On the face of it, it looks like the NSA wiretapping program is illegal. Anyone care to disagree? If the President did break the law, Congress is required to set about impeachment proceedings, no?
A friend sent me this link. Smarter people than me think the president broke the law. Have a gander:
Dear Members of Congress:
We are scholars of constitutional law and former government officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens concerned by the Bush administration's National Security Agency domestic spying program, as reported in The New York Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice Department's December 22, 2005, letter to the majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the program.[1] Although the program's secrecy prevents us from being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law.
...1. Congress did not implicitly authorize the NSA domestic spying program in the AUMF, and in fact expressly prohibited it in FISA...
...2. Construing FISA to prohibit warrantless domestic wiretapping does not raise any serious constitutional question, while construing the AUMF to authorize such wiretapping would raise serious questions under the Fourth Amendment
3 comments:
Thank you SO MUCH for finding and posting on this... I had read an article in the Boston Globe ( Sunday edition) earlier about how the lawmakers were going to try to MAKE new laws in an effort to correct what the Jack Ass had done..and my cerebrum was splattered all over my 12 foot high ceiling...
phew...now I feel better...
( I think I need to remind myelf that the Globe is owned by NYT- and we know what a piece of chickenshit rag they have been on the NSA /Spying issue...)
[and ALL of us need to read Risen's book- it is Excellent- I read it last week-
he wrote it because the NYT wouldn't and didn't print his articles on the issue- he was trying to Still be A Real Journalist- but NYT was more focused on pandering to Judy....urghhhh.]
Thanks again....
BUSH: I guess I'll have to go with the old 'So what?' on that.
I wonder if we can find an intern somewhere to implicate the Shrub in a sex scandal. Because it looks as if a certain population of the U.S. will only rise to the occasion to do what's right for the American People if sex is involved. Compromising our freedom and security by showing the rest of the world that we in fact, have little power as a democracy, and as a people, are no longer in a position, thanks to the president, of having much power in anything that happens here, is not safe for the American people and ultimately makes us look weakened to other countries. Freakin Brilliant.
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