Attorney General Says Wiretap Lawsuit Must Be Thrown Out 493
Mr Pink Eyes writes with news about comments from US Attorney General Eric Holder, who said a San Francisco lawsuit over warrantless wiretapping should be thrown out, since going forward would compromise "ongoing intelligence activities." From the AP report:
"In making the argument, the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration's position on the case but insists it came to the decision differently. A civil liberties group criticized the move Friday as a retreat from promises President Barack Obama made as a candidate. Holder's effort to stop the lawsuit marks the first time the administration has tried to invoke the state secrets privilege under a new policy it launched last month designed to make such a legal argument more difficult. ... Holder said US District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can 'conduct its own independent assessment of our claim.'"
From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Informative)
Eliminate Warrantless Wiretaps. Barack Obama opposed the Bush Administration’s initial policy on warrantless wiretaps because it crossed the line between protecting our national security and eroding the civil liberties of American citizens. As president, Obama would update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability to the congressional intelligence committees to prevent future threats to the rule of law.
Also, I thought he was assembling a cabinet critical of warrantless wiretapping [nytimes.com]?
Let Mr. Holder (Score:5, Informative)
know how you feel:
Leadership
Eric Holder
Attorney General
Contact
Office of the Attorney General
(202) 514-2001
Re:It's official... (Score:1, Informative)
...we no longer have a democracy.
You're right there. [wikipedia.org]
Remember: Ballot, Soap, Jury, Ammo.
Re:Change? What change? (Score:4, Informative)
The Bush administration based their court arguments on an extended interpretation of executive privilege [nytimes.com], whereas the Obama administration is making an argument based in precedent and case law - state secrets [wired.com].
That you've presented your argument as "See, Bush is right because Obama seems to be doing the same" shows you probably know nothing about the arguments in this case, or the executive privilege abuses Bush's administration made in the name of our country.
You do your country a serious disservice with the same old mindless "my team right, your team wrong" dittohead rhetoric. Means another ignorant voter, with no idea what their government is up to, regardless which party is in office -- and no clue how to fight it.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Informative)
To be clear, I'm not trying to apologize for Obama, but you should pay very close attention to what that says:
Note, there is nothing in there about allowing existing lawsuits to go forward in order to punish those who violated the rights of Americans during the previous administration. In fact, Obama has stated, time after time, that he feels we should all just, you know, move on and get over it...
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the opposition to her comes more from her being pro-stimulus and pro-cardcheck and generally being more aligned with the Democrat party than it does from those who are "rabid anti-abortionists and bigoted anti-gay people don't mind having their civil rights and freedoms taken away (except the guns!) as long as the "fags" and those "baby killers" are controlled" as you put it... but no doubt her pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage stance didn't help her with the republicans.
So which is it? Is she really more of a Democrat who happens to anti-gun control... or more of a Republican who is pro-card check, pro-same sex marriage, pro-stimulus, and pro-abortion?
One is far easier to believe than the other personally... but mostly because I've known more of the latter than the prior over the years.
Re:It's official... (Score:5, Informative)
if Ron Paul were president, I guarantee you that he'd keep the new surveillance powers, too.
If Ron Paul were President, he might change his mind.
But as a Congressman, he opposes it. He didn't vote on the FISA bill, reportedly because he was unavailable to do so after a last-minute change to the calendar.
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/06/24/ron-paul-on-the-wiretap-bill/ [antiwar.com]
Mr. Speaker, I regret that due to the unexpected last-minute appearance of this measure on the legislative calendar this week, a prior commitment has prevented me from voting on the FISA amendments. I have strongly opposed every previous FISA overhaul attempt and I certainly would have voted against this one as well.
The main reason I oppose this latest version is that it still clearly violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution by allowing the federal government to engage in the bulk collection of American citizens' communications without a search warrant. That US citizens can have their private communication intercepted by the government without a search warrant is anti-American, deeply disturbing, and completely unacceptable.
In addition to gutting the fourth amendment, this measure will deprive Americans who have had their rights violated by telecommunication companies involved in the Administration's illegal wiretapping program the right to seek redress in the courts for the wrongs committed against them. Worse, this measure provides for retroactive immunity, whereby individuals or organizations that broke the law as it existed are granted immunity for prior illegal actions once the law has been changed. Ex post facto laws have long been considered anathema in free societies under rule of law. Our Founding Fathers recognized this, including in Article I section 9 of the Constitution that "No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." How is this FISA bill not a variation of ex post facto? That alone should give pause to supporters of this measure.
Mr. Speaker, we should understand that decimating the protections that our Constitution provides us against the government is far more dangerous to the future of this country than whatever external threats may exist. We can protect this country without violating the Constitution and I urge my colleagues to reconsider their support for this measure.
I'm not particularly enthusiastic about Ron Paul, but claiming he would support warrantless wiretapping is a misrepresentation of his public statements on the subject.
Re:It's official... (Score:4, Informative)
So, on the statement "we are no longer a democracy", you are answering: "correct, we are not a monarchy".
Truly, check it out. There are democratic republics (apparently not the US, but let's say France and Germany), non-democratic republics (US, China), democratic monarchies (Denmark for instance), and non-democratic monarchies (Saudi-Arabia). I know that you get taught in school that the US is not a direct democracy, but a representative democracy, but given that since ancient Athens we haven't seen a direct democracy, it is safe to assume that if one utters the word democracy it is with an silent 'representative'. Correcting this with saying that the US is a republic is very close to a non-sequitur.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Informative)
Us Brits were already aware that Obama follows Bush era policies.
One of the Britons detained in Guantanamo bay, Binyamin Mohamed, was finally released to the UK earlier this year. Since then he's been trying to prove that he was tortured by, or at the behest of British agents. The courts recieved documents from US intelligence that would back his claim, however their release was blocked by our foreign secretary.
Now, our foreign secretary is an idiot, and part of it is ass covering for sure, but the reason he has cited for blocking their release is that the US has threatened to cut intelligence ties with the UK meaning we could be left vulnerable to attack (as could the US) if this data were released. Originally this threat came from the Bush administration, but it seems since then the Obama administration has been asked with the same threats. Journalists and politicians here have contacted the white house to confirm this and have found that the Obama administration does in fact support this policy.
The fact is, the Obama administration has no interest in accountability for it's security services, it knows and has admitted they were complicit in torture, but it seems the extent to which they were is such a problem that they are willing to put the national security of an ally and their own national security at risk to cover this up and keep that evidence secure.
It's not like we're not used to this attitude from the US, as when a US airforce pilot was guilty of strafing British troops in an A10 in a friendly fire incident in Iraq they refused to release the pilots name for questioning and the gun camera videos etc. (which were later leaked anyway) for our enquiry into how it happened. We expected this kind of attitude of coverups from the Bush adminsitration, but the Obama administration? It did come as a suprise I'll admit.
The original story is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/guantanamo-torture [guardian.co.uk]
An update is here, the court reversed it's decision and stated the documents can be released pending the outcome of an appeal by the British government. Hopefully they'll lose it and we'll be able to see if Obama really is willing to do as he says and damage security of both countries over it:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britain-gitmo17-2009oct17,0,2433061.story [latimes.com]
Change? Not from what we can see over this side of the Atlantic, the only difference here in Europe is instead of a US president having his leg humped by Tony Blair, we've now got a US president having his leg humped by Sarkozy and Berlusconi instead.
Re:So let me get this straight.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:3, Informative)
>>>Where was the tea party during the Bush administration.....
There were a number of anti-war/anti-Bush protests. I know because I attended one of them.
>>>I support Obama, except for this.
I don't. He's raising our national debt from $120,000 to $200,000 per U.S. home, in just eight short years (2016). We're never going to be able to pay that off. First we wasted money on war; now we're wasting it on other shit. We need fiscal restraint.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:5, Informative)
I think you are the thick one here. He was implying that the current Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are already socialist in practice if not in name. and he has a pretty viable argument.
Here is a chart from Wikipedia of the size of the Federal budget for the last 14 years:
* 2010 United States federal budget - $3.60 trillion (submitted 2009 by President Obama)
* 2009 United States federal budget - $3.10 trillion (submitted 2008 by President Bush)
* 2008 United States federal budget - $2.90 trillion (submitted 2007 by President Bush)
* 2007 United States federal budget - $2.77 trillion (submitted 2006 by President Bush)
* 2006 United States federal budget - $2.7 trillion (submitted 2005 by President Bush)
* 2005 United States federal budget - $2.4 trillion (submitted 2004 by President Bush)
* 2004 United States federal budget - $2.3 trillion (submitted 2003 by President Bush)
* 2003 United States federal budget - $2.2 trillion (submitted 2002 by President Bush)
* 2002 United States federal budget - $2.0 trillion (submitted 2001 by President Bush)
* 2001 United States federal budget - $1.9 trillion (submitted 2000 by President Clinton)
* 2000 United States federal budget - $1.8 trillion (submitted 1999 by President Clinton)
* 1999 United States federal budget - $1.7 trillion (submitted 1998 by President Clinton)
* 1998 United States federal budget - $1.7 trillion (submitted 1997 by President Clinton)
* 1997 United States federal budget - $1.6 trillion (submitted 1996 by President Clinton)
* 1996 United States federal budget - $1.6 trillion (submitted 1995 by President Clinton)
Its more than doubled in 14 years and its been done by both Democrats and Republicans. Bush, supposedly the small government Conservative nearly doubled it all by himself in eight years. He not only doubled spending but cut taxes to create staggering deficits. They would have been really staggering earlier if it hadn't been for the housing bubble generating fantasy tax revenue. We don't have that bubble any more which is why deficits are going to be running more than a trillion until we gin up a new bubble(Ponzi scheme).
The U.S. GDP is maybe 14 trillion so the Federal budget alone is more than 20% of the economy. If you count secondary effects from all that spending it could easily be half our GDP now.
The budget deficits are now projected to run over a trillion a year indefinitely which is nearly as much as the ENTIRE federal budget in 1996. Of course the Fed and Treasury have also destroyed the dollar in the same period so a dollar in 1996 was worth a lot more than it is now which is why Gold is now over $1000. Gold has actually out performed the stock market the last couple decades thanks to the last couple years of economic devastation.
And of course in the last two years under both Democrats and Republicans there has been MASSIVE intervention in the economy to bail out Wall Street and Detroit. In so doing they have created massive moral hazard, by allowing giant corporations to do truly awful, incompetent, sometimes criminal things in the mortgage and auto market and just have the government step in to clean up their mess at the expense of ordinary Americans. Banksters pocketed billions and billions of dollars in the process and with collusion of their shills in government like Paulson have completely shredded free market capitalism in this country. They then turned around and have completely gutted all recent attempts to regulate them to keep them from doing it again... and they will do it again.... probably alread
Re:Knee-jerk (Score:3, Informative)
If you read the article is says exactly that.
Holder said U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who is handling the case, was given a classified description of why the case must be dismissed so that the court can "conduct its own independent assessment of our claim."
Not to mention that he assessment can't possible be independent - because it is based on evidence presented only by the respondent without the opportunity for the plaintiff to examine and refute it.
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be disingenuous. Article 8 states that privacy shall not be infringed except as provided by law, for specific purposes only (among them fighting crime).
The exact formulation of the law is not the remit of the EU, but up to the member states. And given that most of these are representative democracies building on the same philosophers as your precious Founding Fathers, it is no coincidence that in fact, the law in almost all member states requires for warrants to be issued before wiretaps can go through.
Now, that some judges just rubberstamp everything the police holds in front of them, that is a different matter. But in that we're no different from the U.S. with it's Executive-lapdog FISA court.
Mart
Re:I am really dispointed. (Score:3, Informative)
If you look hard enough, you'll discover that governments only expand in power and revenue throughout their lifetimes, never reduce.
I can think of only two counterexamples to this, and both, Cincinnatus [wikipedia.org] and George Washington [wikipedia.org], are singular leaders relinquishing massive powers after the end of a massive conflict.
This hearkens back to the adage that the best rulers are those who reluctantly accept the ruler's staff...
... so where do we find more of those?
Re:From www.BarackObama.com (Score:2, Informative)
We are now for all practical purposes living under state capitalism (a.k.a. Fascism) and that is the right wing form of Socialism. Its socialism completely against workers and for the plutocracy/kleptocracy. Obama and the Dems do throw bones to unions like the UAW but unions are just a different form of kleptocracy.
This completely mixes up economic and political systems. State capitalism is an economic system; I agree that the U.S. has moved significantly closer to this in recent years. (Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration have moved the country in the direction of state capitalism.) Plutocracy and kleptocracy are both similar in nature to state capitalism.
Fascism, however, is completely different. It's a political system characterized by authoritarianism, a one-party system, and extreme nationalism. State capitalism and/or government-established racism are common components of fascism, but are not strictly necessary. By no means does state capitalism in itself imply fascism, and the United States is definitely not a fascist state. The nationalism, use of torture, and general authoritarianism of the Bush administration had fascistic tendencies, but were not sufficient to reasonably call the country fascist as a whole.
Socialism is a completely different matter. It is both an economic and political system, characterized by distribution of wealth, democratic control of the economy, and worker control of the means of production. Socialism can be either libertarian or authoritarian, and a libertarian socialist government could represent a significant decrease in the size of government from what we have now. "Socialism completely against workers" is a contradiction; by definition, socialism supports workers. If a system does not give workers significant control, it is not socialism. The U.S. is currently nowhere even close to socialism; capitalism is established throughout the political system and the economy. A move towards state capitalism will not turn the country socialist.
Unions are not inherently part of any particular economic or political system. They are socialist in principle (more worker control), but are generally not politically radical enough or strong enough to determine a political system. Most major modern unions are quite politically moderate, so they don't really act to support either socialism or capitalism.
demachina's post seems to equate state capitalism, fascism, socialism, plutocracy, and kleptocracy as one generic political and economic system. This presents a false dichotomy between libertarian capitalism and pretty much everything else. While state capitalism and fascism sometimes align, there are plenty of state capitalists who are strongly opposed to fascism, and socialists are opposed to both state capitalism and fascism. For that matter, opposition to fascism is a major part of socialism, and fascist states are usually anti-socialist as well, so it's ridiculous to equate the two.
Support whichever system you think is best, but please use the correct terminology in talking about it.
Re:Rabid issue people - anit gay and abortion (Score:4, Informative)
Umm, just FYI, as a Canadian who is perfectly happy living in a nation that most Americans would consider virtually communist, I have to disagree rather strongly with this. And I'm sure your average European would agree with me.
Socialism, hybridized with a liberal democracy and a free (but regulated) market *does* work
As a Russian who has "USSR" as place of birth in his passport, and now living in Canada, I have to note that Canada isn't anywhere near "virtually communist", and it isn't particularly socialist either. Socialism is when all production is directly controlled and owned by the state, and free enterprise in any form is forbidden. High taxes != socialism; and not that Canadian taxes are all that high, in fact.
Canada (and most European states) is a welfare state. It's still capitalist through and through, and you have full freedom to go and earn as much money for yourself as you can and want to do; it's just that part of that money (and not a bigger part) goes towards a safety net for the rest of the citizens. Calling that "socialist" is highly misleading (and I know that you probably used that word because many Americans use it that way, so it's really directed more towards them).
Re:Enforce the Constitution - aim gun (Score:3, Informative)
I swear, Friedman/Reagan destroyed rational economic thinking for a generation. Less government spending is not always better government spending.
For starters per household debt numbers are useless because, among other reasons, they don't factor in the business/institutional share of the debt, and it's a stealthy way of bungling the mean/median income disparity. If you're going to talk debt, talk about raw dollars, or better yet or percent GDP. Right now it's at ~90% and headed to somewhere around 100% GDP. National debt is like a mortgage, lower is better, but the ability to take out a second mortgage in dry times is extraordinarily important. One thing you don't ever do (if you're rational) is become hawkish on the deficit during a recession - government spending factors into the GDP, so cutting government spending actually increases the debt/GDP ratio, additionally public spending has a multiplier factor (essentially a way of increasing the velocity of money), removing those multiplying dollars can turn a recession into a depression.
It would always be better if the debt were lower, but the real cost of constraining spending now would more than counter-balance the decreased debt. We have the largest economy in the world, as the US's global influence wanes, we will be able to support less debt, but for now with global political realities the way they are we can support the debt we carry. People are still buying our debt at very low interest rates - which in itself should tell you that there's no debt crisis. And with all the panic about China holding our debt, their share of the national debt is actually decreasing, with domestic firms are picking up the slack. It's also worth noting that every T-bill held domestically is money we owe to ourselves - it's important to keep it in the debt column, but when it's paid back it's win-win. Come back to me about the defect when we're not shedding jobs every month, or when a t-bill auction fails, or when inflation is approaching double digits.