Clip and save this article for future reference. It could be quite humorous.
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales contended Saturday that some critics of the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program were defining freedom in a way that poses a “grave threat” to U.S. security.
Gonzales was the second administration official in two days to attack a federal judge’s ruling last August that the program was unconstitutional. Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday called the ruling “an indefensible act of judicial overreaching.”
Gonzales told about 400 cadets from the Air Force Academy’s political science and law classes that some see the program as on the verge of stifling freedom rather that protecting the country.
“But this view is shortsighted,” he said. “Its definition of freedom – one utterly divorced from civic responsibility – is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.”
The Dems are going to get to the bottom of the NSA program. And it is going to make Iran-Contra and Monicagate look like a Disney movie by comparison.
Simply put, nearly a dozen NSA officers would not have risked their careers and freedom to leak word of a highly classified program to the New York Times…if that program was limited to phone calls from suspected terrorists abroad calling into the United States.
Cheney and Gonzales are afraid that they will be going to jail. Luckily for them, Joe Biden doesn’t want to mention “woulda, coulda, or shoulda.”
How a redefinition of “freedom” in light of a vaguely explained understanding of the “contemporary” overthrows stare decisis or the FISA Act is still beyond me. Importing a term that has no bearing on the law or on the Bill of Rights, Alberto is performing an extreme act of judicial activism that is anything but a form of strict constructivism, if any such thing can epistemologically exist. But I am glad Alberto has exposed the specious logic predicating his interpretation of FISA. And I imagine such obfuscations will surface again and again in hearings. Biden will have to consider investigations. But after his performance on the Senate floor during the India Nuclear Trade Agreement, I am not so sure. Biden, I believe, is competing with Joe Lieberman for the Senate bipartisan ribbon. His opposition to the amendments to the trade agreement offered by Boxer and Feingold was both vacuous and unfounded. And now he wants to “look forward.” I am not sure where his gaze is cast, but it is certainly not toward a progressive future. I just hope a different committe can claim jurisdiction if Biden proves to be recalcitrant.
Biden’s committee doesn’t have jurisdiction over the NSA or our intelligence committees, or over the justice department.
but over Iraq.
Gonzo will be answering to Senator Patrick Leahy who has indicated he’s ready, willing and able that oversight will be restored. Leahy has fired his first shot on interrogation and detention policies.
As for Cheney, Glenn Greenwald ‘translates’ that address about NSA and..erm ‘hearty laughs’ Cheney gave at the meeting of the Federalist Society.
Laugh now, cry later. Glenn sees a constitutional crisis on the horizon.
It’s hard to disagree with Greenwald. What happens when the Bush administration chooses to ignore Congressional subpeonas and orders from the Supreme Court? They have no respect for the Rule of Law so you know that day is coming soon and I’m not looking forward to the answer.
My hunch is still that we’ll find that Bush has been wiretapping whole networks within US, not just the one-on-one we all talk about. Why wiretap the mailroom boy when you can wiretap the whole corp, the Board of Directors? And yes, so far we’ve only been able to pick the low hanging fruit and as Mr. Bush has proved at every turn, he can and does out do our imaginations every time.
On another front, the ACLU sent Congress a Nov. 13, 2006letter from 93 organizations. They oppose proposed legislation which would immunize telephone companies and ISPs against legal actions based on the assistance these companies provided the NSA.
Besides a class-action suit, investigations are being pursued by nine states Attorneys General and/or Public Utility Commissions. These would all shut down if blanket immunity is passed.
Congress does not know the scope of the NSA programs, or how the companies may have profited from providing the information.
from the Vietnam Era? “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
That’s the attitude of folks like Gonzalez, John Yoo, and others: “We had to destroy freedom in order to keep it…”
Joe Biden doesn’t have any control over House investigations. I don’t have any faith in the Senate because of wussies like Biden, Rockefeller and Lieberman, but (as you have noted repeatedly) the House investigative committees are in good hands.
The unabashed showhorse…….thank you Mr Suskind. All these men that dream Oval Office dreams, why are they so stupid? Kerry said the dumbest of his dumbest things a few weeks back. McCain has totally lost his mind slobbering over the ring. Joe Biden thinks he’ll get there going light on the biggest crooks the country has ever nurtured to adulthood. They’re all dumbasses! Well, there is AL Gore thank God and he has gotten over being ASHAMED FOR CLINTON. He’s been a real pal though taking that on for Bill.