Alberto Gonzales just claimed that the Bush Administration shouldn’t have to get warrants to spy on American citizens because “we’re at war, and there has to be a measure of secrecy.” But the court they get the warrants from, the FISA court, is a SECRET court. They have top-secret clearances, and everything is done quickly and secretly out of the public eye. There’s no chance that any enemy combatants would learn about the wiretapping from the court system.
Bush said he had a team of lawyers go over the program — but a team of lawyers isn’t going to protect us. Only the courts can make sure that people’s rights are not being compromised in the process. And as I’ve pointed out many times, the court is there not just to protect the rights of American Citizens, but to protect BUSH from criticism, and to provide him back up to show that what he’s doing is above board.
If he went around the courts, he’s doing it because he knows he can’t get warrants for what he’s doing. Which means the spying he’s doing isn’t on TERRORISTS at all. It’s on his political enemies. He’s spying on Democrats. He was spying on John Kerry and Kerry’s election team.
Bush should be impeached, then jailed.
Last week, NBC allowed Chris Matthews to say, on the air, that Osama bin Laden sounds like Michael Moore.
This week, though, when Rachel Maddow made a much more apt comparison on Tucker Carlson’s show, saying:
This is a global war on terror. This is a war for you or for us to win. You need patience…He sounds like Ken Mehlman when he’s saying that only less gay. I mean this is ridiculous.
NBC chose to scrub the transcript. Ken Mehlman, for those who don’t know, is the closeted gay head of the Republican National Committee. Here’s the transcript that NBC put online:
MADDOW: He sounds like Ken Mehlman when he‘s saying that. This is ridiculous.
CARLSON: I‘m going to blow by that comment. But I will say—you…
Apparently you’re allowed to dis Democrats but not tell the truth about Republicans.
The television show “Welcome to the Neighborhood” was supposed to be a huge hit. Seven families compete to win a McMansion on a cul-de-sac in an suburban neighborhood, with the winners being chosen by the neighbors. Turns out, the popular couple who won, by changing the hearts and minds of the redneck republican residents, were gay men. And ABC, fearing a backlash from the religious right in the form of a boycott of their pet film Chronicles of Narnia, killed the show because they thought viewers might object to a neighborhood embracing gay people as friends and neighbors.
Now the gay couple who won the house, and the neighbors who changed their minds to support them, are speaking out about what happened.
MATTHEWS (1/18/06): Have you gone to see it yet? I’ve seen everything else but that. I just—
IMUS: No, I haven’t seen it. Why would I want to see that?
MATTHEWS: I don’t know. No opinion on that. I haven’t seen it either, so—
IMUS: So they were—it was out when I was in New Mexico and—it doesn’t resonate with real cowboys who I know.
MATTHEWS: Yeah—
IMUS: But then, maybe there’s stuff going on on the ranch that I don’t know about. Not on my ranch, but you know—
MATTHEWS: Well, the wonderful Michael Savage, who’s on 570 in DC, who shares a station with you at least, he calls it [laughter]—what’s he call it?—he calls it Bare-back Mount-ing. That’s his name for the movie.
IMUS: Of course, Bernard calls it Fudgepack Mountain…
Notice he called Michael Savage wonderful? That’s really frightening.
Terrorist Osama Bin LadenI’m sure you’ve all heard that a tape has surfaced of Osama bin Laden’s voice, indicating that he’s still alive. That was probably quite a blow to the Bush White House, because they’ve been quietly planting the story about that he died in December…
(original link, no longer active – http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/dailyUpdate.html) Christian Science Monitor, 12/21/2005:
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Wednesday that he doubts Osama bin Laden is in any position to command the worldwide operations of Al Qaeda. The BBC reports that Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters on a flight to Pakistan that bin Laden could still be hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, but it was hard to know since the terrorist leader had not been heard from in more than a year…
And the (original link, no longer active – http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200601090808.asp) National Review, January 9, 2006:
And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Nice attempt to tie bin Laden to Iran so we can invade there, huh?
Some news people, though, seemed to think it was less important to talk about what it means that bin Laden’s alive, and more important to play politics, thus prompting outrage. Chris Matthews on Hardball: “I mean he sounds like an over the top Michael Moore here, if not a Michael Moore. You think that sells…”
And Chris Matthews sounds a lot like Joseph Stalin. I’m just saying.
“You’d think the only focus tonight would be on destroying Osama Bin Laden, not comparing him to an American who opposes the war whether you like him or not. You want a real debate that America needs? Here goes: If the administration had done the job right in Tora Bora we might not be having discussions on Hardball about a new Bin Laden tape. How dare Scott McClellan tell America that this Administration puts terrorists out of business when had they put Osama Bin Laden out of business in Afghanistan when our troops wanted to, we wouldn’t have to hear this barbarian’s voice on tape. That’s what we should be talking about in America.” — John Kerry
2022-03-15 Update:
Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 a.m. PKT. Chris Matthews denied ever saying he was dead prior to that date.
Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure
Revision 88 / Serial number 54892
Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.
There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.
What do you want to do now?
> INVADE IRAQ
You are not able to do that, yet.
> LOOK MIRROR
Self-reflection is not your strong suit.
> PET SEAL
It’s not that kind of seal.
> EXAMINE CHAIRS
They are two several chairs arranged around the center of the room, along with two couches. Under one couch you find Clinton’s shoes.
> FILL SHOES
You are unable to fill Clinton’s shoes.
And if the last story wasn’t enough to make want to laugh and cry at the same time, try this one: not content with fumbling the ball in Iraq and listening in on you while you talk to your family members in England, the Bush Administration is demanding Google’s search records, according to numerous news sources, including the Mercury News.
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.
The Mountain View-based search and advertising giant opposes releasing the information on a variety of grounds, saying it would violate the privacy rights of its users and reveal company trade secrets, according to court documents.
Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government’s effort “vigorously.”‘
“Google is not a party to this lawsuit, and the demand for the information is overreaching,” Wong said.
And in future bone-head spastic terror panic of the month news, the Department of Homeland Security will be arresting your 10 year-old brother after mistaking him for Osama bin Laden. Really, people. This is pretty damned stupid. According to CNN:
Scot Tintsman found that out when he stashed a green bucket under an Idaho highway bridge last September, intending to fill it with goodies for other players to find using Global Positioning System units. But before he could finish adding the requisite trinkets and log books and posting its GPS coordinates on the Internet, a bridge inspection crew found it.
Rounding a corner on his motorcycle to finish rigging his cache, he was greeted by a barricade of police cars and a bomb squad. He struggled to explain the misunderstanding.
“I got off my bike and three officers approached me very cautiously, hands on their holsters,” he said. “I was trying to turn off my MP3 player and I think they were worried I was going for a detonator.”
…
Tintsman, whose geocache sat high above the whitewater of Idaho’s Payette River, was charged with placing debris on public property, a misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail and a $300 fine.
County prosecutor Matthew Williams said that he is not seeking jail time but that he would like restitution for the expense of the law enforcement response.
No word on whether Tintsman will in turn seek $300 from Authorities as a fine for “Public Displays of Utter Idiocy.”
Not to lean on Katic Couric this morning, but she deserves this one, too… She had a story this morning on Jill Carroll, the American reporter kidnapped in Iraq by insurgents. She interviewed a fellow journalist (a pretty level-headed guy) about her, and he spoke well of Jill and her style of reporting. And she had an FBI analyst on to talk about Jill’s prospects for freedom. What made me do a spit-take was Katie’s statement to the FBI guy —
“how likely is it that Jill will be freed, since America has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists?”
What? Um, Katie. You’re getting real life mixed up with the movies again. That was Harrison Ford, not George Bush. We negotiate with terrorists ALL THE TIME. That “missing” 8.8 Billion dollars was passed out as cash payments to insurgents, Katie, to pay them to clear a green zone in Baghdad. America traded prisoners from Abu Graib for kidnapped contract mercenaries — paid killers — at more than one time. America traded for guns, money, oil, roads, towns, Halliburton. America paid the insurgents not to attack before both of the elections, Katie. George Bush is a whore who’s slept with every criminal in Iraq. The only dirty, filthy thing that George won’t do is negotiate for an actual American citizen. Because they’re expendable.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 – In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.
But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.
F.B.I. officials repeatedly complained to the spy agency, which was collecting much of the data by eavesdropping on some Americans’ international communications and conducting computer searches of foreign-related phone and Internet traffic, that the unfiltered information was swamping investigators. Some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy.
…
“We’d chase a number, find it’s a school teacher with no indication they’ve ever been involved in international terrorism – case closed,” said one former FBI official, who was aware of the program and the data it generated for the bureau. “After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.”
…
F.B.I. field agents, who were not told of the domestic surveillance programs, complained they often were given no information about why names or numbers had come under suspicion. A former senior prosecutor, who was familiar with the eavesdropping programs, said intelligence officials turning over the tips “would always say that we had information whose source we can’t share, but it indicates that this person has been communicating with a suspected Al Qaeda operative.” He said, “I would always wonder, what does ‘suspected’ mean?”
