The "I" word is in the air - (Impeachment)

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Waitone said:
The more I read threads like this one, the stronger my conclusion is that there is not a linear continuum to politics.
Good point. Have you seen The Political Compass? It measures liberal/conservative on one axis, and libertarian/authoritarian on another. It's an interesting way to view what being libertarian does (and does not) mean.
 
Trip20 said:
The Drew - before you get upset with me, know that I do not support what has gone on, and that I do not blindly support "W".

What I would like to see, though, is that "W", et al, is held responsible for relevant happenings, not what people think.

Here's an interesting legal analysis by Prof. Orin Kerr. This was found by TFL Staff member "Antipitas", who is a lawyer if memory serves:


My point, The Drew, is that there is too much unknown at this point. It's entirely possible, moreso probable, that most persons in this and other threads ranting about broken laws and constitution toilet paper, really don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I'm only asking that we wait to understand what has really happened before we wrap ourselves in the flag, make a kevlar out of the constitution, and start firing our evil black rifles at the capitol.

Here's some additional interesting info:

Pres. Carter executive order 12139:




Pres clinton executive order 12949:




Pres. George W. Bush merely amends previous EO's with his EO 13383, 7-15-05:

So a violation of the FISA law isn't breaking any laws? It's made legal by the president issuing an executive order???

What should happen is that if it does come out that it was technically legal due to an EO, then there should be MAJOR outrage from the populace... Problem is that because this is being done in pursuance of "the war on terror" most of the sheeple don't give a damn...

There are too few real patriots left...
 
Won't be any impeachment

because 1) while it may become apparent that men of good will could come to opposite conclusions about the legality of Bush's actions, that ain't good enough to charge a president,

and 2) there won't be any Dem congress because this kind of talk will have convinced Americans that the Dems aren't serious about terrorism.
 
Just my two cents

Warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens is a clear and gross violation of the Fourth Amendment and thus, of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Ben Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Proponents of this measure "against terrorism": Please note my sigline.

The SCOTUS must have this reversed. Hopefully, they will.

I am against impeachment of President Bush, though. I'm not happy with him, but if he got kicked out of the office, I fear there will be a stronger knee-jerk reaction against Republican candidates than what I already expect in the next election. And that means that Hillary or Kerry would take over.
 
Biker said:
Long as he's damned, it's alright with me.
Biker

Nicht Scheisse!

It just totally boggles the mind how he's caught flat-out breaking the law (Before anyone jumps on me, keep in mind Bush did not get the warrants in the 72 hour grace period, he simply ignored them entirely,) - then he goes on to finger-point at those that exposed him.

If he would have just taken the effort to seek the warrants as the law allows him, I wouldn't have as much of a problem, but since he didn't even respect the law enough to do that, how does this make him any better than Clinton?

Hell, some folks defend him by saying "Oh, he's just spying on terrorists, it doesn't affect me in any way. " Kinda reminds me of them folks that say "Oh, they can take away the assault rifles, it doesn't affect my hunting rifles or shotguns........" :banghead:
 
It just totally boggles the mind how he's caught flat-out breaking the law (Before anyone jumps on me, keep in mind Bush did not get the warrants in the 72 hour grace period, he simply ignored them entirely,) - then he goes on to finger-point at those that exposed him.

What law did he break???? Please post a copy of it.

What is the proscribed penalty????

Apologies to Master Blaster, meant to hit "quote" and hit "edit" instead and changed his post. Did my best to restore it to its original form. Sorry!
 
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GTSteve03 said:
b-b-b-b-b-b-But Clinton! :rolleyes:

Remember folks, the same thing happened last time around, with a Democratic president with a Republican-controlled Congress. The Repubs decided that a blowjob compromised the office of the President and was all ready to impeach Clinton over lying about it.

Lying about a blowjob.

Not violating 4th Amendment rights of US citizens, holding US citizens indefinitely without trial, or using misleading and/or false information to take the country to War.

A blowjob. :barf:
ROFLMAO! Well - that certainly puts this whole affair in perspective.
 
In order to get a warrant you need to name the phone number/ location / person, and provide some idea of the thing you are searching for.

Now imagine we are living in the age of super computers, Imagine a computer at the NSA which can capture and monitor every phone call made out of the US and into the US, say 2 million calls at any given time. Imagine that this computer has a complex program that includes speach and voice recognition, and looks for certain patterns of calls to and from millions of locations, and looks for patterns of words.

When it finds something it writes it to a database and assigns a priority to it so it can pass through another set of programs on another super computer.
Eventually a human being will be allerted if over a certain time span there are repeats of the pattern being sought. This may take a day, a week, a month, 6 months.

How would one go about getting a warrant for the initial 2 million calls, when one doesnt know the location, or the number in advance.

72 hours later does one present all 2 million calls to the court for a warrant as described above?????? Imagine at the end of say a month this filtering database has come up with 1,000 locations that need to be checked, but most would have been monitored for the first time more than 72 hours ago.

Bush via his order allows the above to happen and the FBI to check out after the fact 20 of the 400,000,000 calls/ locations that were fed into the database and super computers that month.

That is what we are talking about.

Unfortunately Now that I have revealed this top secret, you will all have to be TERMINATED

JUST KIDDING
 
Master Blaster said:
What law did he break???? Please post a copy of it.

What is the proscribed penalty????

Even Jesus agrees.
 

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Master Blaster said:
72 hours later does one present all 2 million calls to the court for a warrant as described above?????? Imagine at the end of say a month this filtering database has come up with 1,000 locations that need to be checked, but most would have been monitored for the first time more than 72 hours ago.

Have you totally missed the point of all this discussion...

YES those calls are supposed to be reported to the FISA court for Warrants after the fact... That is what the FISA Act requires!!!

Just because it isn't easy to comply with the law doesn't excuse breaking it...
 
El Tejon said:
The Drew, this isn't a violation of the Fourth Amendment as there is no expectation of privacy in such phone calls. NSA had been doing this for decades as under Carter as under Clinton. Just like Agent Schmuckatelli reading THR.:)

There IS a reasonable expectation of privacy in a telephone call otherwise there wouldn't be a need for ANY law enforcement to get a warrant for a wiretap...

Public forums are a totally different thing...
 
The Drew said:
Have you totally missed the point of all this discussion...

YES those calls are supposed to be reported to the FISA court for Warrants after the fact... That is what the FISA Act requires!!!

Just because it isn't easy to comply with the law doesn't excuse breaking it...

Perhaps more germaine:

They monitor 2 million calls, discovered that 20 of those calls were made to a known terrorist number. They then listen to those calls (they have 72 hours to get a warrant), and then they discover that this guy's TN is "hot".

File for a warrant. 72 hours leeway. Not difficult to do.

OTOH, what do *I* know, I am not the President or the VP. I am just the guy that *employs* them.
 
LAR-15 said:
Bush is damned if does, damned if he doesn't.

:mad:

That's the whole point. There's no other reason these marxists like Boxer and her cohorts in the media are opening their mouths. They're pushing their propoganda campaign so that their minions can have something to scream about.

You know what's funny? Just out of curiousity I've done searches running certain posters user names. I've found that some of the big mouths don't have their usernames come up much for actual gun posts.

Gee I wonder why?
 
SigArmed, thats because they do most of their regular posting at DU.:D I'll give the liberals credit, this little non-story has done exactly what they wanted it to. Which is to discount Bush and our military after the incredible Democratic elections that were held in Iraq last week. Gotta hand it to the liberals and media, they do go all out when it comes to breaking down the USA. BTW one of the other posters was spot on when it comes to the current Republicans and Presidents apparent lack of conservatism. While I wish Bush was more like Reagan domestically, I love his "neo-conservatism:neener: " when it comes to foreign affairs. Hate to tell "true" conservatives this but Bush is as conservative as we'll ever see elected again. The days of Reagan are long since over, with an ever expanding minority vote, soccer moms, government care for me and keep me safe public, etc, it's a miracle (and pitiful Democrat candidates) someone as conservative as Bush actually won this century's two elections.
 
Wow... You guys are more closedminded than I thought... Just because someone isn't a neocon, suddenly they're a marxist lib???

The political spectrum isn't black and white, right or left, or red and blue... It is possible that SOME people value liberty more than they value party loyalty...
 
Master Blaster said:
What law did he break???? Please post a copy of it.

What is the proscribed penalty????

Everybody except the Attorney General seems to feel that Bush has plainly violated FISA requirements. However, there is still considerable discussion over whether or not this is legal.

Previous Presidents going back to Carter have maintained that they have the constitutional authority to order warrantless searches in order to gather foreign intelligence. All of them have maintained that they did not surrender that authority just because FISA was signed. Since most of the cases in the brief I read on it were named things like "In re Classified" and "Unnamed v. Classified" it was a little difficult to get an idea of just how broad that authority is and were FISA supercedes it.

The second issue is that the Bush Administration is claiming that even if they did not have the constitutional authority before this, they do as a result of Congress's Authorization for Use of Military Force passed after September 11.

Those who are saying this is plainly illegal are wrong. It isn't plain and is in a grey area. However, I think a pretty good case can be made that letting the Executive branch both electronically surveil American citizens AND be the sole decisionmaker on whether such surveillance is legal is a really, really bad idea. This is the whole reason FISA exists.

The Bush Administration isn't going to be impeached over this because:

1) Republicans aren't going to impeach their sitting president in this case
2) Too many skeletons would surface during the debate - nobody from either party wants to see that happen
3) It is a genuinely grey area legally where the President has plenty of plausible room to justify his policy, even if it is a policy I think is horrible.
 
El Tejon said:
NSA had been doing this for decades as under Carter as under Clinton. Just like Agent Schmuckatelli reading THR.:)

The fact that it has been going on for decades doesn't make it okay. The federal government has overstepped its bounds, and must be brought back in line.
 
Master Blaster said:
How would one go about getting a warrant for the initial 2 million calls, when one doesnt know the location, or the number in advance.

Answer: One doesn't. This isn't the Soviet Union, or East Germany.

US Constitution said:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Seems pretty cut and dry.
 
Bartholomew Roberts said:
Those who are saying this is plainly illegal are wrong. It isn't plain and is in a grey area.

Simple law doesn't carry the full weight of the constitution. The amendments do carry the full weight of the constitution. In the event that a simple law tries to grant the government powers specifically denied by the constitution, the constitution must prevail.
 
Bartholomew Roberts said:
*snip*
Those who are saying this is plainly illegal are wrong. It isn't plain and is in a grey area.

Now, this I do agree with. As of now, it does seem to be in a fairly grey area. Hell, the only reason I tripped out about it was because I was wondering where it would stop.
However, I think a pretty good case can be made that letting the Executive branch both electronically surveil American citizens AND be the sole decisionmaker on whether such surveillance is legal is a really, really bad idea. This is the whole reason FISA exists.

Well, yea.

The Bush Administration isn't going to be impeached over this because:

1) Republicans aren't going to impeach their sitting president in this case
2) Too many skeletons would surface during the debate - nobody from either party wants to see that happen
3) It is a genuinely grey area legally where the President has plenty of plausible room to justify his policy, even if it is a policy I think is horrible.

Sad but true.
 
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