Posted on 12/27/2005 10:47:23 AM PST by Pragmatic_View
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 Hearst 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.
All the libs claim there have only been a few warrants turned down.
bttt
My jaw is at my ankles, this is alarmingly scary.. The President tries to protect us after being attacked on our own soil and then judges handcuff him.. something smells bad.
God Bless the courage of GWB for doing his duty to protect Americans.
They aught to be until they quit trampling on the Constitution and law. Democrats and Republicans alike need to work within the framework or risk being booted.
Of course, the current crop of Sheeple have already made it well known that security is more important than Liberty.
"Judge Lamberth, who sits on the FISA court, has ties to islamic extremists and rejected many FBI warrant requests, prior to 9/11. "
Thanks for finding and posting this. I wouldn't put it past him.
President Bush DID work "within the framework". He DOES have the AUTHORITY and the DUTY to protect the country and the people. It's called executive powers.
What you are advocating is not conservatism, but ANARCHY, where you don't want any laws applied to anyone, let the terrorists murder us at will, we mustn't listen in on their conversations, even if that is what can prevent a catastrophic attack and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents.
"The reason for giving exclusive authority to the President for the conduct of war was to prevent 500+ bureaucrats from micromanaging the war."
Exactly. Not to mention, that the enemy can destroy us at his leisure, while the bureaucrats are arguing the nuances.
I'll comment. Check his sign up date.
Why didn't Bush say this when he was justifying his actions? He seems to have no interest in defending himself.
You are correct.
The administration does seem to rely heavily on us spreading the word.
I'm not quite sure how this story will be played out.
The good guys of course will say the activist judges on the court are crippling the administration from doing its job and I believe that argument will carry some weight.
The lib spinners will in turn say that the warrants he requested were unjustified and the cowboy who doesn't care about anyones civil liberties violated rights because he is a racist and doesn't like Muslims.
Of course the MSM will not dig into it unless it looks negative to the president which will in turn look negative to our nation, but they don't care about that.
Whatever it takes to protect no consequence abortions at will I guess.
What about it? He's been here over 3/4 of a year. It'd be one thing if he just signed up yesterday, but he's been here long enough that he probably would have been banned by now if he was a troublemaker. Therefore his date is not an argument for or against any particular position.
On top of which, he's absolutely right that an AOF is not a DOW. The President routinely talks about the Iraq war as having been his decision (most recently in his Oval Office address to the nation a couple of weeks ago). That would not have been the case if Congress had passed an actual declaration of war. We'd have been at war from the moment the declaration was issued, and it would not have been the President's choice at all at that point, except when he actually signed the thing.
That once cost us 3000 lives including my friends son who was on the 90th floor of the 1st tower hit. She didn't even have remains to weep over.
Same here.
This article makes me wonder once again why AG Ashcroft resigned his position at Justice. I believe John Ashcroft to be an honorable man.
When I saw the judge was a female with a hyphenated name, I knew what the problem was....
Bush is Protecting America from terrorists. TraitocRats are Protecting terrorists from America!
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
OK, so in other words he felt the need to go against the law. That can be forgiven, depending on the situation. What's far less excusable is misrepresenting the law to say something that it doesn't.
Out of over 13,000 requests, only 2 were denied, which is less than 0.0002%. After 9/11, approximately 3% were denied, which is quite a jump, IMO. If anything, after our country was attacked and 3,000 of our citizens incinerated, you'd think the court would approve MORE of these requests, not LESS...
You keep making the totally unsupported statement, that what President Bush did was illegal.
IT WAS NOT. He has the executive power and the authority to exactly what he did and more.
There have been articles posted with legal opinions, including the AAG's letter with specific cases mentioned, etc.
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