28
Dec
There is probably not a blog I respect more than The Volokh Conspiracy. They’re not the flashy in-your-face types, they’re mostly lawyers with a moderate tone that seem to try to tackle legal issues from a pragmatic angle. I like that. There’s too much shock and awe cluttering the internet for the sake of nothing but attempted shock and awe. So, when I see a banner on Volokh like this:
Prediction: Israel Will Strike Iran:
This is hardly an original insight, but I predict that Israel will strike Iran within the next few months, with the goal of disrupting or terminating Iran’s nuclear program.
I ignore a lot of the scuttle on the internet, everyone has an opinion. However, I value some a lot more than others.
Now, this is where it gets WEIRD. Volokh has been down since I read that banner. I’ve never known them to be down before………
I’ll ping them when they’re back online. And, wonder which side took them out in the meantime…….
In Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine
And what does Toronto blame on this surge in gun related deaths?
Canada’s prime minister and Toronto’s mayor blame weapons smuggled in illegally from the United States, but others point to a growing gang problem……
"The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he complained.
Michael Moore couldn’t have said it better.
However, if you look at their immigrant statistics, it paints a totally different picture:
| United States | 37,790 |
| Central and South America | 135,720 |
| Caribbean and Bermuda | 167,415 |
| Europe | 716,245 |
| United Kingdom | 142,990 |
| Other Northern and Western Europe | 75,180 |
| Eastern Europe | 182,680 |
| Southern Europe | 315,400 |
| Africa | 98,975 |
| Asia | 869,510 |
| West Central Asia and the Middle East | 111,415 |
| Eastern Asia | 299,860 |
| South East Asia | 178,820 |
| Southern Asia | 279,415 |
| Oceania and other | 7,295 |
Seems like the US isn’t much of a factor. Asia has over 1,000,000 of Toronto’s population of 4,000,000 or so.
And best I recall, Asia has a gang problem there. Europe comes in a fairly distant second. Europe has gang problems ( remember the Mafia? )
Blame the US first. So Michael Moore. So BS. So doesn’t solve the problem.
Good.
al-Suwailmi could have taken his fight to the world by many means. He could have gone on tv, he could have appealed to the UN or other world agencies. He could have formed a militia and fought against government armies. But, he chose terror. For that I have no sympathy at all and am only glad he’s dead. I have no issue with struggles, armed conflicts, or even government overthrows. I have issues with people who think attacking innocent civilians accomplishes anything. When has it? What success story was al-Suwailmi using to motivate himself and his followers? Bottom line, there is none. He was dangerous and using religion to further the only agenda he had, terrorism. For that, his death is a blessing to humanity. Keep up the good work Saudi Arabia, you all are shining beacon compared to the idiot German government in the war on terror.
- Technorati Mohammed Abdel-Rahman Mohammed al-Suwailmi
27
Dec
First we had this:
To which we had these incredibly deep revelations:
- "This is Big Brother run amok," declared Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass
- "We cannot protect our borders if we cannot protect our ideals." Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin
- "There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, R-Pennsylvania
And, this is the cause of their concern:
Neither Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the story earlier Friday, would confirm or deny that the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002.
Once again, I would ask these peope, what would you have done after a sneak attack? They criticized the hell out of Bush for not doing backflips on stage when we weren’t even sure what was going on. But, once we were very clear of what was going, these same people are quick to criticize the obvious preventive measures. They’re not wiretapping you or me, they’re wiretapping people calling Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other obvious locations. After fighting the Patriot Act tooth and nail, outing and criticizing our foreign intelligence gathering procedures ( constant whining of abuse ), now they are attacking our domestic information gathering procedures. These people won’t be happy until New York City is a sitting duck again.
And, to make matters worse, media is more than happy to oblige them. Wiretapping 500 people? Give me a freaking break. This isn’t barely a middle page story. If it weren’t for the constant harping of the above mentioned politicos, it would not be a story at all. The media made a hero out of Colin Powell when he criticized certain aspects of the Iraq war. But, very few are making this quote in regards to the current flames being fanned by Kennedy, Feingold, et al:
Wonder why that is?
23
Dec
Some members of Senate wanted more time to get the bugs worked out of The Patriot Act. Congress said let’s take a year or so. The Senate decided that was too long. So, they said let’s take six months. Congress decided that as well was too long and said let’s take one month. The Senate more or less said OK, that’s all we need. The President said enough of this silliness, come back next month.
Now, this is what January looks like for those Senators that after four years, decided they needed more time to work the bugs out before voting.
January
| M | T | W | Th | F | Sat | Sun |
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
Starting January 9th, the Alito confirmation begins. Some of those very same Democrats promising filibusters on the Department of Defense and The Patriot Act are promising a filibuster on Alito as well. Now, granted the schedule moves perfectly, we got no problem. One filibuster and the whole thing becomes a mess.
January will be very interesting in the US Senate.
( For what it’s worth, I don’t have a problem with them arguing the merits of the bill itself. But, I HATE filibusters. One kid holding his breath does not make for good government. )
Without having anything to go on, I think the root of the oppositin to The Patriot Act is seeded a lot deeper than "the wiretap scandal". You have to go back about a decade to understand the chain of events that led to this current debate IMO. I did a synopsis over "what went wrong" in regards to 911 during the 911 Commission investigation. I think it does a good job setting the stage for the rest of my assumption. From a post I made on The Motley Fool on June 4, 2002:
http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/wh-19940504.txt
Start by reading this, if you want. If you don’t want to read it, then ignore the rest of what I have to say on this topic, because it won’t make any sense. It doesn’t make a lot of sense any way.
May 4, 1994, the ever diligent policy wonk of a president signed into effect by executive order, ergo by-passing Congress, the "U. S. Counterintelligence Effectiveness Executive Order 12333". This is the synopsis:
The President’s decision to take these significant steps of restructuring U.S. counterintelligence policy and interagency coordination, followed a Presidential Review of U.S. counterintelligence in the wake of the Aldrich Ames espionage investigation. The President, in issuing this Directive, has taken immediate steps to improve our ability to counter both traditional and new threats to our nation’s security in the post-Cold War era.
Executive Order 12333 designates the National Security Council (NSC) "as the highest Executive Branch entity that provides review of, guidance for and direction to the conduct of," among other things, counterintelligence policies and programs. Consistent with E.O. 12333, the President directed the creation of a new CI structure, under the direction of the NSC, for the coordination of CI policy matters in order to integrate more fully government-wide counterintelligence capabilities, to foster greater cooperation among the various departments and agencies with CI responsibilities and to establish greater accountability for the creation of CI policy and its execution. This new structure will ensure that all relevant departments and agencies have a full and free exchange of information necessary to achieve maximum effectiveness of the U.S. counterintelligence effort, consistent with U.S. law.
OK, so now let’s figure out who the National Security Council is that governs that policy making board:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/
The National Security Council is chaired by the President. Its regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the statutory military advisor to the Council, and the Director of Central Intelligence is the intelligence advisor. The Chief of Staff to the President, Counsel to the President, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are invited to attend any NSC meeting. The Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget are invited to attend meetings pertaining to their responsibilities. The heads of other executive departments and agencies, as well as other senior officials, are invited to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.Clinton’s order, basically gave power to the NSC that it had since 1947 when Truman enacted it, however, expanded it to include just about anybody he wanted on the council. ( What does the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy have to offer in regards to counterintelligence and national security? ). However, he also gave policy making authority to the NSC whereas it had been done inside the various departments in the past.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
This is the current structure of the NSC. I would quote the line that coordinates policy, but if you read it, there were a myriad of sub-committees that had policy making authority. I can see where this is confusing as hell. At the bottom of that link you will see how Bush re-organized it once again, stripping the policy making authority into very streamlined lines of authority. This looks like a very good move to me. However, I digress…..http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/NSChistory.htm#Clinton
Clinton’s first act as President was to appoint members to the NSC.
On January 21, 1993, in PDD 2, President Clinton approved an NSC decision-making system that enlarged the membership of the National Security Council and included a much greater emphasis on economic issues in the formulation of national security policy..The National Security Council framework in the Clinton administration included an NSC Principals Committee, a forum available to Cabinet-level officials to discuss and resolve issues not requiring the President’s participation…
Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a longtime foreign policy adviser to Clinton…. became National Security Adviser in March 1997…. Berger initiated a review of principles that would guide the foreign policy of Clinton’s second term. These included the integration of Eastern and Western Europe without provoking tensions with Russia; promoting more open trade; improving defenses against such transnational threats as terrorism and narcotics; and promoting a strong and stable Asian-Pacific community by seeking trade cooperation with China and avoiding confrontation on human rights issues. In the spring and summer of 1997, the National Security Council became occupied with such issues as the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Treaty, NATO enlargement, the Middle East peace process, the U.S-Russian Summit at Helsinki, and the Denver Economic Summit.
OK, let’s look at Sandy Berger:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/march97/berger_3-27.html
From an interview with Margaret Warner shortly after being appointed:
I don’t need to know everything, nor should I–should they feel compelled to pass everything up the line.This part just blows me away:
MARGARET WARNER: Attorney General Reno today defended the FBI’s decision to refuse your NSC’s request for some counter-intelligence information about China’s alleged attempts to subvert the U.S. election, and this was information you’re asking for, for Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, before her first trip to China. Now, are you–are you comfortable with that? How do you feel about that, that the FBI would not give you the information?SAMUEL (SANDY) BERGER: Well, the FBI is in a difficult position. Obviously, it has a law enforcement responsibility and a need to preserve the integrity of that law enforcement process. I would hope when there are matters touching on national security that there would be a willingness to share that information to the extent they deem appropriate.
OK, so Sandy Berger is the Director of the National Security Council, which coordinates information and policy of the FBI, the FBI immediately refuses to give the NSC information it has requested, and Janet Reno says that’s ok. Along the same lines, I never knew the FBI was law "enforcement", I was always under the impression they simply investigated. I know how the political process works, and how subordinates think and work. Janet Reno’s act right there gutted the authority of the NSC, which is the entity that is supposed to coordinate the FBI and CIA. If the NSC is unable to enforce its authority, then neither agency will feel compelled to respond to it. Therefore, there really is no policy authority for those agencies. Since Clinton placed a stop-gap between himself and the policy making board, and Berger did not feel compelled to stay on top of issues, and Janet Reno felt she had more authority over the FBI than the FBI’s policy making board, I can see how things got to where they did. Reno had already had a history of enforcing rights over the law ( see Gonzalez for a good example ), so I can see where a director within the FBI, who having no support from his policy making board, would not allow the potential violation of a person’s rights even though they were a foreign national and Clinton had signed a previous executive order allowing it. They were being directed by Janet Reno, not the President or the Director of the National Security Council, and Janet Reno was not their supervisor. That’s screwed.
And to beat it all, the lawsuit that emasculated the NSC was over Albright’s efforts to normalize relations with China, at Diane Feinstein’s insistence. And now Feinstein wants to know what went wrong. Give me a break. I hope she finds out. If Congress can’t figure it out for her, I’ll give her a call myself.
I may have gotten some parts of this wrong, but I can’t see how anyone can get it right.
The post is long, and full of related material. But, what it boils down to, and I’ve read this other places as well, is the Clinton was a master at CYA. What he did was basically get EVERYONE involved so that NO one person could pin the blame on him. Pretty much the very first thing Bush did as President was to re-organize the NSC. He stripped it down, made it simpler, and cut a LOT of people ( read Senators ) out of the loop. People like Boxer, Feinstein, Feingold, and others who were in the know were suddenly not. To me, that explains the almost bizarre logic Feingold is using to attack The Patriot Act ( I pick on Feingold because he’s opposed The Patriot Act from day one. ). He’s muddling all together into one big issue, as did Dahlia Lithwick. I don’t really think with these people it’s an issue of The Patriot Act. It’s an issue of having one person in charge of our security that they don’t like. I stated in a previous post that some of these people want our security returned to 9/10/01 mentality. I think now I underestimated that opinion. They want our country, read President, returned to 11/01/2000.
That STILL led up to 9/11. These people need to be stopped.
Dahlia Lithwick of Slate has a LONG article on why the Bush administration won’t obey the law. She sums up the gist of her opinion as such:
At the start of this "war," Congress thought it was authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan. But now we’ve learned that in so doing it also gave the president limitless powers to break the law. Congress thought it was passing the Patriot Act. But it was actually giving the government broad and seemingly open-ended new surveillance authority. We believed the executive branch to be bound by the rule of lawby the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and the ancient writ of habeas corpus. But the president was redefining torture, disregarding international conventions, and granting himself broad discretion to name and imprison enemy combatants for years on end.
The issue she totally ignores when coming to her conclusions and deriding those that agree with Bush is that the US legal system has not found ANY of those things to be be illegal. Not one. She just assumes it’s all illegal and runs with it. She then takes that leap of faith and does what I criticized Schumer and Feingold for doing ( in which I was promptly called an idiot for pointing out ):
Americans believed they were bargaining in good faith with their government over the original deal struck in 1978 when Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA was supposed to represent a compromise between security and civil liberties, by making it illegal to spy on Americans without judicial oversight but setting the bar for such oversight quite low. Even as amended by the Patriot Actwhich further lowered the standards for a FISA warrantthe statute still purported to adhere to the fundamental bargain: Americans would not be spied upon by their government without basic constitutional checks in place.
She ties FISA in with The Patriot Act. None of the issues she raises in the first paragraph have anything to do with the issues she’s raising in the second. That is the same leap of faith I pointed out in Feingold’s text. Bush had no more or less rights to spy on people pre-Patriot Act than post-Patriot Act. By arguing against the Patriot Act ( which she is doing through the backdoor by saying Bush has abused it illegally ), she’s not even addressing the issues she’s complaining about. Go ahead, gut every single provision of The Patriot Act if it makes the Lithwicks and Feingolds happy. And once you do, Bush ( read Clinton, Carter, or any president ), will have exactly the same capability as they had before in regards to wiretapping. All The Patriot Act does is expand the technology, it does NOT expand the definition of who is wiretapped.
She goes on, it gets tiresome:
There are two explanations for the Bush administration’s failure to stay within the boundaries of the legal structures for which it’s bargained: One is that the administration believes it is fighting this war on its own; the courts, the Congress, and the American people are all standing in its way. The other is that the administration is convinced that none of our statutes or policies or systems will actually work in a pinch. Our laws aren’t just broken. They are unfixable.
I don’t recall anyone in the Bush administration ever suggesting that. Ever. She cites and quotes Alberto Gonzales:
The former argument was offered this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who defended the secret spy program with the astonishing claim that Congress wasn’t told because Congress would not have passed it.
The quotes I read are:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Soledad, provides that you must get a court order to engage in electronic surveillance … except as otherwise authorized by Congress. We believe that other authorization by Congress exists in the authorization to use military force that was passed by the Congress in the days following the attacks of September 11, yes.
Ms. Lithwick is taking Gonzales’ statements WAY out of context. That’s the only way she can justify her totally erroneous garbage. Bottom line, no law has been broken. It’s been charged, Ms. Boxer loves tossing around the word "impeachment", but neither Lithwick, the media in general, Feingold, or even Michael Moore can point to where Bush has broken the law. That’s a major point when considering making the argument of "Why won’t the Bush administration obey the law?". The question I have is "Why won’t Slate back up their comments"?. Point to the example of the law being broken ( as proven in court, not by the media ), then make your case.
And, for what it’s worth, Gonzales also is the only person that seems to understand how wiretaps fit into The Patriot Act ( although no one is listening ):
While the wall primarily blocked the flow of information from intelligence investigators to law enforcement investigators, another set of barriers, before the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, often prevented law enforcement officials from sharing information with intelligence personnel and others in the government responsible for protecting the national security. Federal law, for example, was interpreted generally to prohibit federal prosecutors from disclosing information from grand jury testimony and criminal investigative wiretaps to intelligence and national defense officials even if that information indicated that terrorists were planning a future attack, unless such officials were actually assisting with the criminal investigation. Sections 203(a) and (b) of the USA PATRIOT Act, however, eliminated these obstacles to information sharing by allowing for the dissemination of that information to assist Federal law enforcement, intelligence, protective, immigration, national defense, and national security officials in the performance of their official duties, even if their duties are unrelated to the criminal investigation. (Section 203(a) covers grand jury information, and section 203(b) covers wiretap information). Section 203(d), likewise, ensures that important information that is obtained by law enforcement means may be shared with intelligence and other national security officials. This provision does so by creating a generic exception to any other law purporting to bar Federal law enforcement, intelligence, immigration, national defense, or national security officials from receiving, for official use, information regarding foreign intelligence or counterintelligence obtained as part of a criminal investigation. Indeed, section 905 of the USA PATRIOT Act requires the Attorney General to expeditiously disclose to the Director of Central Intelligence foreign intelligence acquired by the Department of Justice in the course of a criminal investigation unless disclosure of such information would jeopardize an ongoing investigation or impair other significant law enforcement interests.
So, once again, Feingold, Schumer, Lithwick, et al, how does gutting The Patriot Act affect wiretaps? All The Patriot Act did was enable some new technology to be used ( roving wiretaps ), and allow the various entities to share the information the wiretaps obtained. What it did NOT do is expand Bush’s ability to order them.
For what it’s worth, the debate over the Patriot Act is not over because the Senate extended it. It will be over when it’s either dead or permanently enacted. The media has obviously taken it’s side, I have taken mine. We need The Patriot Act. I feel a lot safer with it than without. It has also been WAY OVERBLOWN in what it does by people like Dahlia Lithwick and Michael Moore. Most of the civil liberties you thought you lost with the Patriot Act you never had in the first place.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
I would hope Dahlia would have learned to check her stories better before becoming a senior editor.
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Technorati USA Patriot Act
Russ Feingold is an idiot. He gave this statement supporting his opposition to The Patriot Act:
Here’s a little background Feingold fails to mention, or can’t comprehend:
Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.
In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the … courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence … We take for granted that the president does have that authority."
The passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 did not alter the constitutional situation. That law created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that can authorize surveillance directed at an "agent of a foreign power," which includes a foreign terrorist group. Thus, Congress put its weight behind the constitutionality of such surveillance in compliance with the law’s procedures.
Now, before people start bashing me for being Republican, that article was written by John Schmidt, who served for President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997 as an associate attorney general.
What it basically says, and I’ve heard this more than once, is that Bush ( Clinton ) had the authority to order wiretaps BEFORE The Patriot Act was passed. Nearly 30 years before in fact. And, he NOW has the same authority.
Russ Feingold is an idiot. What’s scary is how many people believe him. He ditched our anti-terrorism laws, putting us at risk, and accomplished NONE of his objectives. He is an idiot.
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Technorati Russ Feingold, USA Patriot Act
21
Dec
Almost immediately upon the release of the ANWR decision in the Senate, this happens:
Apparently the business sector doesn’t like the events of the last 24 hours any more than I do.
21
Dec
In the last 24 hours, the Democrats:
- Returned us to the intelligence agenda that led directly to 9/11.
- Told the Middle East that we’re not willing to do what it takes to lessen our reliance on them. Keep sending those terrorists, it’s no biggie.
- Didn’t mind too much cutting benefits for the poor, but were willing to stop the Senate dead in it’s tracks sending homeland security statements to the world.
In the last few days, the Germans have released an infamous terrorist citing he was "something normal". No Democrats have protested.
Thank your locally elected Democrat Senator for returning us to September 10, 2001. This is surreal to me.
