Free Republic

Last night John rendered his "Verdict: The New York Times blew the story." The "story" was the testimony of five federal judges -- Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum and four former FISA court judges -- on Senator Specter's proposed revision of the FISA statute. According to yesterday's New York Times story by Eric Lichtblau: In a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel...voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president's constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. They...

Democratic candidate hopeful, Barack Obama, on the campaign trail in January of '08: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect meby Anne Broache HANOVER, N.H.--Barack Obama may be leading the Democratic presidential pack in every major poll here, but that didn't dissuade the Illinois senator from a final early-morning rally with the Facebook generation. Clearly not content to leave their votes to the whims of online politicking, the Illinois senator stepped onto a stage fashioned in a Dartmouth College gymnasium, pulled an index card from his inside jacket pocket, and launched into a familiar set of talking points centered...

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush charted a course of action to respond to the worst attack on our homeland in history. He promised to use every tool available to defeat al Qaeda and pledged to take the fight to the enemy abroad as he worked to prevent another attack. As he said in the State of the Union address, "Our country must remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home." The president has the constitutional responsibility--and authority--to lead this response. After Sept. 11, Congress immediately confirmed the president's constitutional authority to "use all necessary and...

 A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent...

Pre-911 Mindset: Dems Want To Take Terror Fighting Tools Away From President Bush; Falsely Accuse President Of Breaking Law:Former Vice President Al Gore: "[T]he President Of The United States Has Been Breaking The Law Repeatedly And Insistently. A President Who Breaks The Law Is A Threat To The Very Structure Of Our Government." (Fmr. Vice President Al Gore, Address To American Constitution Society And The Liberty Coalition, Washington DC, 1/16/06)Sen. John Kerry (D-MA): "I Agree That We Ought To Have A Special Council Investigate [The President] ..." (ABC's "This Week," 1/22/06)"Shortly After The President's Speech [On Monday], Senate Minority Leader...

IS THE New York Times a law unto itself? When the Times published its December 16 exposé of the secret National Security Agency electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications, reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau noted that they had granted anonymity to the "nearly a dozen current and former officials" who were the sources for the story. Risen and Lichtblau stated that they had granted these sources anonymity "because of the classified nature of the program." Implicit in the Times's rationale is the recognition that leaks of such classified information are illegal.That recognition is, of course, correct. Section 793 of...

Somewhere between President Bush’s Veterans Day’s speech last year when he personally fired back at Democrats who had been continually suggesting that he had lied the country into war and the December 16th New York Times revelation of the NSA wiretapping program, the outlook for the 2006 elections began to shift.Many of today’s pundits are getting side-tracked by the Abramoff scandal and are missing the change in the political terrain. While the Abramoff mess is indicative of much of what is wrong in Washington, it is not the earth shattering political typhoon that is going to wipe out the Republican...

Interview of the Vice President by Neil Cavuto, FOX News FOX Studios New York, New York 2:18 P.M. EST Q Mr. Vice President, first off, there's a tape -- it seems to be official -- from Osama bin Laden. The CIA is saying as such. What do you make of it? THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it's -- I'm sure it will be an interesting development, partly because we haven't heard anything from him in over a year. And if this is authentic, it will be the first indication that we've had from him. The other key question in addition to...

The mainstream U.S. media outlets have failed to report a major terrorist plot against the U.S. - because it would tend to support President Bush's use of NSA domestic surveillance, according to media watchdog groups. News of a planned attack masterminded by three Algerians operating out of Italy was widely reported outside the U.S., but went virtually unreported in the American media. Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and...