Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them
Personally, I’d really like to know just which law it was that Our Glorious Leader has sworn to uphold. It would seem that he has decided that if a law or a legal process is inconvenient, he’ll simply bypass and do whatever he pleases- law or legal process be damned.
You’d think that one of the hotshot White House lawyers could hip the Prevaricator in Chief to the reality that law is not an optional choice. You cannot simply ignore and bypass the law simply because you find it cumbersome and inconvenient. IF you think that a law needs to be changed, work to change it. Go to Congress, lobby for a law that will more comfortably allow you what you think needs to be permitted. All bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does is to make Our Glorious Leader look…well, like the criminal and thug he is. So, at least he’s staying in character, eh?
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) — U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.
A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Heart newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.
The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court’s operation.
But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered “substantive modifications” took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years — the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court’s history.
FISA was put into place to keep Administrations from spying on their own people. Unfortunately, this Administration seems to think that almost ANY action can be justified if it can be cloaked in the magic phrases: “9.11” and/or “the war on terror”. This should be the stuff that impeachment hearings are made of….
The more one thinks about the implications of the secret FISA runaround, the more insidious it all becomes. And with the Justice Department now investigating THE LEAK (as opposed to the order itself), one has to wonder how many other "secret" orders have been issued regarding who knows what. If people in the know are threatened with prosecution - or worse - if they divulge any information, can ANYTHING be beyond the realm of possibility? How far are these people willing to go to subvert the laws...with virtually nothing to keep them in check?
I think most people are living in a dreamworld about all of this. It really is very serious stuff and potentially catastrophic to our system of government and our way of life. It potentially undermines everything upon which we base our democracy. Many people don't seem to comprehend the implications.
And when one considers that it's conservatives - those who supposedly are trying to limit government interference in people's lives - who apparently support such actions by the President, one has to wonder WTF is going on. It's freaking insane!