Rep. Jane Harman Focus In Yet Another Warrantless Wiretap Scandal 312
Many different sources are talking about the latest scandal surrounding the warrantless wiretapping program. Incriminating evidence against California rep. Jane Harman was apparently captured some time ago on a legal NSA wiretap. However, Attorney General Gonzales supposedly intervened to drop the case against her because (and this is where the irony meter explodes) Bush officials wanted her to be able to publicly defend the warrantless wiretap program. "Jane Harman, in the wake of the NSA scandal, became probably the most crucial defender of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, using her status as 'the ranking Democratic on the House intelligence committee' to repeatedly praise the NSA program as 'essential to US national security' and 'both necessary and legal.'"
Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this even remotely suprising? (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't prosecute. (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course this sort of thing goes on all the time.
But there's a less sinister explanation for why Gonzalez didn't prosecute - the wiretap capturing Harman's conversation was illegal. Can't prosecute someone with an illegal wiretap.
Irony alert on many levels.
So what's the crime here? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it that Bush blackmailed a Congressman to do his political bidding? As much as I find it detestable, district attorneys do this all the time.
THIS is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The spirit of bipartisanship (Score:3, Insightful)
Both parties working together to do shitty stuff. Yay.
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
"Irony" is so overused (Score:4, Insightful)
The "irony-makes-head-asplode dept." is funny, but inaccurate.
Irony is when something is the opposite of what you would expect.
Hypocrisy, lies, and hardball intimidation tactics are *exactly* what we would expect from proponents of warrantless wiretapping.
This situation contains no irony. Just corruption. We might say, though, that "Ironically, the new administration was elected in hopes of restoring honor to the Justice Department."
Re:A Setback for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts (Score:5, Insightful)
Only to those of you recently clued in on Israel's stranglehold over US politics.
Re:A Setback for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Setback for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts (Score:4, Insightful)
They didn't "hold out" seats as bribes. They just offered to lobby Pelosi to give her the seat. With her experience she might have gotten it anyway - she was probably best qualified.
She can't very well hope to explain the entire conversation away, though. Any time you end a phone call with "this conversation never happened" it's hard to play innocent after the fact.
Not warrantless. (Score:5, Insightful)
DoJ had a warrant, apparently it was part of the AIPAC investigation.
No, the fishy part is that the Bush admin apparently blackmailed her into supporting the warrantless program.
Also, you have the Executive branch doing that ot a member of the Legislative.
This could get really interesting...
If Harman was a republican (Score:2, Insightful)
You can bet it would have been pointed out in the title of the summary and 10 more times in the summary.
Jane Harman (D - CA) (Score:2, Insightful)
There, somebody posted the usual rant, now the serious ones can be legitimately modded redundant without making the mods feel guilty.
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
You're spot on target. This wasn't treason, it was standard political quid pro quo. Admittedly, it's sometimes hard to tell the two apart....
Dems may call it treason because she turned her back on the party line. But that's personal. IANAL, but to me, this looks like obstruction, maybe tampering with evidence. Not treason.
Re:beat me to it (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe some people consider those that threaten our liberties to be our enemies... Seems reasonable to me.
Re:Jane Harman (D - CA) (Score:5, Insightful)
How hard is it to put the D after her name?
Why would you want to do that? You'll just perpetuate the myth that it actually matters.
corruption and blackmail, not irony (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason we don't want to have warrantless wiretapping is not for people like you and me; it's for this: if the government can listen in on the opposition, it can blackmail them to fall in line politically. So, this case isn't "ironic", it's what you expect to happen when warrantless wiretaps are tolerated, and it's a really bad sign.
Re:Couldn't prosecute. (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been many reasonable accusations for why the Bush warrantless wiretapping was illegal (for gathering any amount of intelligence against American citizens). You can't make a bare assertion (or implication) that it was legal because a determination of supposed legality was made by a branch of the government. The Executive branch likely wasn't duly authorized to endorse such activities by fiat.
If a law isn't from a primal document like the Constitution or Declaration, since the Federal government as constituted has absolute restrictions on its legal activities (even if we frequently ignore those restrictions), laws can be, and frequently are found to be illegal. Nothing stops law makers from cooking up ridiculous, incoherent, inconsistent, poorly thought out laws. It may seem mutually exclusive, but nothing makes a law "legal" on its own.
Re:Couldn't prosecute. (Score:4, Insightful)
Basically it is potentially a government sanctioned blackmail scenario. A kind of quid-pro-quo, "you support our legislation and we will not release what we know about you"...please explain how it is not illegal?
Re:"Irony" is so overused (Score:4, Insightful)
This makes it even more ironic - the Bush administration declined to prosecute what was likely a serious crime, based on a legal wiretap - so that they could more effectively pursue illegal wiretaps.
Re:Jane Harman (D - CA) (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the press makes party affiliation very clear... perhaps in a way they don't mean to.
When an (R) does something wrong as you note you cant(R) see(R) their(R) name(R) in(R) print(R) without(R) that(R) (R) right after their name.
On the other hand, when a politician has done something wrong and no party affiliation is mentioned they're a (D), never an (R) or an (I).
Re:Treason (Score:4, Insightful)
You're spot on target. This wasn't treason, it was standard political quid pro quo. Admittedly, it's sometimes hard to tell the two apart....
Dems may call it treason because she turned her back on the party line. But that's personal. IANAL, but to me, this looks like obstruction, maybe tampering with evidence. Not treason.
Are you sure about that? Doing AIPAC's bidding directly puts the US in conflict with the people we get a large portion of our oil from. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the US is supposed to be the welfare provider for the entire world. I find it curious that we'll have conservatives who rail against welfare to American citizens but are more than happy to send the money overseas. I know that this is a liberal who just got caught here but the liberal platform isn't anti-welfare which is what makes the conservative stance hypocritical. What part of giving handouts to Israel serves America's interests? This does nothing to enhance America's security. If we are talking about humanitarian concerns, giving no-strings-attached aid to Israel just makes it more certain the Palestinians will take it in the shorts.
This scandal is going to get the neo-nazis out in droves hooting and hollering about the evil joo's controlling the gubmint. Ignore them. I'm pissed about AIPAC but I'd be just as pissed if we had the Irish PAC leading the government around by the nose and demanding concessions to Ireland and asking us to take sides in the Troubles.
Re:The wiretap was COURT APPROVED (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing legally wrong with wiretapping so long as the wiretap is approved by the judicial branch of government.
Fixed that for you. A seal of approval by the government doesn't change whether something is morally wrong or right.
Re:Couldn't prosecute. (Score:1, Insightful)
Parent:
COTUS: Article 6:
Explanation: If it's unconstitutional, it's illegal.
Vociferation: Daktaklakpak 5576 squared! Daktaklakpak 888 warning! Utilization to the 356th power divided by warning! Daktaklakpak warning!
Re:Treason (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait a second... are you saying that the Democratic Party controlling congress supported the evil Bush plan for dominance? Why didn't I ever read about that in the news??!!
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress, which has been under Democratic control for several years. CNN isnt going to report that though, its not favorable to their agenda.
Re:Treason (Score:1, Insightful)
There's just one problem though, Isreal is officially our ally, not enemy.
Well, we're not officially at war with Israel but I would imagine that a US citizen could get in a lot of trouble for helping foreign spies even if the USA was not officially at war with the country that the spies were from. Whether the US citizen would be guilty of treason specifically would be a very complex matter of constitutional law.
More generally though, one of the basic principles that the USA is supposed to believe in is that people of different religious and racial backgrounds can live together successfully. In fact, the USA is supposed to believe that it would be wrong for a government to segregate people or discriminate against people on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, culture, etc.
If you want to get ideological you could argue that segregation (limiting where people can live, work, travel, etc.) is an infringement of individual freedom which, along with the idea of government by the people, is the founding principle of the USA.
Anyway, based on the USA's opposition to segregation and discrimination, one would expect the USA to be very wary of ethnic homelands. If the US government declared that Catholics, for example, were no longer US citizens and that a sovereign country has a right to deport non-citizens then (hopefully) people in the USA would be outraged.
In general, I would expect people in the USA to think that it was very wrong to use race or religion (or culture or ethnicity) as a criteria for granting or denying citizenship - but this is exactly what Israel does with granting Jewish "right of return" but not Palestinian "right of return".
I recognize that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complex but, considering the principles that the USA is supposed to believe in, I would be hesitant to characterize Israel as an unequivocal ally.
Re:beat me to it (Score:2, Insightful)
I feel as if you threaten my liberty.
Can I put all of your friends on trial for treason too?
It's just more Ann Coulter bullshit.
They are not allies in reality (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has false flag specialist Israel really been the US ally, as opposed to treating the US as her bitch, because of traitors like this cretin in the article and other traitors in big business, big media, and big finance and big government? They sure as hell ARE traitors. Just because they claim they aren't doesn't make it so once you look at the real data.
Why the hell should we be supporting a racist apartheid nation? I never supported racist south africa, and nor do I support Israel, they have been a plague and have put the world at peril for nuclear confrontation for decades now, all so that some European settlers can claim land that isn't theirs. If they had a beef with Germany over their particular holocaust, which is just ONE OF MANY that happened during the war, why the hell didn't we demand Germany give up some territory for some new zionist nation? The Germans are the biggest hypocrites out there now about this. Their old biblical claim to "greater zion" is pure hogwash, freaking fantasy land and I can't believe anyone on this forum falls for it.
Here's just a few references to get you started on some sorely neglected education that you need about those false "allies" who are really the biggest threat to the security of the US, USS Liberty attack [gtr5.com]-this is called levying war, get it? and don't believe the official dual nation coverup story, listen to the actual survivors and dudes who lived through it. And go ahead and google "9-11, dancing Israelis"-for more levying war, and "khazars" for a little more in depth historical background of what lying toads they are. Shrewd yes, technologically capable, yes, smart yes, but also lying sneaky deceitful skunks and jerks.
People who put the interests of some other nation over their own ARE traitors, fullstop. If they claim to be US citizens but work for another nation-traitors. That includes Israel-firsters, including those loony brainwashed flat earth snake handling Xians who are dreaming of Armageddon and some huge conflagration to bring about the Rapture, and just the normal economic traitors, then those jerk off big businessmen who are China-firsters, and so on.
Traitors. You can't have it both ways, either loyal to your own nation first, or you are a traitor and a liar and a hypocrite.
Israel, history of false flag operations [google.com]
Re:The wiretap was COURT APPROVED (Score:2, Insightful)
Morality is orthogonal to law.
Re:Treason (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:not quite right (Score:3, Insightful)
They were investigating the foreign operatives. They caught them bribing a congresswoman. That can not possibly fall outside the scope of their investigation.
Wiretap Legal, Extortion Not (Score:3, Insightful)
While I've never agreed with the legal theories that allow most wiretapping, the courts have, and this wiretap was approved by a court.
However, dropping prosecution in return for the Congresscritter actively supporting their political agenda strikes me as somewhere on the spectrum between extortion and at least partisan favoritism.
Re:Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Couldn't prosecute. (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument is that while the wiretap may have been legal, using it to subvert the independence of Congress was not - they can prosecute or not, but they can't legally blackmail. This argument calls into question all sorts of things prosecutors do every day, but there is additional reason for questioning the methods in this case since they either effect the control of a Congresswoman by the Executive or allow her control by a foreign power or both.
Re:Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
No, actually it's not. The Constitution very carefully defines treason. Giving aid and comfort to our ENEMIES is treason. Doing so to our allies isn't.
Is it sufficient reason to kick her out of the House? Yep. Send her to prison? Yep.
But you won't send her to prison on treason charges. Any shyster can get you off on those charges, with just a copy of the Constitution....
Re:beat me to it (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe some people consider those that threaten our liberties to be our enemies...
So... most federal and many state agencies are treasonous?
Re:Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
I find it curious that we'll have conservatives who rail against welfare to American citizens but are more than happy to send the money overseas.
I am sorry, but I really take offense to this comment. I am a conservative and all of my family and friends are conservative, and none of us are against welfare. We all believe that safety nets are needed because sometimes bad things do happen to people. If I had to guess, you are taking a few quotes from some fringe conservatives and sweeping the rest under the same brush.
What we don't like is the current welfare system that does not encourage people to get off the welfare system. The current system is broken and broken badly.
Re:A Setback for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Efforts (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how that countries would look like without their oil.
Re:Couldn't prosecute. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a moot point whether it was a legal or illegal wiretap. Either way corruption abounds.
If it was a legal wiretap, burying the evidence is corrupt.
If it was an illegal wiretap, using the illegitimate evidence to blackmail the representative is wrong.
So either way Gonzalez is wrong.
Luckily there's enough corruption all around to make it a non-issue.
Really the only thing that needs fixing is the person that reported this story. But I'm sure that's an issue that will be resolved quickly.
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, many of the things the public blamed Bush for are the actions of Congress
Sorry, but most of the things Bush is blamed for Bush started and Congress later enabled. For instance, consider warrantless wiretapping, which the major issue Bush wanted Harman to help with. Bush was breaking the FISA law for years, when the news broke, Congress first did nothing, and then passed a law retroactively making it 1) legal and 2) impossible to prosecute.
Also, consider the Iraq war. Bush used manufactured intelligence to justify the war, but Congress did nothing; they even cheerleaded for it.
All this is not to say that Congress has no culpability, because they do. But Congress was Republican for most of the Bush years. To say, in the context of this conversation that many of the things blamed on Bush should be blamed on Democrats, who have only been in power for two years? That's way off. You are the one with the obvious agenda.
That said, none of them deserve to keep their jobs. I can't believe people still identify with Republicans or Democrats these days.
Re:They are not allies in reality (Score:1, Insightful)
Disagreeing with Israeli policy is not antisemitism.
Disagreeing with Israeli policy is not antisemitism.
Is it starting to sink in?
Ouch (Score:3, Insightful)