lennon would have turned 67 years old last week had he not been murdered in 1980 by a mentally disturbed fan. On his birthday, Oct. 9, his widow, peace activist and artist Yoko Ono, realized a dream they shared.
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By Marie Cocco — By simply deciding that something is a “state secret,” the Bush government has avoided answering for its brutal treatment of innocent victims in the war on terror. This is a perversion of the principle of American justice.
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btinternet.com
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First we had “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Then came the Patriot Act. And now, President Bush has co-opted another vague term that’s hard to argue with, emptied it of its intended significance, and altered it to mean “let big telecom companies that aided the administration in its dubious wiretapping activities off the hook.” Yes, folks, this latest round of rhetorical gymnastics has brought us “the Protect America Act.”
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washingtonpost.com
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It sounds far-fetched, but a number of protesters swear they’ve spotted robotic insects hovering around anti-war rallies. The government denies deploying robot spies, but it’s known that the U.S. military has had robotic flies, such as the one above, since World War II.
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In 2005, the Justice Department issued two secret opinions on torture that endorsed and protected the administration’s desire to use physically and psychologically traumatizing interrogation techniques. Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey reportedly warned his colleagues that they would be “ashamed” when their work became public.
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Just to put current world events in perspective, here’s a transcript of a recent speech by Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who released the Pentagon Papers to the press during the Vietnam War, about some potential developments that could severely harm our country in the not-so-distant future.
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For his part, Stephen Colbert doesn’t see Naomi Wolf’s point about Blackwater USA’s recent shameful shenanigans in Iraq somehow heralding a fast-approaching era of fascism in America. Instead, the faux-pundit believes the trend is more toward “a bull market for shooting people” these days.
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J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, has in part explained Congress’ hurry to revise domestic surveillance law. It seems that the FISA court, established three decades ago to keep the government from abusively spying on American citizens, decided that the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was illegal—and that just wouldn’t do.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Some lawmakers were furious over the administration’s actions regarding a surveillance bill, but in the end members of the majority party in Congress caved in under political pressure.
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indymedia.org.uk
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Street surveillance is taking an alarming turn for the interactive in England. As part of a government plan to target “antisocial” behavior and petty crime, closed-circuit television cameras will be installed around the country with the capacity to talk back to people engaging in unseemly acts in public places.
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AP
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By Stan Goff — The Special Forces veteran and author of “Full Spectrum Disorder” explains why the media celebrate true believers such as Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich who continue to fight a war that is already lost.
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From the AP: “Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush’s domestic wiretapping program Wednesday, endorsing a White House-supported bill that would give the controversial surveillance legal status.”
The November elections can’t come soon enough….
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The Congress hears from police agencies that envision using unmanned military drones for surveillance—in one troubling example, high above American cities.
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From hollywoodinvestigator.com
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The N.Y. Times examines internal police reports in which NYPD commanders discuss their use of “proactive arrests,” covert surveillance and psychological tactics at antiwar rallies in 2002.
The country that wages preemptive war now has a city police force making “proactive” arrests.
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Senate Republicans shut down a Democratic-led proposal to investigate Bush’s eavesdropping program. Instead, a White House-approved seven-member panel will oversee the effort.
White House-approved? You gotta be kidding.
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An all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed an investigation into Bush’s spying program and may eventually kill it.
The White House may have botched Cheney’s response to the hunting incident, but the administration sure hasn’t lost its touch when it comes to leaning on moderate Republicans (and even Democrats) to rally around the president. Call your senators—especially Olympia Snowe of Maine—and urge them not to cave in to political pressure.
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Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) breaks with the White House and calls for a full congressional inquiry into Bush’s spy program. | story
The dam hasn’t just cracked—it’s gushing.
Posted on Feb 8, 2006
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Investigators eavesdropping on Americans in overseas calls have dismissed nearly all of them as suspects, according to the Washington Post. This is huge, because “a search cannot be judged ‘reasonable’ if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable.”
Meanwhile, feisty Russ Feingold, a Democratic senator, takes the attorney general to the cleaners for lying to him a year ago about Bush’s surveillance activities. Gonzales shoots back, “I was telling the truth then. I’m telling the truth now.” | story
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From crooksandliars.com
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As Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepares for Monday’s hearings, we should keep in mind the president’s 2004 statement about warrantless wiretaps: “Anytime you hear the United States government talking about a wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order.” (Hat tip: crooksandliars.com) | video
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Walter Pincus, one of the best-informed national security reporters in the country, offers a video critique of the Senate appearance of the nation’s new spy chief. | video
Posted on Feb 3, 2006
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The Gray Lady, in an editorial, eviscerates Bush’s defense of his spying program, point by point. | editorial
Posted on Jan 29, 2006
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Paul Conrad
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The White House rejected a 2002 Senate proposal to ease surveillance warrant restrictions, saying such a move would probably be unconstitutional. The Washington Post picks up the story blazed by Glenn Greenwald.
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Charlie Riedel / AP
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The president is now calling it the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” | story
OK, Mr. Bush, but what about the non-terrorists being swept up in your nets? Not that we’re surprised by the new moniker; this is the guy who legalized an increase in air pollution and called it “Clear Skies,” and labeled a tree-slashing program “Healthy Forests.”
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Fox News / via Think Progress
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Think Progress notes that the Arizona senator is the latest in a long list of Republican conservatives who have expressed strong doubts about the program’s legality. | blog
Crooks and Liars has the video.
Posted on Jan 23, 2006
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After the attorney general dismissed the vexed former veep’s charges of illegal spying, Gore swats back: No wonder you didn’t defend yourself on the issues—you can’t. | release
Meanwhile, a group of arch-conservatives call for hearings into Bush’s program. Hey, if you’ve lost Grover Norquist and David Keene… | release
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From medaloffreedom.com
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A year before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. called America the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” His comments and actions made him the object of a massive, FBI-led audio surveillance program into his sex life. Check out our multimedia assemblage in Uncovered. | entry
Posted on Jan 15, 2006
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By Blair Golson Back in 1968, it wasn’t the Fox network but Time and the Washington Post that branded war critics as fifth columnists. Also, read about an illegal wiretap operation that makes today’s version look downright cordial.
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Members of Congress question whether the agency can investigate itself. | story
Meanwhile, a dream team of 14 legal scholars and ex-gov’t officials write a memo to the DOJ calling the NSA program illegal. | story
Posted on Jan 10, 2006
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By Jon Wiener — Bush rolled out an old canard about Bin Laden and the media rolled over. An inside look at the sticking power of a falsehood.
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Judges will question Dept. of Justice, others, on legality of warrantless wiretaps | more
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By Blair Golson An intense debate has been raging on Op-Ed pages and in the blogosphere over the legality of President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. What follows is a roundup of some of the most influential, talked-about and linked-to analyses.
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The president attempts to explain how his 2004 claim that “a wiretap requires court orders” squares with his warrantless surveillance program. Times reporter Eric Licthblau calls Bush’s comments “at odds” with those of his senior aides.
Posted on Jan 1, 2006
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Two of Bush’s most senior advisors made an emergency visit in 2004 to a hospitalized John Ashcroft to get him to override his deputy and sign off on a continued warrantless domestic surveillance program. Read the story
Posted on Jan 1, 2006
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