<p>Bush SAID they weren’t doing this, and they are…</p>
<p>If find that, at a minium dishonest, but guess driver doesn’t care much about honesty, thinks dishonesty is a good thing in the leader of the “free” world</p>
<p>CGM, speaking of dishonest … your claim that Bush said they weren’t doing it is the height of dishonesty. No scruples my, my, my (to put it into CGM-speak)</p>
<p>CGM, you might want some light reading. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060501faessay85301/kevin-woods-james-lacey-williamson-murray/saddam-s-delusions-the-view-from-the-inside.html[/url]”>http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060501faessay85301/kevin-woods-james-lacey-williamson-murray/saddam-s-delusions-the-view-from-the-inside.html</a></p>
<p>Um…FF, how many times do people have to supply links and evidence that Bush is doing exactly what you are claiming he isn’t? He believes that he is above the 700+ laws, the FISA, etc.</p>
<p>The key to the Constitution is that it applies to all people and all times. So put Bush to the side for the moment, and imagine some time in the future. Checking who you call and who calls you is legal, and done as a matter of course. Since the Bush administration has won the public debate that it’s constitutional and does not require legal oversight, it has become routine.</p>
<p>Would you who support this practice ever feel any concern that one day some president might ever use this information for “bad” purposes? That one day a president might decide to track who the other party leaders call, and how often? Since there is no oversight, maybe that future president could listen in on the calls, since there is no one to stop him. No one would be willing to call the press and alert them, since that person would be caught by the telephonic net around all the reporters. </p>
<p>In fact, why wouldn’t some future president do all this, since it would be legal?</p>
<p>That is pretty scary though…
the FBI spies on major news networks…
the Pentagon spies on war protestors…amongst others…
<a href=“http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/DODAntiWarProtestDatabaseTracker.pdf[/url]”>http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/DODAntiWarProtestDatabaseTracker.pdf</a>
the NSA wiretaps calls
the NSA keeps huge databases of calls</p>
<p>which part of the intelligence community ISN’T illegally spying on us?</p>
<p>Nixon did some of the same dirty tricks and got “fired” for it. Ooops, before the usual suspects (“defenderers”) catch me on a technicality, I should say that he “resigned” before he got fired, but it’s the same thing.</p>
<p>
No, you got caught on a different technicality. Which Nixon dirty trick was the same as the NSA program?</p>
<p>Message to the conservatives who have posted on this thread: the Bush administration has managed in significant ways to turn the meaning of your political identification on its head. The ballooning deficit, the erosion of civil rights, the drop in respect on the world stage, to name merely a few quantifiable trends. In these arenas, the Bush administration has failed to conserve what it inherited. Do you conservatives not find it at least a bit ironic that it is card-carrying liberals who are calling for conserving your civil rights, conserving your country’s international reputation as a nation of laws, and stopping the tax cuts to the wealthy in order to pay down the out-of-control deficit and conserve our ability to remain a major force in the international financial markets?</p>
<p>Driver reminds me of the annoying kid, desperate for attention, who keeps asking “Why?” just so people won’t ignore her.</p>
<p>Unless I’m mistaken, the Supreme Court ruled, ages ago, that it is fine to keep records of whom you call - no Fourth Amendment violation.</p>
<p>I keep saying that things come home to roost. When you take a “loose” interpretation of the Constitution, it isn’t a surprise that, years later, someone uses that interpretation to do some pretty wacky stuff. </p>
<p>A lot of conservatives have had enough of Bush… there just isn’t much hue and cry, perhaps because the liberal media doesn’t want to admit that we think our party is about more than what it has become.</p>
<p>Both were/are imperial presidents. Both were/are malign cancers that far transcend ordinary partisan differences. Bush is worse in that the evil he has done will take more than a decade to repair.</p>
<p>Nixon was driven by paranoia. Bush is a dry drunk trying to out do Dad. For Nixon I have a shred of pity for the man. For Bush, I have none.</p>
<p>Aries, the most recent was 1978-79, Smith v. Maryland</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2383457&postcount=110[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2383457&postcount=110</a></p>
<p>such dangerous thoughts,…no wonder the government must record your conversations, dad.</p>
<p>driver, didn’t someone post that a subsequent law was passed that made it illegal for phone companies to give out customer info without their permission? If the issue were as clear-cut as you think, why did Quest think it was illegal? One of the distinctions between Smith and current law, is that the Court ruled that the perp on the phone had no expectation of phone number privacy from the gov’t. The Telecommunications law, as I read that prior post, made it illegal for the phone companies to give out the info to anyone without the customer’s permission, or a court order.</p>
<p>and you didn’t address the previous question. I’m interested in how you all think, separate from the Bush involvement. Can you ever envision that the executive branch could use such oversight, unfettered by any judicial oversight, for its own purposes; and does this give you pause, or not cause you any concern at all?</p>
<p>
I think somebody did, and I think that somebody misunderstood both the subsequent law and the current NSA program. There is no customer information given out. Numbers are run through computers–vast, vast quantities of numbers–way too many for any human system to keep up with–to identify patterns of US numbers contacting known bad-guy numbers. But you’ll find out the whole story when your uncle General Hayden starts testifying before the Senate on Thursday.</p>
<p>If these are only calls to or from “known bad-guy numbers”, why would they need to purchase the phone records from the phone companies for millions and millions of phones? Why wouldn’t they just get court orders for the bad-guy numbers?</p>
<p>“Nixon was driven by paranoia. Bush is a dry drunk trying to out do Dad. For Nixon I have a shred of pity for the man. For Bush, I have none.”</p>
<p>That’s NOT FAIR. He has made his friends - everyone from Texas oilmen to defense contractors - very, very rich, and for the rest of them he has provided tax breaks. The fact is he HAS outdone dad, of which he should be very proud.</p>
<p>Now if he can only get that guestworker program, so he can make U.S. towns and villages resemble the Northern Marianas… Made in America all the way! </p>
<p>Judges shouldn’t make laws; that’s something that should be left to the Executive Branch. He learned that at Andover, and he hasn’t forgotten. He took a pledge to protect and defend the Constitution, and I think we should take him at his word.;)</p>
<p>
Because each time a new number becomes identified as a bad-guy number, the NSA wants its computers to point out who has been calling those numbers. But it’s all done by computers, with no names attached. If the computer finds out that someone at your house has been calling Al Quaeda, they’ll get a search warrant. No-brainer.</p>
<p>“A lot of conservatives have had enough of Bush… there just isn’t much hue and cry, perhaps because the liberal media doesn’t want to admit that we think our party is about more than what it has become.”</p>
<p>Aries: what in the world does that mean? I am so tired of that old saw that it is, once again, the liberal media’s fault. Grow up, for God’s sake.</p>