Bush authorized spying on US citizens more than 3 dozen times

So much for the "I did it once because it was really important excuse."

For three years Bush didn't bother going to congress to try to get the law changed, he simply ignored the law and broke it - over 36 times.

Tell me the difference between what the Republicans have turned our country into and a two-bit dictatorship? It's no wonder the world now hates us. Look at what we've become. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Orchid Blogging

Oncidium ornithorhynchum

My picture doesn't really do this one justice. (You can see a nicer pic here.) It's a species plant that I find hard to grow. I had one last year and died last winter, so I'm trying one again. The flowers are VERY small and the plant blooms with hundreds of them, it's quite pretty. But the best thing is the smell. It's hard to describe, but it's absolutely wonderful. Sweet in a something-warm-and-desserty kind of way, and the smell wafts across my apartment. But like I said, I find it hard to keep alive. Time will tell this winter.

Enjoy. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Saw Brokeback Mountain. I loved it. Kate loved it. John thought it was very good and says Heath Ledger deserves an Oscar. Rob left the movie very satisfied.

John will give a more thorough review later.

It was very intense...and emotionally draining. Read the rest of this post...

Off to see Brokeback Mountain at 7...

With Rob and Joe and our friend Cate. We already know Rob will cry, but I'm curious what the rest of us will think. Will blog about it later. Read the rest of this post...

Bush should be impeached

From Kevin Drum's blog (guest blogger Hilzoy)

...Bush signed an order allowing the NSA to spy on US citizens without a warrant.

This is against the law. I have put references to the relevant statute below the fold; the brief version is: the law forbids warrantless surveillance of US citizens, and it provides procedures to be followed in emergencies that do not leave enough time for federal agents to get a warrant. If the NY Times report is correct, the government did not follow these procedures. It therefore acted illegally.

Bush's order is arguably unconstitutional as well: it seems to violate the fourth amendment, and it certainly violates the requirement (Article II, sec. 3) that the President "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don't care. It's bad for the country, and that matters most.

But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it's not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.

And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

I agree. Read the rest of this post...

Why didn't the NY Times publish the domestic spying story last year...before the election?

Read the post from Will Bunch on this subject. He asks and gives some good answers to that question.

Okay, we'll never know for sure whether the NY Times helped Bush during the 2004 by holding back the story that he allowed spying on US citizens without warrants -- an action that is illegal. This looks like another situation where the Bush team cowed the media by playing the politics of national security. Bunch nails it:

And there lies the real story behind the story. Because it appears it may have been possible for the Times to publish at least some of the details of the Bush-ordered domestic spying before Nov. 2, 2004, the day that the president nailed down four more years. Although Bush won by 2 percent nationally, a switch of just 59,302 Ohio voters from Bush to John Kerry would would have put the Democrats back in the White House.

Would Bush won the election if the extent of his seemingly unconstitutional domestic spying had been known? We'll never know. For roughly a year, the White House successfully leaned on the Times to keep the story under wraps. It's not known when the Bush lobbying of the Times began. But it is clear that the warning signs about the program -- the alarm bells that likely triggered the Times investigation in the first place -- were going off by mid-2004, months before the vote.

We do know that Bush and his campaign played the national security card over and over during the election. The media played right in to that canard over and over. Meanwhile, many members of the MSM knew that White House staffers had betrayed an undercover CIA agent. Now, we know the Times had explosive information about a domestic spying operation. And, they call it a liberal media. Read the rest of this post...

ACTION ALERTS: Tell Congress to kill the Patriot Act until we get answers about Bush's illegal domestic spying

With the successful filibuster of the Patriot Act, don't breathe a sigh of relief - it's just been put on hold.

Now, more than ever, it's required that you contact your two Senators and tell them to reject the "Patriot" Act. (See below for contact info and message.)

A couple of things to point out from the Washington Post article:

The White House made no comment last night. A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages.

Congressional sources familiar with limited aspects of the program would not discuss any classified details but made it clear there were serious questions about the legality of the NSA actions.
...
It has also involved teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel stationed in major U.S. cities conducting the type of surveillance typically performed by the FBI: monitoring the movements and activities -- through high-tech equipment -- of individuals and vehicles, the official said.

1. Defense department employees are stationed WITHIN THE UNITED STATES to spy on Americans without a court order. And people within the Congress think it might be illegal.

2. This administration time and time again has used 9/11 to simply ignore whatever laws they don't agree with. They used it in foreign policy, invading Iraq, lying to the American people telling them Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when it didn't. The White House attitude is quite simple - we know we're right and we're going to do it no matter what the law.

3. This administration doesn't believe in the Constitution or the rule of law. 9/11 was used to suspend the Constitution, the Geneva Convention, and any number of laws. (Yes, it really is that bad.) There is nothing at all "patriotic" about the US military and NSA illegally spying on citizens. Average Americans most certainly wouldn't reward the Bush administration with a permanent extension of the Patriot Act and congress should either.

ACTION ONE:
Visit this page to find your two Senators' phone numbers and call them. Tell them not to renew the Patriot Act until the Bush administration is held accountable for breaking US law in order to spy on American citizens. It's time the Congress finally did its job as an equal branch of government. No more blank checks for a White House that is breaking the law and spying on its own citizens.

And now from the original New York Times piece that started this all off:

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Delayed for a year? Was the White House really concerned about terrorism? Or was it politics? What did the New York Times know and exactly when did they know it? What was going on a little more than a year ago? The President faced reelection.

Did The New York Times know about this story before the 2004 Presidential Election? I would hate to imagine that the New York Times knew this story before the election and didn't run with it. In the days of Judy Miller and Bob Woodward, you just can't give the media the benefit of the doubt. The New York Times needs to come clean with the American people.

ACTION TWO:
Write The New York Times Public Editor and ask him to come clean on when the Times first knew about this story: public@nytimes.com Read the rest of this post...

If Bush thought eavesdropping laws were too onerous post 9/11, he was required to ask Congress to CHANGE THE LAW, not just violate it for 3 years

This new domestic eavesdropping scandal has nothing to do with September 11. Rather, it has everything to do with George Bush thinking he's living an episode of the hit spy show "24," where a fictional US anti-terror agent regularly breaks the law in order to catch the bad guy.

Unfortunately, George Bush isn't Kiefer Sutherland, and 24 is only a TV show.

We now know that for the past 3 years the Bush administration broke American law in order to spy on American citizens. Why? Bush says it's because the current law was so onerous that our spy agencies couldn't find the terrorists in a moment's notice.

Maybe that's true, maybe it's not.

But, if the president of the United States thinks US civil rights and privacy laws are too onerous and are hampering the war on terror, maybe - MAYBE - he breaks the law the first time the issue comes up - let's face it, he's afraid Osama is running out the door and Bush doesn't have time to call a judge. Okay, it's possible.

But Bush didn't do this once. He did it for the past 3 years.

The first time you break the law to catch a terrorist who is fleeing, I might forgive you. But after that incident passes, you go to Congress and you ask them to change the law to address this urgent need. You do NOT just shrug your shoulders and break the law repeatedly for 3 years because you're just too proud to ask Congress - to ask OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS - to weigh the case for and against your radical proposal to spy on the American people.

This is incredibly serious. Bush did what a dictator does, not what an American president should have done.

In America, when the president has a problem with the law he goes to Congress and presents his case, and asks our elected officials to weigh the merits of the case and then vote on changing the law. Only dictators say to hell with Congress, to hell with our laws, to hell with our democratic process.

This isn't just wrong what Bush did, it isn't just criminal, it violates the most basic tenets of our democratic form of government. We have a man in power in the White House who thinks he is above the law. Bush's holier than thou snubbing of the rule of law, the will of the American people, and the truth needs to stop now. From the invasion of Iraq to this current scandal, we see a disturbing pattern of a rather-average man who's thinks he's too good and too smart to be honest with the American people.

We need an immediate independent investigation, and if this story is confirmed, Bush should resign or be removed from office. Read the rest of this post...

Kill the Patriot Act until we get answers from Bush on his domestic spying

NO new domestic anti-terror legislation should be passed until Bush answers some questions. This is absurd. We're going to give him these powers for another 4 years when we just found out he abused them? I don't think so. Read the rest of this post...

Filibustered: The Patriot Act

The Senate just voted against invoking cloture on the Patriot Act. That means another failure for Majority Leader Frist and his President who needed 60 votes to end the debate and have a vote. They got 52. 47 Senators voted against cloture.

After the vote, Leahy offered a compromise to extend the Patriot Act for three months so it won't expire. But, Frist is opposed. Read the rest of this post...

Bush can only talk about some ongoing legal proceedings

Apparently, the unwritten White House policy is that Bush will talk about ongoing legal proceedings if it's good politics. So, he could talk about DeLay's legal trouble and proclaim him innocent, but talking about the Plame scandal is off limits. Scotty got lots and lots of questions about that at the briefing yesterday. And, of course, he couldn't give a real answer. E&P; has the transcript....definitely worth a read:

Q But it's hypocritical. You have a policy for some investigations and not others, when it's a political ally who you need to get work done?

MR. McCLELLAN: Call it presidential prerogative; he responded to that question. But the White House established a policy --

Q Doesn't it raise questions about his credibility that he's going to weigh in on some matters and not others, and we're just supposed to sit back and wait for him to decide what he wants to comment on and influence?

MR. McCLELLAN: Congressman DeLay's matter is an ongoing legal proceeding --

Q As is the Fitzgerald investigation --

MR. McCLELLAN: The Fitzgerald investigation is --

Q -- As you've told us ad nauseam from the podium.

MR. McCLELLAN: It's an ongoing investigation, as well.

Q How can you not -- how can you say there's differences between the two, and we're supposed to buy that? There's no differences. The President decided to weigh in on one, and not the other.

MR. McCLELLAN: There are differences.

Read the rest of this post...

Bush Domestic Spying probably illegal

The Washington Post picked up the major NY Times scoop on the Bush Domestic Spying Program. This is a brewing scandal and experts are questioning whether Bush broke the law:

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University, said the secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity.

The law governing clandestine surveillance in the United States, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, prohibits conducting electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. A government agent can try to avoid prosecution if he can show he was "engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction," according to the law.

"This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said Martin, who has been sharply critical of the administration's surveillance and detention policies. "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans."

Serious charges for a very serious issue. Too bad we don't have a Congress that actually does oversight. Read the rest of this post...

Army hits recruiting target but accepting very low scores, again

The Army has definitely moved on from only accepting 2% of low scoring candidates (those who scored between 16-30 out of 99) and more recently they were claiming the target to be around 4%. Last month the Baltimore Sun reported that the low scoring candidates were 12% of the total in October but the Army made assurances that they would be on target (4%) at the end of the year. For November, the Army is only saying "double digits" so that could mean just about anything. At least we have an open and transparent government that does not try to hide information from taxpayers. Read the rest of this post...

Friday Morning Open Thread

Okay, it's established, I am over the Today Show. Is there anything worth watching in the morning where I can actually get news? Read the rest of this post...

Congress report says that Bush had more pre-war intelligence

Shocking. Who would have guessed since the administration has repeatedly said otherwise so many times? Go figure why more and more Americans do not trust the administration.

Democrats said the 14-page report contradicts Bush's contention that lawmakers saw all the evidence before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, stating that the president and a small number of advisers "have access to a far greater volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information."

The Bush administration has routinely denied Congress access to documents, saying it would have a chilling effect on deliberations. The report, however, concludes that the Bush administration has been more restrictive than its predecessors in sharing intelligence with Congress.

Read the rest of this post...

Turkish author to stand trial for insulting "Turkishness"

Orhan Pamuk is perhaps the most well known author in Turkey and internationally with books in 20 languages. Today his trial begins in a case regarding what conservatives view as his insults to Turkey's national identity. Earlier in the year Pamuk openly questioned why nobody in Turkey ever discussed the thousands of Kurds and a million Armenians who were killed in Turkey during WWI. For a country that is trying hard to join the EU, this strange trial is not doing them any favors and is only going to damage their image throughout the region. It also is highlighting the other lesser known Turks who are also standing trial on similar charges. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

I was at a dinner tonight for the neighborhood association and a guy asked me what I did for a living. It was the first time that I can think of that I had to tell a stranger "I'm a blogger." It was weird. I almost felt like I had to justify myself, though I didn't. And it clearly was the first time anybody had told this guy that they blogged for a living. Anyway, it was just weird, kind of like telling a stranger you're gay when you don't want to tell them but you kind of don't have a choice because of the question they just asked you. Yeah I know, weird comparison, but that's what it felt like. Just thought I'd share. Read the rest of this post...