No, You May Not...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WARRANTLESS_SURVEILLANCE?SITE=IDBOI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

John Yoo can kiss my ass, by the way.

 

Fine, have the damn ACLU fight the war on terror.

We'll be getting hit every other freakin' week.

 

Mark, don't get him started.

Ignore it, and the thread'll be on page 4 in an hour.

 

Yes, the federal judiciary hates America.
Welcome, once again, to the Pinochets of the mind.

 

One of these days you'll get out of the mindset that even terrorists have rights.

 

I don't have a problem with the surveillance... it's that Bush broke the law to do it.

Pass a law - disband the FISA court - whatever.

In the current environment, I'd think it would be easy to get laws passed granting all kinds of surveillance.

Just go about it the right way...

 

As always, Luggie...the voice of reason...

;D

 

The misconception in these stories is that they are protecting the terrorists' rights.
That's not it.
It's protecting your rights.
What if, hypothetically, the government decides you are an undesirable. You have done nothing, but the precedent has been set that the constitution can be put aside for those people officials decide "are guilty"
Who or what is going to protect you from that?
It is the same rights that must be applied to everyone. You can't pick and choose who is protected and who isn't.

 

You all put an awful lot of stock in the government if you think that only terrorists get the benefit of the Bush-Cheney-supersecret beyond-Constitutional-powers.

I'd rather stick to the Constitution and keep plinking away. Otherwise what horrors could we see. Maybe someone would start a war based on lies in a country that had little to do with terrorism, torture prisoners, lock innocent people away in a foreign jail with no lawyer, etc. etc.

All those things could happen if we aren't careful.

 

And I'm not entirely sure I ever said that. (Although, nobody should lose their rights just because some DoJ bureaucrat writes a memo calling them a "terrorist.")  What I do believe is that we have a Constitution worth defending, and that this president doesn't have any interest in doing so, and so the rest of us have to be up to the job. Luggie's right, although I wouldn't disband the FISA court, and I would point out that the British cops all had warrants in hand last week, and that the judge here said it better than I can:
"We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution."

 

I think that's all that the ACLU and the federal judge were trying to say.

As long as you have a warrant, surveil away.

 

"Fine, have the ACLU fight the war on terror"?

That's the response of a grown man?

We have laws. The President, I would think, with both houses of Congress and the Federal judiciary on his political side of the aisle, has a little bit of power in determining what those laws are?

You want to wiretap people? Fine. Get a warrant.
You want to wiretap terrorists without a warrant? Fine, pass a law making it legal and explain to the public who qualifies as a terrorist.
You want to be made at someone because you're scared of dying? Fine, be mad at the president who ignored the law.

How the ACLU did anything wrong here in anyone's eyes boggles the mind. They're fighting some very important battles in the war on terror, battles only a fool with no sense of history would think need not be fought.