Bush’s Abuse of FISA, Yet Again
Will the Bush Administration ever acknowledge that our constitution guarantees us civil liberties? Don’t hold your breath. Scalia is likely to vacate this decision, if he can help it, in the next session. But it is encouraging to see judges standing up to the Bushies.
The Chief Judge in the Northern District of California has struck a blow at the Bus Administration flaunting of the FISA laws. This judge, at least, thinks spying on a nonprofit for reasons the Bush Administration will not come forward with, are illegal. Oh, this has been happening all along with the Bushies. Their record of abusing civil liberties will go down in history as an episode that will make most of us cringe with shame, but will make none of the Bushies feel one bit of shame. They’ve zero regard for the constitution unless it is for protecting the ability for anti-abortion activists showing pictures of bloody fetuses to grade school kids. What an awful record they have.
Here’s a bit of the story from the New York Times:
A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the “exclusive” means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.
The judge, Vaughn R. Walker, the chief judge for the Northern District of California, made his findings in a ruling on a lawsuit brought by an Oregon charity. The group says it has evidence of an illegal wiretap used against it by the National Security Agency under the secret surveillance program established by President Bush after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Justice Department has tried for more than two years to kill the lawsuit, saying any surveillance of the charity or other entities was a “state secret” and citing the president’s constitutional power as commander in chief to order wiretaps without a warrant from a court under the agency’s program.
But Judge Walker, who was appointed to the bench by former President George Bush, rejected those central claims in his 56-page ruling. He said the rules for surveillance were clearly established by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to get a warrant from a secret court.
“Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive means for foreign intelligence activities to be conducted,” the judge wrote. “Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.”
Judge Walker’s voice carries extra weight because all the lawsuits involving telephone companies that took part in the N.S.A. program have been consolidated and are being heard in his court.
I’m no expert on constitutional law, but this looks to be a case that could challenge the immunity many Senators are trying to give telecom companies for bending over backwards to the Bush Administration spying on ordinary Americans. Sure, a court in California allowed free speech for people who were talking very ugly. It seems to me appropriate that they should protect citizens from being spied upon at the same time.
I’m n o constitutional law expert either, but nowhere in the constitution does it say that the President has the ability to override a law that has been previously signed without first going to the legislature for a new law. This is especially so in a case wherein the law in question has an exclusivity provision built right into it.
So the question of telecom immunity is complete bullshit. It doesn’t matter if these telecoms can produce letters stating that the President ordered them to rape their mothers, steal cars, run over kids with steam rollers or eavesdrop on Americans… the President doesn’t have the authority to do that.
and with the multi-million dollar legal departments the telecoms have, they would KNOW that. So if they did it anyway, they were at the very least aiding and abetting in millions of felony violations of federal law.
To me, this seems open and shut. Telecoms get no immunity. Bush gets impeached and goes to jail for the rest of his damn life. Cheney gets a nice adjoining cell. The entirety of Congress for supporting this legislational nightmare at the behest of the bribes paid to them by the Telecoms ( check out opensecrets.org at some point and do some digging ) get tossed out on their asses and replaced with an entirely new congress.
Truth, justice and the American way, which have been so shit on lately by neo-cons, prevail.
Of course given the way things are going I’m probably lucky I don’t have an FBI agent stepping on my throat about now.
FUCK THE FBI, FUCK THE NSA, FUCK BUSH, CHENEY, RICE, RUMSFELD and the rest, They’re all fucking traitors.
Like E in MD, I’m no constitutional expert either. However, the article makes reference to a few items not found in the post. First, Judge Walker dismissed the suit, giving the plaintiffs 30 days to file an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Second, as specified in Judge Walker’s ruling, a panel of the 9th Circuit has already stated that the plaintiffs cannot use the one document in the appeal that may or may not prove they were spied upon through the Terrorist Surveillance Program because said “sealed document” remains classified and unavailable as evidence. Third, this ruling has no bearing on the telecom cases since the defendant here is the government; since there is no evidence that this group was spied upon, and because the court (the 6th Circuit) has already ruled that the government cannot be held liable for the Terrorist Surveillance Program without evidence (see ACLU v. NSA; the government legitimately invoked the state secrets privilege), it is very likely the plaintiffs will not be granted standing, and this case (and any further cases) will be dismissed.
Remember, we are still at war, as authorized by Congress (and before anybody says it, the Democrats had the majority in the Senate when the 2001 AUMF was passed).
Doesn’t matter if we’re at War, the exclusivity provision in the original FISA legislation means that unless specifically overridden by a later statute signed into law or the Constitution FISA was the sole means by which the President could conduct surveillance on American citizens. Being at war or not has no relevance other than making politicians scared of contradicting the President and looking like cowards to their constituents. War or no war, the President is not empowered to selectively ignore whatever laws he finds inconvenient.
107th US Congress
As far as the the breakdown of the Congress, your information is incorrect. The 107th Congress from January 2001 to January 2003 originally started off as 50/50 Democrat and Republican. But by November of 2002 the breakdown was 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, 1 Independent and 1 from the Independence Party.
With the House, January 2001 started with 221 Republicans and 211 Democrats with 2 independents and 1 vacant seat due to a death. By November of 2002 the breakdown was 222 Republicans, 209 Democrats and 2 independents with 2 seats vacant.
Authorization for Use of Military Force against Iraq
House Votes
Republicans 215 AYE, 6 NAY, 2 no votes
Democrats: 81 AYE, 126 NAY, 1 no vote
Independent: 0 AYES, 1 NAY, 0 no vote
Senate
Republicans: 48 AYES, 1 NAY
Democrats: 29 AYES, 21 NAYS
Independent: 0 AYES, 1 NAYS
As you can see at no point during the 107th Congress did the Democrats hold the majority. This is not to say that the Democrats aren’t also culpable for the ridiculous mistakes both parties have made since 2001. But your attempt to make it look like the Democrats were in the majority and were thus more responsible is contradicted by history. The roll call votes on the AUMF also contradict your assertion.