“Police state” is part of the slippery slope hyperbole being associated with this issue.
It was their choice to violate it for a principle they believed in. If they were caught, they paid the price. So should the leakers. They can pat themselves on the back in jail.
I think “jury nullification” exists for just this kind of situation. What jury would convict them?
Since everyone is happily spinning all sorts of hypothetical situations, let me pose another one for the **OP.
Evil One**, you wake up one morning to discover that your phone conversations for the past 2 years have been recorded. A file exists which logs every web site you’ve ever been to, every e-mail you’ve ever sent or received, every post you’ve submitted to the SDMB, and every purchase you’ve made on you credit/debit card.
You OK with this?
I suspect this is the leaker on the NSA issue. And it looks like it’ll be a test of the whistleblower laws.
on another note:
How quaint. So George is king? So if Bush’s legal council informs he that they find it perfectly legal for George to order assasinations of US citizens on US soil by the NSA, he would be completely within his presidential powers as long as he informs Congress? Yet Congress would have no power to contest his new presidential power because anything the NSA does is secret?
You are making the mistake of believing that everyone thinks as you do.
Some people are actually OK with extraordinary measures being taken to catch terror suspects before they can act.
Of course not. Nor would anyone be. But since I haven’t broken any laws, the best federal agents could do is critique my choice of porn and giggle over the pet names I use for my wife.
On the other hand, if they catch me with anthrax or a nuclear bomb in my basement…sucks to be me.
The beautiful thing about the jury system is that conviction of a crime has to be unanimous. One or two dissenters is enough (at least, for a mistrial, if not acquittal).
I hope Mr. Tice is heard…behind closed doors at first to make sure that no further damage is done. Perhaps he will uncover a real problem that needs to be addressed…or perhaps he is on a quest for relevance.
Congress has the power to cut the NSA’s purse-strings if it so chooses. That’s the point of congressional oversight.
I can engage all of you that disagree with me in an “if-fest” all day long if you like…but it always comes back to hypothetical slippery-slope hyperbole. The threat to our nation from terrorism is anything but.
Hoping that one or two jury members is blinded to facts by ideology is not a huge endorsement of the strength of your case.
So he would be like a President?
Seems reasonable. I nominate Ken Starr.
Regards,
Shodan
Slight Nitpick. Actually unless those members have are already on the original distribution [in which case they’d already know] for that information, disclosing the information to them would still be a violation regardless of whether they have a clearence or not. It would simply be a lesser violation.
Why not? It seems to have worked for the President just fine.
Where does “blinded to facts” enter into it? The whole point of jury nullification is that the jury has not only the (in practical terms inevitable, if we are to have a jury system at all) opportunity, but the lawful authority, to (in the one particular case at bar, with no precedential effect) “judge not only the facts but the law.”
When?
(I can’t recall any case of a Bush Admin official benefiting from jury nullification. But maybe you’re making a broader rhetorical point . . . )
“He” who? I am envisioning a board of ten tribunes.
That’s cool. I nominate Ralph Nader! And they’ll both serve on the same board! We’re on our way! 
You are mistaken.
Since we do not know who George was really listening in on, (it might well have been the DNC, given the timing of the known events and his need to hide it from the judges empowered to authorize warrants), we do not know whether any threat to the country from terrorists was even involved. There are (according to the administration, at least) a lot of people working to protect the country from terrorists, but there is no indication (other than the claims of the administration) that these activities were related in any way.
On the other hand, we have a clear history of the government violating the civil rights of citizens under the false banner of security going back the the earliest days of the country. In each case, while the country has managed to survive, many individuals have been harmed and our national ideals have been threatened. Given the large number of people whose careers were curtailed and lives ruined by the witch hunts of the 1940s through the 1960s in the Great Red Scare and the abandon with which the current administration seems willing to engage in torture, imprisonment without trial, and defamation of character, it would appear that the genuine threat to the nation as a whole is from the secret actions of unregulated agents of the government.
The terrorists can blow up a building, but the government can incinerate the Constitution.
You seem to have the hypothetical threats and the real threats confused.
That, of course, depends on your standards of proof.
But there are cases where the Patriot Act in particular has identified terrorist threats.
Regards,
Shodan
What exactly was this link supposed to prove-that Bush is capable of making vague claims without providing any evidence? We already knew that.
In addition, that link is about the USA PATRIOT act and has little to do with the NSA wiretapping (as put forth in other threads, I believe by Bricker, the two are separate and distinct and should not be confused).
Even so, the two examples given in the article do not bolster the argument. One has to keep in mind that people that argue against the USA PATRIOT act are, to my knowledge, concerned with specific provisions, not the entire thing. The first example given concerns sharing knowledge between agencies; while there are legitamate issues with separating foreign/domestic information, I honestly believe that few people think streamlining agencies is an inherently bad thing. As to the second example given, I’m not sure what provisions of the USA PATRIOT act were actually in play. However, given the information in the article, the two were specifically not charged with terrorist activities, but with “lying to FBI investigators” and “immigration violations”. Furthermore, it seems as though the case was not terribly strong, being characterized as a “witch-hunt”.
If that’s the best there is, I personally find it lacking as evidence of anything.
Which (leaving aside the weakness of the second example) has absolutely nothing to do with illegal activities by the Executive, since the PATRIOT Act was actually passed by Congressed and signed into law.
I have made no claim that there is no threat to harm the U.S. from terrorists. I simply note that the threat from terrorism does not seem to be actually larger than the genuine violence against citizens in which this country has engaged in the last 208 years. (And I will further note that the violence carried out against citizens does not actually seem to have resulted in the prevention of harm to the U.S., in the past, only the diminution of civil rights.)