Butchering Legal Facts
Under the headline 'Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy Program', the New York Times is reporting that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman--and chief presidential water-carrier--Pat Roberts is now calling for the NSA program to be brought under the oversight of the FISA court. The Bush administration has so far only been willing to consider the sort of legislation proposed by Senator Mike DeWine, which would legalize the program but require oversight by a Congressional subcommittee. If the Times is right (and I remain skeptical), Roberts' position is now much closer to the positions expressed by Senators Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter. If so, that's a small but important step in the right direction. Any legislative compromise has to allow for judicial oversight. The lack of such oversight just invites abuse. If it's not happening already, it will, someday, under some president.
What really jumped out at me, though, was this line from the article:
Lines like this should not be appearing in the New York Times almost two months after this scandal surfaced. It's not just that some people "say" that the program "appears" to violate FISA. It does, unquestionably. The Administration admitted this within days after this story broke. The issue is not whether or not the program complies with FISA's requirements; it doesn't. No one is even arguing that it does. The question is whether the AUMF or the president's powers under Article II give him the authority to disregard FISA's requirements. Is that so difficult to understand?
What really jumped out at me, though, was this line from the article:
Democrats and a growing number of
Republicans say the program appears to
violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act.
Lines like this should not be appearing in the New York Times almost two months after this scandal surfaced. It's not just that some people "say" that the program "appears" to violate FISA. It does, unquestionably. The Administration admitted this within days after this story broke. The issue is not whether or not the program complies with FISA's requirements; it doesn't. No one is even arguing that it does. The question is whether the AUMF or the president's powers under Article II give him the authority to disregard FISA's requirements. Is that so difficult to understand?
5 Comments:
Remember, this is the same bunch of lying liars that argued you could not tell who won an election in 2000 by counting the votes...
The same crew that blew poll after poll up our add BEFORE the election how chimpy was going to win by a "landslide" and then ignored the exit polls that prove he was not legitimately elected in 2004.
We are talking about the same pundits and media whores that told us Iraq had WMDs -- its a simple game. The administration feeds the NYT lies and then the media "echo chamber" repeats these lies as "objective facts" because they appeared in the NYT.
Nothing would surprise me -- but we need to talk about the military-industrial complex and power-elite BEHIND this administration and not the moron puppets they parade in front of us.
There is a reason chimpy talks about "catapulting the propaganda"
Balance doesn't allow the Times to say the truth about what appears. Elisabeth Bumiller may be the worst factotum of non facts in this regard.
Last week, General Michael V. Hayden, the retired head of the NSA, said that this NSA surveillance program was adjudged legal by 3 different lawyers before it was implemented. He said all three lawyers were experts in this field.
So, the post is incorrect in asserting that "No one is even arguing that [the program complies with FISA's requirements]."
(BTW, General Hayden was a Clinton appointee, held over by Bush.)
Anonymous,
When the Bush administration says that the NSA program is "legal," they don't mean that it complies with FISA's requirements. They've conceded that it doesn't. What they're asserting is that the AUMF and/or Article II gives the president the authority to disregard FISA's requirements.
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