We all know the issue:
Bush is asking for permanent immunity, to escape all possible liability on Telecom spying.
MSNBC is giving this a lot of "breaking news" coverage, right now.
The Democrats are saying there's no chance there'll be any lapse, or change, to the security measures that have been in place, any time soon.
Nothing at all will change for months -- the language of the existing protections already includes continuing protection, even with the failure to negotiate an extension.
What the Republicans want is new language that makes the immunity much more difficult for any future president to remove. So that their possible exposure to prosecution, for illegal activities that may have already been committed, can't be erased, as soon as next year.
There's more here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2858703Excerpt:
"...Warrantless wiretap---domestic spying---is a great big blackmail scam. One of the very first things that Dick Cheney did when he began to recreate Dick Nixon’s attempts to found a totalitarian regime was institute domestic spying. By now, we all know that this plan did not start after 9/11. The administration went to the telecoms early in 2001 and told them it wanted to be able to intercept phone calls, emails, faxes. We know that Verizon and AT&T went along with the plan and Qwest refused on the grounds that it was illegal. Verizon and AT&T have been well rewarded by the FCC. Qwest has been punished with criminal prosecutions. From a whistle blower, we know that every communication within the United States was funneled through..."Besides the *domestic* spying, it's just possible that some of those wiretaps connected overseas. Valerie Plame + Sibel Edmonds:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3179368Excerpt:
"...Valerie Plame Wilson Describes Sibel Edmonds Disclosures as 'Stunning'
Says She Been Following Recent Blockbuster Series in British Paper Concerning U.S. Nuclear Secrets Espionage, Allegations That Her Cover Company, Brewster Jennings, Was Exposed by a Former High-Ranking State Department Official as Long Ago as 2001...
Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson says the recent disclosures in the UK's Sunday Times concerning the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets to the foreign black market, as aided by high-ranking government officials, are "stunning."
The previously covert agent, who had worked in the agency's counter-proliferation division for years, monitoring traffic in the nuclear black market under the guise of a cover company named Brewster Jennings, until being outed by Administration officials, was asked about the recent series of explosive stories in the British paper...
The *nuclear proliferation angle*, which ties Valerie Plame to Sibel Edmonds, also brings up other covert (suppressed?) issues, possibly related to recent events in Turkey and Central Asia. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2860234Excerpt:
New York Times--ISTANBUL, Nov. 30 — A Turkish passenger jet crashed in the mountains of western Turkey early Friday, killing all 57 people on board, including several prominent nuclear physicists on their way to a conference, Turkish authorities said.
The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 operated by Atlasjet, an airline based in Istanbul, took off from Istanbul and disappeared from radar shortly before it was due to land at the airport in Isparta. It crashed about seven miles from the airport, near the town of Keciborlu, the authorities said. The cause of the crash was unclear. The weather was good, airline officials said.
The plane crashed in an area that was not on its scheduled route, according to Semsettin Uzun, the governor of Isparta Province. “We don’t understand how it landed there,” he said.
Other nuclear scientists were recently kidnapped in Pakistan, and also disappeared, perhaps conveniently. (That's at the top of that link, the excerpt above is from a response.) Also:http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2855600Excerpt:
"On 22 January, Turkish police arrested 33 individuals, some connected with the military, in the largest concerted action against the "deep state" – that shadowy underworld linking extremists and criminals from the spheres of military, political, judicial and the academy. Some were accused of belonging to an ultranationalist group, Ergenekon, that was allegedly "preparing a series of bomb attacks aimed at fomenting chaos ahead of a coup in 2009 against Turkey's center-right government, whose European Union-linked reforms are opposed by ultranationalists." The ultranationalists (who also distrust the Erdogan government for its alleged Islamist agenda) were plotting to assassinate prominent cultural figures, such as Nobel-prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, journalist Fehmi Koru, and possibly Kurdish politicians.
The deaths of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, two Italian priests and three Protestant missionaries have already been blamed on ultranationalists associated with the Ergenekon group......With all those genies out of the bottle, they could bring attention back to some of the troubling questions never properly addressed by the 9/11 Commission. (I'd say, go to D.U.'s 9/11 discussion to follow some of those tracks.If anyone's ever able to actually get Valerie Plame and Sibel Edmonds in the same room, at the same time, and an authorized investigative agency (sanctioned by Congress, as a result of this House Contempt Resolution for Myers and Bolten?), gets any traction, things could get ugly, fast, for the Executive Branch.
But, however that investigation turns out,
here's the bottom line:The Republicans will look pretty silly, if it comes out that they were actually
intercepting,
recording and
data filtering:
*every single communications transmission*
coming in and going out of the country
(and some juicy, local, domestic -- democratic -- ones as well)
but shucks, when asked for them by Congress, they "lost" all those
White House e-mails on the Attorney General firings.
Admittedly, as 'hush-hush' and protected and 'eyes only' confidential as most of this stuff is, we're only seeing the tips of all the icebergs. They may or may not be connected below the surface.
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