Court Orders White House to Disclose Telecom Ties 147
rgiskard01 writes "Glenn Greenwald is reporting at Salon.com on a win for the EFF, in the battle for clarity regarding the telecom surveillance scandal. A federal judge ordered the Bush administration yesterday to accede to the EFF's Freedom of Information Act request. Assuming the White House follows the court order, they would have to make public their lobbying ties to the telecoms industry. 'These disclosures will reveal ... which members of Congress McConnell and other Bush officials privately lobbied. As an argument of last resort, the administration even proposed disclosing these documents on December 31 so that -- as EFF pointed out -- the information would be available only after Congress passed the new FISA bill. The court rejected every administration claim as to why it should not have to disclose these records.'" Greenwald goes on to argue that the order should be leveled against Senators as well, to get a sense of who else is in Ma Bell's pocket.
Clarification (Score:4, Insightful)
Sudden outbreak of common sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it is used every day on a different issue, it seems that common sense isn't as rare of an asset as was once believed.
If I am not mistaken (Score:4, Insightful)
He did this with knowledge and aforethought. Bush is
really a traitor to the American people.
Re:Sudden outbreak of common sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
The people are getting more and more fed up with the system and it's beginning to show itself more and more with favorable laws and judicial decisions after minor elections and before major ones.
Re:They'll ignore the court order... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:constituents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They'll ignore the court order... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why isn't this done allready? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
Specifically it seems to be records of lobbying activities. Does anyone know where the Administration's arguments for keeping this sort of thing from the public can be read? I would like to know why they think that the public shouldn't be allowed to know who is trying to sway the opinion of their representatives.
Re:Well, if it's required by law (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They'll ignore the court order... (Score:1, Insightful)
Taco, it'd sure be nice if you'd make overrated and underrated meta-moddable or just do away with them entirely.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
US Govt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If I am not mistaken (Score:5, Insightful)
Even funnier:
They don't see the contradiction.
If you s/funny/sad/ or s/funni/sadd/ it holds just as well.
But here is a newsflash for the poster:
a decade ago the SEC and FCC were filled with Clinton appointees. And *he* did that with knowledge and forethought.
a decade before that, the FCC and SEC were filled with Reagan appointees; *he* did that with knowledge and forethought.
Are we seeing a pattern here? G
uess what, 5 years from now the SEC and FCC will be filled with appointees of the next president who will do with knowledge and forethought.
Can you see the pattern yet?
Furthermore, do you want a President appointing people to the SEC and FCC without knowledge and forethought? Wouldn't you think about putting people into those posts? While it can be argued these posts should be eliminated, I hold it rational to assume that if they are going to exist that qualified individuals should hold those positions.
That's one of the differences, IMO, between a mere malcontent[1] and a genuine dissident. A malcontent will just make thing sup that sound important or impressive, and label his or her target with whatever epithet sounds denigrating at the time. If it suits a malcontent's argument to say the target (in this case the POTUS) is stupid, he or she will do so. The next day if it suits the malcontent to say the target is a criminal mastermind, he or she will do so. Why? The point is not discussion and resolution. It is about bitching, whining, or an agenda to make oneself (or political allies) feel or look better. And for some it is about blog ad revenue.
A dissident however, has no need to make such contradictory claims. A dissident doesn't care whether he or she likes the POTUS, he or she knows the POTUS gets neither blame nor credit for the economy by right (for example), or can see good and bad, agreeable and disagreeable in, for example, the POTUS regardless of party, state of origin, campaign contributor beliefs, sex, or whatever else.
And finally, there is no "The American People". We are a very diverse bunch. We do not all agree on pretty much any given political or social matter. Malcontents like to portray this fiction because it lets them imply or claim that their target is not among the group. It's a form of the logical fallacy known as appeal to popularity. It is particularly popular for nationalist malcontents to portray a country's population as a people; and for the same reasons.
1: malcontent (a person who is discontented or disgusted); not the Shakespearean/English theater Malcontent.
Re:This will be fun to watch... (Score:4, Insightful)
In politics, what you describe is called "bullring tactics". It is a very well known and effective way to keep the population under control, by diverting their attention toward an outside "enemy". An enemy that threatens the very thing that makes us human, perhaps (Nazi). Or someone that threatens our way of life (Terrorists). Or someone who corrupts our children (Commies).
This happened and still happens on many countries, not just USA. The USA is just the more obvious one. Maybe because they have such much presence on the media. Actually, you can see it happening everywhere if you study the history of any country. Sometimes the enemy is fabricated. Sometimes the enemy is real (ie: the politics got lucky and didn't have to create one). The tactics is always the same.
This is so widely known and used that you can even read about it on books (1984, Chapterhouse Dune etc). You can see it in your own country (doesn't matter where you live). You can see it in your church (in case you belong to one).
The saddest thing of all, even if you and everybody else can see plainly what these leaders are doing, 99% of the population accept it. I don't know why. Maybe people just don't want the responsibility. Maybe they like to be tricked. Maybe it is because a leader is that makes us a people (don't laugh, it is a verifiable historical truth). Maybe they just don't care. It usually takes things getting pretty serious on a personal level (something like the great depression or even worst) for they to do something.
Enters Caesar. Bullrings tactics, add some breads and circus, and you have a very simple recipe for keeping the population under control. How simple ? Take a look at the presidents of countries like Venezuela and Brazil. I'm mentioning those just to take a bit of the "anti-Bush" flavor out of this post.
Let the USA government continue to waste the country's money on all these wars for a decade or two more, and suddenly Iran and North Korea are no longer the real problem anymore.
Even if you agree with what your government is doing, don't simply accept it. Ask yourself also WHY they are doing it. Do actions and words agree ?
This EFF court case is a very good way to find out real motivations. I, for one, praise them, and hope they can manage to get the information. If the government tries to hide it, thats ok too. That by itself is enough of a message, telling us, again, what the real motivations are.
Re:Checks and balances (Score:4, Insightful)
They didn't give all out authority of one branch to interfere or "express oversight" with the another. It has to be done within the context of the constitution. This is something that makes me believe this would be overturned in future appeals.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
The supreme court never ruled on that use. Congress demanded the documents, Cheney claimed executive privilege and Congress chose not to pursue the matter any further, as they didn't think at the time anything would be gained by doing so.
So far, this has been the case of all of the Bush administration's use of Executive privilege. None have (yet) made it to the Supreme court. In previous cases where the Supreme Court has ruled (Clinton and Nixon being the two most recent), they have ruled that it covers only cases of national security, directly involving either military details or discussions with foreign nations.
Which, it should be noted, is exactly the claim made by Nixon, which the supreme court rejected in ordering him to turn over his tapes. From which, of course, someone had accidentally deleted a completely inconsequential 14 minutes.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:constituents (Score:3, Insightful)
Drugs, taxes, and Iraq are all in the Ron Paul platform, aren't they? Questioning the system? Right? And from a guy genuinely more interested in policy than his political career?
Can I ask why your image of the ideal presidential candidate, then, is a guy who (1) found celebrity lifting weights, (2) has conventional ties to a "side you're fed up with," (3) isn't running and (4) legally can't?
Directly: which Republican candidate do you want on the ballot? It's not an abstract choice.
I did process of elimination, and once I crossed out guys who remind me of Bush and guys who deny evolution, the guy left was the one whose contrasts I like. That Fox News seems to hate him is gravy.
Re:They'll ignore the court order... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and this is not an accident; it's an unusually good example of Newspeak. The word didn't just gradually evolve its meaning over time, but instead it took on its completely opposite meaning in less than a decade. This is what happens when masses of people identify with a term without knowing anything about its history. The people who identify with a party or a label simply because their parents did are not doing themselves or their parents any favor. You need neither a conspiracy nor a coincidence to explain this. As politicians and others with a media presence continued to call themselves "conservative" the former meaning simply became less and less true. So long as the change isn't too sudden, those who use the term will continue to receive the backing and political support of those to whom the term appeals. This works so well because party affiliation is best understood as a poor substitute for thinking for yourself.
The practical effect this has had is that there is no longer a choice about whether state power and size should continue to increase. You may elect either a Democrat or a Republican and in either case this will be the result; all of the arguments in the mainstream media are about how and why it should be done. Whether it's for the war effort, for senior citizen prescription drug entitlements, for a public health care system, or to bail out irresponsible home buyers who signed the dotted line on a loan they couldn't afford -- and of all of these, only the military action is a legitimate power of government -- there is always some justification being sold to us as to why government should be expanded with little attention paid to the full consequences of doing so.
don't worry too much (Score:3, Insightful)
They will loudly denounce all the very things they considered so vital. The 180-degree turn will be fun to watch, but also sad, in that I know now that they're all lying would-be totalitarians who only distrust government because they don't happen to like who's in charge that week.