One good reason TO bother with it, and the reason why I brought it up in the first place: if it’s any indication of the arguments Republicans will use, it’s better to be prepared to deal with them.
Thats pretty devestating to anyone trying to argue that Congress authorized these wiretaps with the AUMF.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the special FISA court the one that decides whether or not to grant a FISA warrant? ISTM like the FBI General Counsel’s office gave up too easily.
I’d think more of it if it included actual language from those decisions and stuff. It’s easy to buffalo people in an op-ed column, where you can implicitly say, “X supports my argument entirely, but I don’t have room to even fully cite it here, let alone quote from it.”
The implications of this are pretty staggering: if the President has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping, in the United States, without warrants, for foreign intelligence purposes, then who’s to know whether he’s wiretapping just for those purposes, or whether he’s wiretapping anyone and everyone, for whatever reason strikes his fancy?
That’s a pretty big carte blanche for the President to become Big Brother. There’s just no way I can believe the courts have repeatedly given such a grant of effectively unlimited surveillance power to the President. Absent appropriate cites and quotes, I’m gonna call reductio ad absurdum.
If the administration floated the idea in Congress for a law permitting them to detain people in Hamdi’s situation, and were turned down… do you believe that would make one iota of difference to the Supreme Court’s decision?
It may sound crazy, I know… but one thing the courts do NOT do when trying to resolve a question of legislative intent is send a note back the legislature asking, “Say, what did you guys mean by this?”
So what. I don’t care.
Wasn’t that one of MY points down in the Pit???
Wow. I’ve been saying I thought it was illegal. Me, with no fancy law degree or anything. Imagine. A FISA judge resigns because he has the same concerns.
“Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.”
It’s just a replay of the Nixonian argument that “anything the President does is legal”. It didn’t work then, it won’t work now.
It would be awful hard to disavow it at this point, he came right out and said in effect “I’m doing it and I’m going to keep doing it”. How do you disavow something you’ve already said you plan to keep doing?
Oh, I wish we could be sure of that. It’s quite surprising how many people, including some with legal training, buy the claim that after 9/11 everything is so different that all bets are off. Since the constitution made the president commander and chief and he was authorized to use the armed forces in the war on terrorism, whatever he decides to do might be unfortunate but it is all legit seems to be the line.
There is a glimmer of hope though. The 4th circuit appeals court just turned down the Justice Dept.'s petition(?), motion(?), or whatever, to move Jose Padilla’s trial to a civilian court. Speculation is that they wanted it moved because there is action ongoing to get a Supreme Court review of the legitimacy of trying Padilla, a US citizen, in a military court and the administration dosen’t want such a review.
Right church, wrong pew. The administration is trying to dodge a SCOTUS ruling on whether it can hold citizens w/o charges*, not whether they can be tried in a military court. Remember, Bush doesn’t want Padilla tried anywhere. In fact he didn’t even want to bring charges against him-- just detain him “indefintely”.
*IE, declare him an illegal enemy combatant even though he is a US citizen, arrested on US soil
Hey shitstain: I posted that in response to someone else’s question.
I don’t care that you don’t care. How’s THAT for elevating the level of discourse here?
And I thought I was in the Pit.
My deepest apologies. If I could report my own post, I would.
I would take it as a kindness if someone would report this, and if a Mod would remove the first two words of that post. I certainly didn’t intend to use that sort of rejoiner in GD. It’s confusing to have two threads proceeding in roughly the same fashion in GD and the Pit.
Done. In future I think mods don’t mind if you report someone else’s thread above or below yours.
Thanks. I e-mailed tomndebb, but I figured the “report the post” would notify everyone and be the better approach.
It’s a good lesson. Even in the Pit, when I give in to the fleeting temptation to descend into vulgar language, I’m almost never happy with the result later.
I think, with decent debates happening in both this thread and a pit thread, and with this thread being an Alaricthegoth title special, it’s an easy mistake to make.
If it was up to me. I’d just ignore it and chalk it up to simple confusion.
Sorry. Legal concerns prevent Mods from altering text in a post other than to correct vB tags or to correct bad links or break inappropriate links.
You’ll just have to live with the knowledge that you need to be more careful remembering where you post.
[ /Moderator Mode ]
( Behold the approaching petard…prepare to be hoisted…)
Might the exchange of notes cited by Daschle be germane to your prior proposed mitigation of presidential culpability based upon his subjective belief that he was acting within the powers granted him?