I Have Some Questions I want the Right to Answer about Wiretaps

[Ioo]

Again, the law gives him the means to get all the wiretaps he wants, all he has to do is go to a secret court and ask for one.
What is so hard with this?

What did he have to hide?

What is SO major that he did not trust the courts?

Our President does not trust the courts should I?

He is also tring to tell me that he wants us to think that the courts would reject a warrent if it was really calls from terrorists?

[rfranklin]

1. Because the court would have rejected what the Bush thugs wanted...

and the Bush thugs knew they were doing something un-Constitutional.

[Flabbergasted]

2. Ultimately

People will argue this issue any way they want. I recently went to political Crossfire (a political forum). As always a heated debate concerning wiretaps was ensuing.

The truth is Bush broke the law. That's what it comes down to. Most courts would see this. Lets hope the Supreme Court does. If Alito gets in or any other judge like him we're in trouble. Nothing will ever impeach this guy in that case.

[Ioo]

3. I think the one that is strong , Bush does not trust the courts, should I?

[Flabbergasted]

6. A Supreme court with Sandra Day is one thing

a supreme court with Alito is another.

Sandra is quoted as saying something like war does not give the president a right to do anything he likes.

Alito seems to go toward exec priv but is's hard to say.

[ddeclue]

5. Well impeachment isn't up to the Courts...

It's up to Congress and then the Senate. The Courts have no say over impeachment itself.

Doug D.

[Flabbergasted]

7. Ultimately but

Roberts will play a significant role in favor of Bush in this regard. The problem is the legality of the situation. Was it legal. Congress probably wouldn't impeach unless it was found that he broke the law especially since the dems will probably not have a significant majority if any.

Bush still can, and my fear is will, wiggle out of this. In which case he will have a mandate for spying and other powers. I think the thing he has to worry about is as he continues to talk to the press and public more information comes out refuting his statements. I think this is likely. (Cross my fingers)

Worse case scenario is it goes to the s.u. and they find it legal.

[ddeclue]

8. Yes but the tryer of fact is the United States Senate.

As we all remember from the Clinton impeachment and it is not up to the courts.

The Senate gets to decide on it's own what is or is not a crime, there is no jury of citizens.

The Chief Justice (now Roberts) would preside over such a Senate trial but I really don't think he can do enough to help Bush out of the hole he is in on this one. The Republican leadership is going to go to Bush sooner or later and ask him to take one for the team and resign and if he doesn't they are going to impeach him because they know that the Democrats will in 2007 and replace Bush with a Democrat.

Doug D.

[Flabbergasted]

9. Clinton Commited a Crime

Perjury. It was not up to the senate to decide that. The court provided the proof. Without the courts decision that a crime had been committed the Senate won't do much.

I see what you're saying but its going to come down to wether he had the right to tap without warrants? The public is undecided because they refuse to ask the question in terms of larger context. In this case the important questions are: R we at war? Does this grant the pres. extra powers? Who did he spy on? And with a rubber stamp FISA court why did you not get a warrant?

There will be a massive debate on this subject for months. Who he spyed on is ultimately the real question and the point they will lie about most.

[ddeclue]

10. Actually you are wrong..

Clinton was never tried in any court of law for perjury.

The trier of fact and law is the Senate and solely the Senate.

Re your questions:
1) He had no right to tap without warrants. Article II Section 2 of the Constitution grants him no such power and all such unenumerated powers are reserved to the people and the states, not the Federal government. The FISA law further restricted him and made it a felony to tap without a warrant, not merely "unconstitutional".
2) No we are not at war. War requires a declaration by Congress which was never issued.
3) No even if we were at war it does not grant the President any extra powers. The President's powers are specifically enumerated in the Constitution. The "Executive" power granted to him in Article II Section 1 only gives him the power to execute and enforce the laws AS PASSED BY CONGRESS. No laws were changed and no acts of Congress related to 9/11 or Iraq granted him any power to spy in the United States.

As Tom Daschle said in his Washington Post piece, they asked, the Senate told him no anyways.

4) We have no idea other than he has admitted to spying on Americans without a warrant on TV which is a clear violation of the FISA act which is a felony (x1000's of counts.)

5) He didn't get a warrant because the NSA plugged directly into the phone companies and recorded miliions of conversations an hour looking for someone saying "bomb" or "Osama", etc. and there is no way to get a warrant on everybody because a warrant requires probable cause which in turn requires a particular subject or subjects. It can't just be everybody - that totally blows the 4th Amendment out of the water and turns the U.S. into a police state.

Please read my recent posts at www.brainshrub.com/blog/121 on this topic. I cover it all in great detail.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

[ddeclue]

4. Because of one or more of the following:

1) The NSA and it's huge banks of computers were tied into all the major phone company switches all over the country and were sifting through every last phone conversation, email and page building huge databases of conversations and how they were linked to each other which is literally George Orwell's "big brother".

In order to get a warrant, you have to show a judge "probable cause". In order to have probable cause you have to have a particular suspect or reasonably definable group of suspects. No judge, even Antonin Scalia, would issue a warrant granting the President the right to listen in on every electronic communication on the planet and then sift through it all in such an over-reaching intrusion on 4th amendment privacy.

Also once that data is collected, it is stored and can be searched for particulars afterwards that weren't considered while recording it.

Listening in on everybody in general sounds innocuous if you think about it superficially but everybody is just a mathematical superset of a whole lot of somebodies (and "nobodies" as well). This means they could pull up conversations from John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, Terry McAuliffe, Wesley Clarke, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, Bill Richardson, or anybody they disliked or even just didn't entirely trust and listen in - without a warrant.

In this sense, the NSA wire taps were akin to what arms controllers call a "dual use facility". Yes it could listen in on Al Qaeda, but it could also listen in on the Kerry Edwards campaign.

Without a warrant, there will be very little paperwork and we'll probably never know the whole truth.

2) They actually were specifically listening in on political opponents instead of just suspected terrorists.