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Posted on 06/01/2011 8:25:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last week Mike Riggs noted Ron Wyden's warnings about the Obama administration's "secret interpretation" of the PATRIOT Act, which he said undermines democracy, the rule of law, and ultimately the public's support for anti-terrorism efforts. Here is some of what Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had to say on the subject in a floor speech on Thursday:
When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the Patriot Act, they will be stunned and they will be angry. And they will be asking senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits?" "Why didn't you know before you voted on it?" The fact is that anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified.
It's almost as if there are two Patriot Acts, and many members of Congress haven't even read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the executive branch's secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government thinks this law means....
While Americans recognize that government agencies will sometimes rely on secret sources and methods to collect intelligence information, Americans also expect that these agencies will operate at all times within the boundaries of publicly understood law.
I have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee for ten years, and I don't take a backseat to anybody when it comes to the importance of protecting genuinely sensitive sources and collection methods. But the law itself should never be secret—voters have a need and a right to know what the law says, and what their government thinks the text of the law means, so that they can decide whether the law is appropriately written and ratify or reject decisions that their elected officials make on their behalf....
Government officials must not be allowed to fall into the trap of secretly reinterpreting the law in a way that creates a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly claims that it says....When the public eventually finds out that government agencies have been rewriting surveillance laws in secret, the result is invariably a backlash and an erosion of public confidence in these government agencies.
Wyden likened the Obama administration's classified understanding of the PATRIOT Act to Harry Truman's telegram-intercepting Project Shamrock, the CIA's domestic spying, the Reagan administration's Iran-contra scandal, and the Bush administration's secret approval of warrantless wiretaps. But what exactly does this twisting of the PATRIOT Act entail? Wyden can't say, because it's classified. (Duh!) But Cato Institute privacy specialist (and Reason contributing editor) Julian Sanchez argues, based on clues going back to comments that two other senators, Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), made more than a year ago, that the shocking secret probably has something to do with mass collection and analysis of cell phone geolocation data under Section 215 of the law.
Look for my column tomorrow about the rush to renew the PATRIOT Act.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
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“Wyden can’t say, because it’s classified. (Duh!)”
Duh! Send it on a CD to Assange!
Obama is still warming up. If he wins reelection, we’ll see “REAL CHANGE”, ...
Obama may just use the patriot act as his justification to remain the Fuhrer without an election.
Zero obviously interpreted the Constitution as allowing a naturalized citizen who’s father was never a US citizen to become eligible for POTUS - so there’s no telling WHAT he has interpreted the Patriot Act to mean
just imagine what they could do with the Patriot Act !
If Ron Wyden is opposed to Obama, Obama is in BIG TROUBLE.
Just a typical outcome when the basic "Law" itself is unconstitutional, from that starting point, ANYTHING is possible.
This is a D objecting to secret overreach, so he's probably not as outraged as any conservative should be.
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If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Orator --- 106-43 B.C.
"No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it. The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and the name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose, since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it."
16th American Jurisprudence 2d, Section 177 late 2nd, section 256:
The American public is already angry, now there is more to simmer over.
Bookmark for the follow-up. At a guess, this administration is interpreting the law pretty closely to how everyone thought it would be used way back when it was first proposed. The text of the law is public, so go back and look at how conservatives (and some of the smarter libs, since they focused on different parts of the law) felt the law could be used against the American public back when it was first passed, and it probably won’t be far off the mark from what the Zer0 and his cabal are planning.
If the law is being abused it would not be the first time. It also doesn’t make the law itself wrong, it just makes those who were abusing it so.
We have now had year upon year of classified secrets being leaked by the left-wing and had numerous occasions where they cried abuse of the Constitution or abuse of some law or another by the Executive branch and have been flat out wrong time after time again.
If the Patriot Act is being abused then it will eventually come out but I will beware of some who would intentionally create such abuses in hopes of creating a backlash against laws designed to protect our liberty.
The left-wing has continually acted as the terrorist’s civil rights party. The continual alliance they seem to have with all enemies of America is creepy and treasonous. I would not put it past them to do anything at all to try and destroy all laws and provisions we have in place to defend our liberty and our nation from another attack.
The next attack could easily be 300,000 or 3 million dead Americans one morning and then our liberty will in the gravest danger it has ever faced. The left-wing would welcome anyway at all in order to re-write our Constitution and our way of Life.
I thought this was standard practice. The law they sell to the public and the law they secretly voted in.
I for one would like to know where our tax stimulus money actuallly is. What politicians and crooked businesses including Obama put the money in secret slush funds in what countries?
Bingo.
Lost some respect for the article at:
“the Reagan administration’s Iran-contra scandal”
Iran-Contra was genius and a smashing success. Playing two adversaries off each other (Sandanistas and Khomeni) it led to:
1) a ceasefire and elections in Nicaragua (Sandanista defeat) and
2) defeat of an Iraqi armored invasion of Iran restoring the stalemate of the Iran-Iraq war.
The media and democrats went berzerk when they found out their communist darling Ortega was being opposed by -other Nicaraguans.
First -- I hope you and the Mrs are feeling and doing better and glad to see you posting 'again' ;-).
And as to the article, no surprise.
Ever since ECHELON went operational we've all been under electronic surveillance by the NSA. And Billy-Jeff especially, put that to his good use.
A housewife and mother in Michigan emailed her friend that her daughter Hillary was in a school play and it was a Bomb.So. 'Two' Patriot Acts? Knock me over with a feather.The next day two of the gubmint's finest showed up at her door in their trademark sunglasses and dark suits and took her into custody for questioning.
This was in the very early days of the internet when the www had a couple hundred websites and access consisted of the likes of Prodigy. And when this case hit 'the news' (/s), I always, and intentionally, sent a buddy of mine emails with these Key Words the NSA was looking for in emails.
Oh. And I'd add a ps to the G-Men saying Hi and advising them to take their sunglasses off when indoors. (Yeah, I'm a wise a__ when being 'under surveillance' for no reason)
Shocks the hell out of me, not.
No government institutes a regulatory requirement without a reason. The moment I heard that GPS chips were to mandated for new cell phones, I knew that data would be abused. I kept my old phone until it died. I pull the battery on the new one when I choose. I just don't like even the possibility of my government knowing where I am. It's creepy.
This is one of those things that separates the patriots from the RINOS. We should watch it very carefully.
To all you short-sighted folk, I have just 4 words: We Told You So.
I'm very afraid that you're right.
Well, almost right. I think maybe you meant to say "WHEN, he STEALS reelection." At least, that's MY fear.
As Stalin said, "It's not the people who vote that count; it's the people who count the votes."
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