Gone Zo But Not Forgotten

Former A.G. A. G. Back In The Headlines

It's been a long time since we've heard about former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The little worm probably thought he wriggled off the various hooks he'd impaled himself on in service to his idol Führer President George W. Bush. Think again. From The Atlantic (via Crooks and Liars):

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

This incident is one of the worst examples of abuse of power in an administration rife with - indeed characterized by - abuse of power. We blogged about this dramatic story back in May of 2007 when the testimony of James Comey revealed the incident in front of a Senate Judiciary Committee. We lamented a day later that it had been virtually ignored by the Lamestream Media (abbreviated LaMe) - in stark defiance of the journalistic rule, "if it bleeds, it leads."

My opinion then, to which I still adhere, was that if the American public knew what went on in John Ashcroft's hospital room it would have led to Bush and Cheney's being lynched impeached. So I think one correction needs to be made to Murray Waas's otherwise excellent article about these new developments. The 'now-famous' visit to Ashcroft's hotel room is nothing of the sort. I would bet that it's only famous to the denizens of Greater Left BlogSylvania, because a) the LaMe have kept schtum about it, so 70% of the public have never heard the story and b) the complicit House and Senate chose not to make an issue of this political dynamite, that could well have put Bush, Cheney, and Gonzo in the dock defending against treason charges.

For a more thorough understanding of the issues surrounding this incident I urge you to read the entire Waas article and/or my own post from May of last year (links will open in new windows.) There are two new stories here, the first the revelation above, from Gonzo's own lips, that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit. That's big. There's been speculation about this, Gonzo testified that he was acting 'on the authority of the White House' but until now that left the possibility open that he was under Cheney's direction. (TPM Muckraker has archive YouTube footage of Gonzo's testimony that goes to this issue.) This new revelation, if true, puts Dubya's skinny neck right on the chopping block. The deliberate and underhanded effort to subvert the Constitution and the rule of law in a naked grab for power is undeniable.

I just have to insert a reminder here. When this hospital room incident happened, Gonzales was still White House Counsel, John Ashcroft was the titular Attorney General but was not actively carrying out the duties of that office, and James Comey was the acting Attorney General. It's important to know that to understand the level of impropriety of Gone-Zo's actions.

The second aspect of the story that's new is the information "that in another instance the President asked [Gonzales] to fabricate fictitious notes." Parts of that story appear in the Murray Waas article linked above. Waas has a separate article here about the fabricated notes aspect of the story. This one puts Gone-z0's neck on the block, and I have to comment that it is simply shocking to see how compliant AGAG is with the most outrageous requests from his president.

President Bush reauthorized the surveillance program on March 11, 2004, one day after the hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to sign a certification saying that the program was legal and could therefore continue.

In reauthorizing the surveillance program over the objections of his own Justice Department, President Bush later claimed to have relied on notes made by Gonzales about a meeting that had taken place the day before (March 10), in which Gonzales and Vice President Cheney had met with eight congressional leaders—also known as the “Gang of Eight”—who receive briefings about covert intelligence programs. According to Gonzales’s notes, the congressional leaders had said in the meeting that they wanted the surveillance program to continue despite the attorney general’s refusal to certify that it was legal.

But four of the congressional leaders present at the meeting say that’s not true; they never encouraged the White House to sidestep the objections of the attorney general and continue the program without his approval.

Investigators are skeptical of the notes because Gonzales did not write them until days after the meeting with the congressional leaders, and he wrote them after both Bush and Gonzales had together signed a reauthorization of the surveillance program.

Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time he met with the congressional leaders, has told investigators working for the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General that President Bush personally directed him to write the notes so that he could “memorialize” what the legislators had told him, according to a report made public by the Inspector General’s Office on September 2 and sources close to the investigation.

The timing of when Bush directed Gonzales to write the notes is important: investigators say the fact that they were written after both the meeting and the reauthorization of the program might indicate that they were written in order to provide an after-the-fact justification for the signing of the reauthorization—and that that timing might have given Gonzales a motive to lie in the notes.

For the sake of clarity and brevity I'll try to sketch this out in bullet-point form.

• The Bush/Cheney crime syndicate wanted desperately to be able to wiretap whomever they wanted to, whenever they wanted to, without oversight.
  
• They knew damn well that this was illegal, as the FISA statutes had made this particular insult on the Fourth Amendment a FELONY - specifically emphasizing that the President himself was not only not exempt from the law, but after Nixon's transgressions was the very target of the law
• The Department of Justice seems to have initially certified the surveillance program on good faith, but significantly had done so without the White House really having disclosed what it was they were signing off on.
• When the DoJ got details (probably not full details) of what Bush/Cheney were actually doing with the initial authorization, they declared the program to be illegal, and vehemently declared that the certification would not be renewed.
• By the time the initial certification was to expire, Attorney General John Ashcroft lay in Intensive Care in the hospital, was recovering from surgery and under heavy sedation.
• Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card were dispatched to Ashcroft's hospital room with a manila envelope containing the renewal of the DoJ certification that the surveillance program was legal.
• James Comey had already refused to sign this document. Ashcroft, Comey and other chief officials at DoJ as well as Robert Mueller, director of the FBI had all threatened to resign if the illegal wiretapping program continued.
• The President personally phoned ahead to advise Ashcroft's wife that Gonzales and Card were on their way. This led Ashcrofts Chief of Staff to call Comey and Mueller to advise them of what was about to go down.
• Comey sped to the scene to prevent Ashcroft from being pressured while he was in no condition to defy a two-on-one play to subvert justice. Mueller called the FBI agents assigned to guard Ashcroft and order that under no circumstances was Comey to be removed from the room.
• Ashcroft, to his credit, refused to be steamrolled, telling Gonzales and Card, "I'm not even the Attorney General right now, he (Comey) is." Thus the illegal attempt to obtain the illegal certification of an illegal program was thwarted.
• Phase Two begins. Having failed to subvert the Justice Department, the White House turned their efforts to the Legislative Branch. Gonzales and Dick Cheney met later the same day (Mar. 10, 2004.) with the so-called Gang of Eight.
  
• The next day President Bush re-authorized the surveillance program HIMSELF!! through an executive order - exerting a dictatorial power that he did NOT have under any interpretation of the Constitution of the United States of America.
  
• At some point AFTER this bogus 'reauthorization' Gonzales cobbles up notes giving a false account of the meeting with the Gang of Eight - an account wherein the Gang of Eight said they wanted the surveillance program to continue.
• The Congressmen who attended the meeting said that they did NOT express such desire.

In the shortest summation I can distill this to - the President of the United States committed fraud in order to usurp the powers of both the Judicial and Legislative branches, in order to commit a large number of serious felonies. More alarming, nobody tried to stop him in the face of these patent High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Glenn Greenwald discussed these related stories with Murray Waas in Friday's Salon Radio segment. If this isn't Shock and Awe directed against the very foundations of the country I don't know what would be.

---

Geez Louise. Could it get any worse for the beleaguered Gonzales? It appears so. TPM Muckraker reports that the DoJ is going to release a report on Monday about the Prosecutors' Purge scandal. In that short report TPM recalls a predicition made by David Iglesias, who was one of the US Attorney's dismissed under questionable circumstances:

I expect them to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to show that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty committed perjury in their statements before Congressional committees and investigators.

Seems like Alberto's got a whole lot of 'splainin' to do.

TAGS: Alberto Gonzales, Illegal Wiretaps, Usurpation of Power
James Comey and the Curious Case of the Hospital Visit

Goodbye To My Dear Friend The 4th Amendment

Here's the list of the wankers who voted to let the 4th amendment go away today. Democrat wankers below:

Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Conrad (D-ND) Feinstein (D-CA)
Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lincoln (D-AR) McCaskill (D-MO) Mikulski (D-MD) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Obama (D-IL) Pryor (D-AR) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI)

And as per usual, Glenzilla is pretty much right on the money.

With their vote today, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom
industry, and has dramatically advanced a full-scale attack on the rule of law
in this country. As I noted earlier today, Law Professor and Fourth Amendment
expert Jonathan Turley was on MSNBC's Countdown with Rachel Maddow last night
and gave as succinct an explanation for what Democrats -- not the Bush
administration, but Democrats -- have done today. Anyone with any lingering
doubts about what is taking place today in our country should watch this (video below):

Maddow's introduction to Jonathan Turley's segment on Countdown last night, including the phrase "...one finger salute to the rule of law.." would be hilarious if it weren't true. Watch:

30 Felony counts, for which Bush is now, at least temporarily, absolved.

As I've expressed before, the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments to the Constittion are inextricably woven together, regardless of how they're numbered. When you take one of those away, the others become weaker.

Expect the next attacks to be on the First Amendment.

TAGS: FISA, Surveillance State, Useless or Incompetent Congress, Take Your Pick, Grrrr

AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State'

"The Judicial Logic of a Dictatorship"

From WIRED: Mark Klein is the engineer who blew the whistle on AT&T's involvement in the Bu$hCo™ ILLEGAL warrantless wiretapping program. He told everybody about the secret room in Los Angeles where the telecom giant allowed NSA to tap into the trunk carrying pretty much all domestic communication on the west coast. This led to a lawsuit against AT&T, a lawsuit that will probably be pining for the fjords if the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 gets passed. In an interview with WIRED's Ryan Singel, Klein sounds off against this latest instance of obstruction of justice by the US Government (a wholly-pwned subsidiary of Bu$hCo™)

...It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.

The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a "compromise," but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: "Just following orders." The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.
[...]
Congress has made the FISA law a dead letter--such a law is useless if the president can break it with impunity. Thus the Democrats have surreptitiously repudiated the main reform of the post-Watergate era and adopted Nixon’s line: "When the president does it that means that it is not illegal." This is the judicial logic of a dictatorship.

The surveillance system now approved by Congress provides the physical apparatus for the government to collect and store a huge database on virtually the entire population, available for data mining whenever the government wants to target its political opponents at any given moment—all in the hands of an unrestrained executive power. It is the infrastructure for a police state.

...which for the Ruling Crime Syndicate is a much higher priority than other infrastructure projects like highways, bridges, flood control, air traffic control, hospitals, etc. Because somehow in their way of thinking the government giving you medical treatment when you need it infringes on your freedom, whereas spying on you doesn't.

TAGS: Warrantless Wiretapping, Police State, FISA Amendment Act of 2008
"When the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

New and Disturbing Rules Sought

Taking Liberties with YOUR Civil Liberties

It looks like they're still trying to find some way to give retroactive immunity to telecoms who broke the law by co-operating with Bu$hCo™'s illegal warrant-less wiretapping program.

Story from TPMMuckraker;
Story from Crooks and Liars

Of note for those still naive enough to think that the US is going to vote itself out of the current Bush-created crises in November is the capitulation of Texas 'Democrat' (In Name Only) Silvestre Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The so-called compromise would leave it up to the FISA courts themselves to determine whether immunity should be granted. My deepest sympathies go out to anyone with a teen-aged daughter who is as incapable of saying NO as the FISA courts are. Or as willing to roll over onto her back as the Democrats are.

As has been consistently shown in every legal case that this administration has had contact with, the new rules he's trying to put in place can be summed up as:

1) - If you're 'with us', you can get away with whatever the hell you like, including murder. Think of the KBR/Halliburton thugs that gang-raped Jamie Leigh Jones. Or the contractors involved in the black-site interrogation TO DEATH of dozens of alleged terrorists. Or the $10 BILLION in cash that went missing in Iraq under Paul Bremer's watch - and nobody even bothered to look for it. Etc, etc, etc....

1) If you're not 'with us', you are by explicit definition 'with the terrorists', so you are guilty regardless of any evidence that a crime being committed. Think of Don Siegelman, or once again of those dozens of alleged terrorists who've been tortured to death.

Above all think of the appointment of the most partisan group of hacks to ever inhabit the Supreme Court, and the Prosecutors' Purge that has created what amounts to a Department of Injustice in America. The march toward a full-blown fascist state continues unimpeded.

TAGS: FISA, Warrantless+Wiretapping, Department of Justice, = Injustice

The Shape of Things to Come

"Oh gosh, actually it isn't lawlessness any more, now is it?"

I've been hatching a lament for several days now, on the sorry state of what passes for justice anymore in the nation that used to be America. Naomi Wolf posted recently at Huffington Post on a topic that was pretty much where I was going anyway. Long story short, that handbasket that America's future is riding in is not just nipping down to the store for a quart of milk. The erosion of anything resembling justice is pretty much complete.

As the Australian reported earlier this week, New South Wales Justice of the Peace Mamdouh Habib is suing the Australian federal government -- which under the Howard administration had colluded with the US in committing various abuses against detainees and due process -- for having allowed him to be arrested wrongly in Pakistan in 2001, kidnapped and sent illegally to Egypt. There this Justice of the Peace was illegally imprisoned and tortured for six months. After that the United States held him for FOUR YEARS in Guantanamo.
[...]
Get that? A justice of the peace in a developed-world democracy. Had you heard of that?

Me neither.
[...]
They rendered an Australian justice of the peace -- and that rendition did not even make the US news. So how can we be sure there is something so sacred about an American justice of the peace or even a judge? Say, an American judge who ruled against the Military Commissions?

I could quote much more of this article, but it's better if you just read the whole thing yourself. You might be angry, but you won't be disappointed.

My lament was going to mention things like the well-documented Don Siegelman kangaroo court in Alabama. Ms. Wolf touched on that. I was also going to mention the Supreme Court's recent decision to not even consider the ACLU's petition on illegal warrantless wiretapping. This is a replay of another decision they made last April regarding the odious Military Commissions Act. I blogged about that then, my opinions haven't changed, you can read about it HERE. There are other signs that the entire court system has gone over to the dark side, all the way over. There's THIS STORY about the Supremes' outrageous behavior in an appeal by Exxon over the still unpaid judgement almost twenty years later over the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

What bothered the chief justice was that Exxon was being ordered to pay $2.5 billion -- roughly three weeks' worth of profits -- for destroying a long swath of the Alaska coastline in the largest oil spill in American history.

"So what can a corporation do to protect itself against punitive-damages awards such as this?" Roberts asked in court.

There's not even any pretense that this case is going to be decided in an unbiased manner on its merits, or with reference to the Constitution and legal precedent. The will of the Corporatist government of Pricktator Extraordinaire George W. Bush is all that matters. The Constitution, after all, is just a Goddamn Piece of Paper. And there are more stories from just this week indicating how far the rule of law has diverged from the idea of 'a nation of laws, not men.'

How about this one?
Mukasey Rebuffs Contempt Referrals, House to Head to Court

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused yesterday to refer two new House contempt citations to a federal grand jury, saying the White House aides involved in the case cannot be prosecuted because they were following legal advice from the Justice Department.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mukasey said the refusal by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet E. Miers to comply with congressional subpoenas "did not constitute a crime."

Or how about the sham that has attended the fight over the renewal of the Protect America Act, which is about anything but protecting America? Over 80% of the riders in the aforementioned proverbial handbasket can catch a distinct whiff of sulfur, but you'd never know it from watching FOX "news" or CNN.

Ms. Wolf's post touches on a number of the Ten Points To Close Down an Open Society from her book, The End of America, notably #10; Suspend the Rule of Law. But you can't ignore #2; Create A Gulag, #4; Set Up an Internal Surveillance System, #6 Engage in Arbitrary Detention and Release or #8; Control The Press. The suspension of normal legal procedures is what enables all but #8 anyway. And reflexively, it is #8 that enables all the others. As Ms. Wolf observes, "They rendered an Australian justice of the peace -- and that rendition did not even make the US news."

If you carefully consider Ms. Wolf's analysis of any potential resistance to the worst case scenario of martial law, (and I think you should consider it very carefully indeed) where do you put your hopes when "NO ONE KNOWS WHERE THE RAMPARTS ARE?" After all, "THEY HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN and we have not. They aren't surprised or shocked; we are. They have a plan; we don't."

When it happens, and I increasingly fear that if it can happen it probably will, it won't be a Taxi to the Dark Side, it will be a humongous fleet of windowless prison buses. Speaking of Taxi to the Dark Side,

[It] won't be seen by most Americans. This is because the Discovery Channel bought it hoping to air it -- but then backed out. (Its affiliates have close ties to the military-industrial complex.) Will the Oscar win get it on the airwaves? Doubtful.

Call me paranoid, but I can't help thinking that perhaps the Discovery Channel bought this documentary not hoping to air it, but to ensure that no-one else could air it. At any rate there are numerous signs and portents that bode ill for the near future of America. One is reminded of the ominous opening of Act IV, scene 1 of Hamlet,

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.

TAGS: Police State, Fascism, Underground, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Tears of Rage

We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day,
And now you'd throw us all aside
And put us on our way."
-- Tears of Rage --
(Bob Dylan & Richard Manuel)

Throwing us all aside, the US Senate has capitulated once again to the UberFührer's President's demands, this time on the issue of telecom immunity. As infuriating as it was at first blush, it only became more so on further reflection. In last night's lively thread I made an oblique observation that the DINO problem may be much worse than we thought. Look at the way the voting breaks down by how close those Democratic Senators who voted with the Republicans are to facing the polls:

Here is the list, with the cohort to which each Senator belongs. I think It shows an interesting trend.

Evan Bayh (D-IA) - III
Tom Carper (D-DE) - I
Kent Conrad (D-ND) - I
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) - I
Daniel Inouye (D-HI) - III
Tim Johnson (D-SD) - II
Herb Kohl (D-WI) - I
Mary Landrieu (D-LA) - II
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) - III
Claire McCaskill (D-MO) - I
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) - III
Ben Nelson (D-NE) - I
Bill Nelson (D-FL) - I
Mark Pryor (D-AR) - II
Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) - II
Ken Salazar (D-CO) - III
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) - I
Jim Webb (D-VA) - I

This year's cohort II (4 out of 12)
Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller
25%

2010 cohort III (5 out of 15)
Evan Bayh, Daniel Inouye, Blanche Lincoln, Barbara Mikulski, Ken Salazar
33%

2012 cohort I (9 out of 22)
Tom Carper, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Herb Kohl, Claire McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Debbie Stabenow, Jim Webb
41%

I think the numbers pretty much provide their own analysis. There may be any number of stealth Republicans with D's attached to their names who will vote with the R's when necessary to get a measure passed, but refrain from doing so unless necessary in order not to blow their cover. I could be wrong, but when Nosybear remarked that I had implied such a premise, I ran the numbers and here you see the result. You do the math, as they say. To be honest I haven't done any stats or probability problems in decades, and wouldn't know how to test this result to see if it passes a significance threshold.

At the very least this way of looking at the vote demonstrates one thing. The Democrats seem to be much more afraid of being punished at the polls for being soft on Republican terror than for being soft on Islamofascist (or whatever you want to call it) terror.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another observation I made is of just how much will have been given to this foul administration and their corporate enablers should retroactive immunity ever become law. Remember, the reason they're pushing so hard for this is that with the Department of Justice in their pocket, they can assure that no court will ever get to scrutinize their actions.

Without judicial review, and able to hide behind the State Secrets wall, there are no limits. The telecoms, the alphabet soupers, or the White House can spy on Congressmen of the opposition or even their own side for purposes of blackmail. They can listen in to conference calls of their competitors, steal trade secrets, practice insider trading without 'officially' being an insider. They could even bug trysts between lovers just for some kind of sick sexual gratification.

Jenn provided a link to this Raw Story piece about Bush's recent revelation that there were indeed telecoms who co-operated with illegal activities, something he has never come right out and said before. Man, that is one cocky bastard, filled with the certainty that he has destroyed the very concept of Justice in America! May he die the death of Herod the Great.

One line in that Raw Story sticks out from the others. "Bush has pledged to veto any bill without immunity, and he said Tuesday that he would not accept any more temporary FISA extensions."

Here's what I see playing out:
-Buoyed by his success in the Senate, Bush is trying to set yet another 'soft on terrorism' trap for the Democrats in the house. This is typical of his brat-like habit of, when given exactly what he wants, demanding more.

-Should the house fail to comply he will veto the bill and then, bewildering to anyone with two functioning synapses, blame the Democrats for denying him the tools to fight terrorism.

This should scare the hell out of us, because it implies that he is either:
1) absolutely certain that the corporate media will spin this to look the exact opposite of what it is or
2) planning on letting FISA lapse then springing yet another false flag operation, the 'third pearl harbor' that will justify him suspending the November elections and declaring martial law outright.

Clearly, tears are not nearly enough. This is like attending a funeral for human rights, perhaps for democracy itself. Like the passage of the Military Commissions Act last September, this is a time for sackcloth and ashes, a time for tearing at the hems of one's garments. A time for weeping.

---

We pointed out the way to go
And scratched your name in sand,
Though you just thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand.
Now, I want you to know that while we watched,
You discover there was no one true.
Most ev'rybody really thought
It was a childish thing to do.

It was all very painless
When you went out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe.
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse.
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
Tears of rage, tears of grief,
Must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know
We're so low
And life is brief.

(This post is a follow-on to Unconventional Conventionist's excellent And Liberty Cried..)

---

Thanks for the Blog Roundup linky love Mike at Crooks & Liars!!
Happy Valentine's day to you and to Blue Gal.
And thanks even more for this link to The Daily Awesome's action alert.
C&L visitors, please help us put pressure on Congress to squash this odious un-American provision. No criminal should be given immunity after the fact.

"HOPE has two children.
The first is ANGER at the way things are.
The second is COURAGE to DO SOMETHING about it."
-- St. Augustine --

TAGS: Telecom Immunity, FISA, Death of Democracy, Rise of Fascism

And Liberty Cried...

As I write this, it was within the last hour that the 110th Session of the Senate of the United States passed by 68 - 29 the most constitutional damage EVER. Consider the 4th Amendment wrecked unless some miracle happens in the House and/or in the Conference report.

Here is a pretty good summary of what went on, what will happen next.

But let's have a look at this in a total context.

THE PRIMARIES: Both Senators Obama and McCain were on the floor, voted on the amendments and the actual final bill. Senator Clinton was not on the floor and did not vote.

THE PRESS: SadButTrue's post below pretty much sums the climate up; LIES.

THE COURTS: Bear with me here. This is a little complex. The FISA court continues to say that there is likely information that the public should know that exists in the classified materials the ACLU seeks. Christy Hardin Smith at FDL puts it better than I can:

In other words, there is likely information that the public should know that exists in these classified materials, but the Congress, and not the courts, is the place in which these matters ought to be investigated. It's a strong hint from the FISA court, but they are not going to go beyond that because to do so, in their opinion, would be a violation of their role in this oversight tango. (And I have to wonder if the documents that the House is combing through contain this information -- or is it something beyond what they have been given?)

That the FISA Court has gone on record publicly not once -- but twice now-- on this issue screams volumes. That there is no clear resolution to these issues says a lot about where we are politically, and about the levels of frustration that is engendering among a whole host of people inside and outside the Beltway.

Contrast the FISC Court against Antonin "It’s ‘Absurd’ To Say The Gov’t Can’t ‘Smack’ A Suspect ‘In The Face’" Scalia. In light of the fact that testimony under water torture hasn't been in use since, oh, the Spanish Inquisition.

All this and a Healthy Dose of Unitary Executive.

Personal Gain Trumping Duty. Lies. Secrets. Legal Versus Justice System. Unchecked Executive Power.



You now understand why I titled this post "And Liberty Cried..."

TAGS: DISGRACE, FISA, Fascism, There Ain't A Label For What I want To Express