"Sen. Durbin was on FNS a bit ago here and made the claim that Clinton approached congress to change FISA to allow his breakin of Aldrich Aimes home. Is that right? Do you, or anyone else, remember that?
His inference was Clinton went to congress for approval while Bush has not. This just does not sound right to me. Maybe I missed something?"
Hi Morgan (good luck w the Broncos today)
I heard part of what he said (I was reading FR, so missed most of it). A couple of things I thought I heard him say were: 1) the law/President's authority doesn't include wiretapping as part of physical searches, and 2) Klintoon went to Congress to get wiretapping included in physical searches. I didn't hear the bit re Ames; however, I seem to recall reading something to that effect.
Klintoon included wiretapping in physical searches and Presient Bush has gone to Congress and kept several members informed all along (the Dims forget to mention this).
Jonathan Turley was on a radio show when I was driving home from work within the last week or so and kept insisting w BOR that the President broke the law and that wiretapping is not considered 'physical' and was therefore not covered (BOR felt that the President was working to protect the American people, which is his job, and that even if it is found that the wiretapping is unconstitutional (which he doesn't think it will be) no one will charge the President w wrongdoing. Turley did not concur and IIRC impeachment was mentioned. As a side note: I've read that on Friday on C-Spin, the Dems under the authority of Conyers, other Dem lefties held a comm meeting of just Dems with people like J. Turley, Moveon, The Truth Project, to give America reasons to impeach the President over this so-called "domestic" spying.
Turley, et al should chat w Klintoon and Gorelick about physical searches being included in wiretapping:
The Wisdom in Wiretaps
Bush critics seek war-powers loopholes to benefit terrorists.
Saturday, January 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The Bush Administration's use of warrantless wiretaps in the war on terrorism continues to generate controversy, and Congress is planning hearings. Some of the loopier elements of the Democratic Party have even suggested the wiretaps are grounds for impeachment. But the more we learn about the practice, the clearer it is that the White House has been right to employ and defend it.
The issue is not about circumventing normal civilian Constitutional protections, after all. The debate concerns surveillance for military purposes during wartime. No one would suggest the President must get a warrant to listen to terrorist communications on the battlefield in Iraq or Afghanistan. But what the critics are really insisting on here is that the President get a warrant the minute a terrorist communicates with an associate who may be inside in the U.S. That's a loophole only a terrorist could love.
To the extent the President's critics are motivated by anything other than partisanship, their confusion seems to involve a 1978 law called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA provides a mechanism by which the executive can conduct warrant-approved surveillance under certain circumstances. But FISA covers only a limited number of intelligence-gathering scenarios. And no Administration--Democrat or Republican--has recognized FISA as a binding limit on executive power.
Jimmy Carter's Attorney General, Griffin Bell, emphasized when FISA passed that the law "does not take away the power of the President under the Constitution." And in the 1980 case of United States v. Truong, the Carter Administration successfully argued the government's authority to have conducted entirely domestic, warrantless wiretaps of a U.S. citizen and a Vietnamese citizen who had been passing intelligence to the North Vietnamese during the 1970s Paris peace talks.
In 1994, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick also asserted an "inherent authority" not just to warrantless electronic surveillance but to "warrantless physical searches," too. The close associate of Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress that much intelligence gathering couldn't be conducted within the limits placed on normal criminal investigations--even if you wanted to for the sake of appearances. For example, she added, "it is usually impossible to describe the object of the search in advance with sufficient detail to satisfy the requirements of the criminal law."
Some critics have argued that the surveillance now at issue could have been conducted within the confines of FISA. But that doesn't appear to be true. FISA warrants are similar to criminal warrants in that they require a showing of "probable cause"--cause, that is, to believe the subject is an "agent of a foreign power." But if the desired object of surveillance is a phone number found on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's computer, you may not even know the identity of its owner and you can't show probable cause.
Nor does the actual track record of FISA argue for the sacredness of judicial oversight of intelligence gathering. In the 1990s, FISA judges nitpicked warrant requests to the extent that Ms. Gorelick and others believed FISA required a complete "wall" of separation between foreign intelligence gathering and U.S. criminal investigators. One consequence was the FBI's failure to request a warrant to search alleged "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui's computer. Only after 9/11 did FISA's appeals panel rule that such a wall had never been necessary, and did the Patriot Act destroy it once and for all.
Other critics accept the President's inherent power but say he still should have asked Congress to approve the wiretaps. But some in Congress were informed of the wiretaps and did nothing to stop them. Instead, the ranking Democrat on Senate Intelligence, Jay Rockefeller, wrote a private letter to Vice President Dick Cheney expressing his "lingering concerns" and saying he'd keep it on file for posterity--or more precisely, for posterior-covering. The Senator then released the letter after the story became public as a way to play "gotcha."
If Mr. Rockefeller had been serious about his objections in 2003, he should have told Mr. Cheney to cease and desist or that he'd try to pass legislation to stop it. After reading Mr. Rockefeller's letter of self-absolution, we can understand if Mr. Cheney concluded that the wiretapping was too important to the war on terror to risk seeking an explicit legislative endorsement from so feckless a Congress. The way the Members have played politics with the Patriot Act is another reason not to give Congress a chance to micromanage war-fighting decisions.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110007783
To point #2, perhaps Turban Durbin should refresh his memory on Clinton:
Dereliction Of Duty: The Constitutional Record of President Clinton
Cato Institute ^ | March 31, 1997
Posted on 01/16/2006 6:23:41 PM PST by hipaatwo
Very long article, here's a sample:
The Clinton administration has repeatedly attempted to play down the significance of the warrant clause. In fact, President Clinton has asserted the power to conduct warrantless searches, warrantless drug testing of public school students, and warrantless wiretapping.
Warrantless "National Security" Searches
The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1559291/posts
Thanks for this and the Broncos comment. To be honest with you I'm a bit stunned. I have to admit I did not believe the Broncos would do well this year. LOL
I'll go over the post later after I get caught up. I really appreciate your efforts and insight too. One thing about FR, there are always people who remember these things so well that it just works out great when someone needs something. Much of this just did not hit my radar as important at the time and now I have to get back up to speed.
Could it be John Kerry? Hmmmmmmmm. Veddy interesting, but not stupid.