Free Republic

It's Brylcreem. (Don't be picky, now!)

Too bad I can't make a living off my own typographical and factual mistakes ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brylcreem

I don't even remember the Vitalis jingle.

Oh yes, VP Gore is really getting going now, Southern preacher style. "Go get 'em, Al!!!! Fire it UP!"

President Bush has conceded that there has been electronic monitoring outside of the boundary of FISA - that's why he invokes inherent powers plus the AUMF.

And what will be funny is that tha it is CONGRESS that has been derelict in providing power to monitor terrorists. Why did Congress draw the line at "foreign powers" and expressly omit "terrorist organizations" from the range of proper subjects for warrantless surveillance?

I predict that by the time this plays out, Congress and the President will be seeing eye-to-eye; and what was "outside of FISA" yesterday will be "inside of FISA" tomorrow. Hail the rule of law!

Gore is a blooming fatboy idiot.

("A little dab will do you.")

I thought that was Brylcream?

Get it out there, fatboy. Make a bunch of assertions with no evidence. President Bush is on board with Congressional investigations, and the more wacky your "facts" are, the more fun it will be to pop your balloon.

Wiretapping DIDN'T HAPPEN. Why do they keep saying this. What's a wiretap? It's putting a bug on your phone line which didn't happen. What NSA and W did DOESN'T NEED WARRANTS.

It's shorthand. Go with the flow on this. Regardless of the technology, people operate under the illusion that the have privacy, and the Courts put some teeth into this illusion by excluding certain types of evidence from criminal prosecution.

Poll Question: Do you support wiretapping of American citizens by the President if such wiretapping would lead to impeachment of the President?

LOL!!!

If ANY President violated the Law he should be impeached.

Not if the law cuts off an executive power that a President has under the Constitution.

However it's not been proven that a Judge's approval was required prior to the wiretap orders being given.

I think the President concedes that there has been warrantless electronic surveillance outside of the confines of the limits set by FISA, "the law." The defense promulgated by the DoJ is not, "the activities are within the statutory limits of 50 USC 1801 et seq." The defense is that the President has the inherent authority, and that in combination with the Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) provides him the authority.

Furthermore, I would personally PREFER that the Government monitor ALL phone calls coming IN or going OUT of the Country.

In country calls are another matter.

If the government suspects Joe Terrorist, in the USA, of planning a terrorist attack, would you ignore calls between Joe Terrorist in the USA and John in the USA? Or would you figure Joe Terrorist is bad news, and want to know who is in his circle of bad guys, ESPECIALLY those in the US? RIght now that's a rhetorical question, but it may end up being a fair representation of the facts.

The question is unqualified ...

"If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment."

Other poll questions insert a range of qualifying notions, such as "international calls," and "contact with suspected terrorists." The question inserts the weasly "should Congress consider" phrase too. That is not the same as "should the President be," that most readers of the results will impute.

Others have pointed out that the poll has the function of keeping the dialogue going, and then in terms that are not favorable to the President.

The good news is that Presindet Bush is warmed up to having public hearings. Keep in mind tha so far he has not told "much" of his side of the story.

Approval of the "wiretapping" will depend on its scope and specific rationale. Nixon's enemies list was unpopular, as a way of historical example.

Discussion at http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/5448252.html

Relevant text from President Bush's signing statement for H.R.2863:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. Further, in light of the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2001 in Alexander v. Sandoval, and noting that the text and structure of Title X do not create a private right of action to enforce Title X, the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051230-8.html

The signing statement for H.R.1815 refers to and incorporates this language.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060106-12.html

Another summary at http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/5448252.html

So Much for the President's Assent to the McCain Amendment
Monday, January 02, 2006

Marty Lederman

The President signed the Defense Appropriations bill on Friday. In his signing statement he did at least two notable things.

First, with respect to several provisions of the bill, the President signaled his intention to reserve his authority, as Commander in Chief, to ignore statutory mandates. These include provisions that require advance notice of congressional committees before the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program; and a "report and wait" provision that requires the President to wait 15 days after notifying six congressional committees before using certain appropriations to transfer defense articles or services to another nation or an international organization for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement, or humanitarian assistance operations.

Most importantly, as to the McCain Amendment, which would categorically prohibit cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all U.S. personnel, anywhere in the world, the President wrote:

The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.

Translation: I reserve the constitutional right to waterboard when it will "assist" in protecting the American people from terrorist attacks. [UPDATE: Or, as Matthew Franck eagerly puts it over at the National Review, "the signing statement . . . conveys the good news that the president is not taking the McCain amendment lying down."]

You didn't think Cheney and Addington were going to go down quietly, did you? (And this even though they took their opponents to the cleaners by negotiating the Graham Amendments, which, by precluding substantial avenues of judicial review, are far more beneficial to their detention and interrogation policies than the McCain Amendment is detrimental.)

Questions of the hour: How, if at all, will McCain respond? And will these questions of presidential authority to ignore statutory restrictions on the conduct of war -- implicated as well in the current NSA wiretapping scandal -- be front and center in the upcoming Alito hearings?

For one thing the senate does not impeach, it's congress and the Rats need to get the majority.

Not only that, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say the Ssenate must hear the articles of impeachment, just as nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the Senate must give an up or down vote relating to a nomination.

So, even if the House impeaches the President of a judge, the Senate can refuse to conduct the trial.

Two words, "parental notification". That's what the USSC will be tackling in the near future.

The Ayotte case. It was heard at the end of November and the decision is pending.

Supreme Court hears N.H. abortion case - The Boston Globe

If Al Qaeda does not meet the definition of a foreign power as defined in 1801(a)(1) -(3), then we cannot conduct warantless electronic surveillance on them. How absurd! I can understand why President Bush would want to "go above" FISA, if this is really the case!

One general point that Sandy & I were trying to make is that if the surveillance is within FISA, then the Senate would have no beef. But the Senate has a beef, and the President has a beef that "the secret program" was disclosed. Therefore the speculation is that the surveillance is outside of FISA.

We don't have details beyond that - we don't know, for example, "how far" outside.

Does anyone here seriously believe that the Republicans will ever be able to mount a successful filibuster against a future Democratic SCOTUS nominee?

Never mind filibuster. Hypothetically, assume that a DEM president nominates Hillary! (or Bill) to SCOTUS. Assume further that the GOP has a majority in the Senate, and that it is well believed that the nominee will produce outcome-driven rulings, legislate from the bench, etc.

In short, that in the mind of the Senator, the nominee is offensive to the Constitutional principles of separation of powers. Based on past performance, even given a belief on the part of a Senator that the nominee will be an activist judge (see Ginsberg), the Senator will vote to confirm.

A good fraction of Congress prefers that tough social decisions (same-sex marriage, abortion on demand, adoption into unisex families, right to suicide, euthanasia, etc.) be "settled" by the Courts. And in that environment, there will always be 60 Senators who will confirm, even if 70 members of the Senate are Republicans.

And the end result was Bush got all qualified conservatives voted on and confirmed ...

No he didn't. Not yet anyway. Half of the then-pending Circuit Court nominees were NOT voted on, and remain pending even now.

I also believe that the President ponders SCOTUS nominations under the assumption that it takes 60 votes to obtain confirmation - or to avoid confrontation. The fact that the abuse of cloture is being discussed in the context of the Alito nomination reinforces this point.

IIRC: The Constitutional Option is only valid in the Congress in which it is invoked.

Rulings from the chair are durable past the Congress they are issued in.
Riddick's Senate Procedure has many examples.

Now thanks to this story, the terrorists will buy the disposable phones in smaller quantities.

If the anonymity is useful to them, they were probably already using it. If the technology is useful for terrorists, perhaps it should not be available "over the counter," as it were.

Sometimes I think all journalists should just shut up.

Hehehehe. I hear ya. But it's fun to deconstruct their fabrications.

OMG. Next thing you know, the bad guys will use pay phones!!

Did Cotey also tell the police the gun was such a flimsy fake it was breaking apart?

Why would anybody believe him either?

It doesn't matter much if pop and brother tell the cops it isn't real. If he shows up on school grounds brandishing something that resembles the real deal, the cops have to presume it is and take him down. It's that simple.

Yup. That's why I never bother to tell the professional LEOs what I know until they are done doing their professional job. It's a waste of effort.