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Comments: 647 +- Your Rights Online: White House Derails Attempts to End Illegal Wiretapping on Thursday June 07 2007, @01:44PM
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P. Rivacy writes "If you recall, last month we discussed Congress's attempts to outlaw the already illegal NSA wiretaps authorized by the President. The White House is now using delaying tactics to derail the passage of that bill. Their tactic is to stall on providing documents related to the President's warrantless wiretapping program, despite requests from the Senate Intelligence Committee that is currently reviewing the proposed legislation. '"Another critical priority for congressional oversight is government wiretapping of Americans, conducted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and, illegally, under the President's warrantless wiretapping program," Senator Russ Feingold said. "When the program was finally placed within the FISA process, an opportunity arose for the Administration and the Congress to move forward, under the law. Unfortunately, the Administration has yet to demonstrate a real interest in doing so."'"
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Majority, n.:
That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
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Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wiretap all muslims for 2 generations (Score:5, Informative)
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A universal maxim that applies here: (Score:5, Insightful)
The makers of rules are never motivated to personally abide them. Rules are for you to follow.
Ergo, it is up to us to demand that rulemakers comply at least as well as the rest of us.
Re:A universal maxim that applies here: (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:A universal maxim that applies here: (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments sit for entire sessions coming up with new laws, never really repealing old stupid ones most of the time.
Imagine an entire whitehouse year full of repealing laws instead of creating new ones. Wouldn't look too great eh... (IMO fantastic, but MO doesn't count)
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Re:A universal maxim that applies here: (Score:5, Insightful)
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I predict... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Interesting)
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Tyrant (...)
1. An absolute ruler; a sovereign unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty. [1913 Webster]
2. Specifically, a monarch, or other ruler or master, who uses power to oppress his subjects; a person who exercises unlawful authority, or lawful authority in an unlawful manner; one who by taxation, injustice, or cruel punishment, or the demand of unreasonable services, imposes burdens and hardships on those under his control, which law and humanity do not authorize, or which the purposes of government do not require; a cruel master; an oppressor. "This false tyrant, this Nero." --Chaucer. [1913 Webster]
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Re:I predict... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Informative)
His record, as president, matches perfectly his business record.
The thing that scares me the most is I vaguely [unknownnews.net] recall [allhatnocattle.net] him saying [blogspot.com] something like, [villagevoice.com] "I want to preside over the Rapture prophesied in Revelations" (which of course requires an Armageddon), and forcing Russia to change the direction their nukes are pointing seems like a good first step down the road to Hell for all of us.
I definitely [sourcewatch.org] remember him saying, "I want to be a war president."
(Holy fuck, when I started this I didn't realize that I'd find so much evidence to link to. Wow.)
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Re:I predict... (Score:4, Insightful)
If similar criticism were to be fielded by serious political opponents here (in Norway) against a sitting government it would pretty much be a tremendous political scandal the likes of which has scarcely been seen in sixty years and heads would roll on one side or the other. But then, in Taiwan MPs throw shoes at eachother as a matter of course
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Re:I predict... (Score:4, Informative)
Impeachment roughly equals an indictment. It has nothing to do with guilt - it is a formal statement of charges. House impeaches, Senate tries and potentially convicts. Only after the Senate convicts an impeached President is that President 'guitly'.
Get your facts straight before challenging others'.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/spe
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12
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Re:I predict... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never considered the pardoning of Nixon a good thing. He we are not even 40 years later with a President condoning far worse crimes such as torture and warrant less wiretapping. Hell, there have even been things considered war crimes committed in the name of the United States which goes against everything the country stands for. At what point do we say stop, you have behaved like a criminal, it is time for us to treat you like one and throw them the hell in jail.
I think that would do far more to actually healing the country versus getting us to start thinking about other problems to tackle. International opinion has never been a concern of the United States and I don't think it should play a part in our decisions now.
I think we need to do something about the wrongs being committed against American citizens as well as the wrongs Americans are committing against others. If we're fighting a war on terror and Americans are now less safe because we can be stripped of our citizenship and shipped to Guantanamo bay where we can be held for more than 5 years without even a hearing then this country has some serious problems that should never have been allowed in the first place. No where in the constitution does is say that the government can torture people, and no where does it say that the government can spy on our own people. If we're going to become a police state then the legislature needs to bring it forward and pass laws to allow this all to happen legally.
In short, Nixon gave America some serious nerve damage, we just stopped more damage from happening and didn't go through any therapy to get back what we lost because we chose to just forget about it. We can't afford to forget about Bush and all the rights that we have lost without a constitutional amendment. That's not supposed to be possible.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering Clinton is still treated like the popular Jock of presidents rather than the buffoon who's illegal and immoral activities left a tarnish on the Oval Office.
Yeah, all those balanced budgets, that surplus, the prosperity, the international respect, the peace. I don't know how the country survived.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
those ALL came to be after Newt Gingrich became speaker.
WRONG. The first year Clinton was in office he did something that 12 years of Republican administration before him failed to do: submit a budget smaller than the year before. Don't think Clinton had anything to do with a balanced budget? Take a look at what happened to the budget with a Republican Congress and a Republican president following Clinton.
I distinctly remember some place called Mogadishu
I remember a president named Bush who left that mess for someone else to clean up. Sound familiar?
As for peace, Balkans war comes to mind.
A war to stop actual genocide? A war where the U.S. suffered not a single combat fatality? Yeah, I remember that one, too.
And our own government was doing the terrorist's job for them at Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Ruby Ridge? Are you kidding? That happened before Clinton was even elected. As for Waco, sorry but I'm not going to debate that one with someone from the black helicopter crowd.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Interesting)
Come, come. 6 years? Ever heard the official term Contempt of Congress [wikipedia.org]? This administration is yet to have an official to be so condemned (in six years!), but the list [wikipedia.org] is long, and even the previous administration is on it.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be quite surprised if the Democrats don't start busting out the contempt charges real fucking soon, with the way justice officials seem to be making a habit of lying to congress.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say it was more questionable on Bush's part. Clinton just fired the USAs en masse when he got into office, Bush seems to have fired specific USAs that would not speed up iffy prosecutions of democratic supporters in time for the election.
As for the recess appointments, I'd say it's a bit pathetic that Bush was forced to do recess appointments while his party held the majority in the legislature. Not to excuse Clinton's actions, but he was dealing with a legislature that was in the process of impeaching him, that doesn't leave much room to agree on appointees.
heck we have the speaker of the house trying to make herself the face of American foreign policy!
Actually we have the press and the republicans trying to convince people that congress people are somehow not alowed to leave the narrow confines of DC and their home district to look into situations. I mean, what was it a week, two weeks before that a republican delegation went and talked to Syria? No one said they were trying to be the face of American foreign policy.
ice attempt at an apologia for the Administration though.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please take a moment to consider the difference between a clean sweep and a targetted purge.
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Re:I predict... (Score:4, Informative)
Oh noes, the liberal media.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you misunderstand the situation. Almost universally, all federal prosecutors are asked to resign whenever the administration changes - Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Regan, etc.. all replaced their prosecutors. Clinton staggered his over a short period of time after taking office to mitigate the transition effects.
Additionally, prosecutors are (by tradition) almost never, barring exceptional circumstances, replaced mid-term and certainly never for political reasons -- which seems to be reasons of this administration.
While not technically illegal, these actions by the current administration are distasteful and demonstrate Bush's continuing disrespect for the office of the President of the USA.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, in addition to being distasteful and demonstrative of Bush's disrespect for the office, it's quite likely that they were also illegal.
It is illegal under the Hatch Act of 1939 to use political office and federal funds for campaigning for any particular candidates. The 8 fired attorneys all allege that they were fired for refusing to do so. Numerous witnesses so far have supported these claims, including Monica Gooding's recent testimony in which she stated that the Republican party had engaged in vote caging as recently as the 2004 election despite a 1986 supreme court injunction ordering them to stop.
Gonzales has, of course, denied them, but has claimed that beyond very vague "performance reasons" he can't remember why they were fired, or even who fired them.
Of course, what's really scary about this is not that 8 US Attorneys refused abuse their office to promote Republican party political campaigns, but that 85 of them didn't.
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Re:I predict... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop referring to this as though it has any impact on the current scandal. Nearly every president fires all of the federal prosecutors and replaces them with their own appointees, INCLUDING Bush. Bush *already* fired all of Clinton's appointees, and nobody complained because that was completely normal, just like when Clinton did it. The Bush Justice Department fired *Bush's* appointees mid-term because they weren't prosecuting according to the political agenda of the President. It is nothing like the previous firings, including the earlier firings by Bush.
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No Way In Hell Parent is Accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
Were GWB's recess appointments any less questionable than Clinton's?
Then takes a left turn into fairytale land:
Was the firing of certain federal prosecutes by bush any less questionable than Clinton firing *all* of them?
You are sorely mistaken as to why matters are different in this case. I copied this nice summary: "During the Clinton administration, there were just four people in the White House -- the President, the Vice President, the White House Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel -- who could participate in discussions with the Justice Department "regarding pending criminal investigations and criminal cases." There were just three Justice Department officials authorized to talk with the White House. This arrangement was intended restrict political interference in the administration of justice.
Yesterday in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that it was important that the Justice Department "be independent from" the White House. But as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) pointed out, the firewalls that had existed during the Clinton administration have been ripped down. In the Bush administration, the rules have been rewritten so that 417 White House officials and 30 Justice Department officials are eligible to have discussions about criminal cases."
struggle between branches
The current administration is not struggling. They _have_ vastly expanded the executive offices powers. Nixon tried and failed. They got it right this time.
heck we have the speaker of the house trying to make herself the face of American foreign policy
This comment suggest you believe in an executive branch with infinite powers. I respectfully disagree.
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Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Violating the 4th amendment.
2) Failing to protect the border, which is a legal obligation under Article 4, Section IV of the US Constitution.
3) Lying to Congress about the intelligence that lead us into Iraq.
4) Lying to Congress about the true cost of his medicare expansion.
#2 would go over very well with a lot of the public because in most polls, about 70% of the population, cutting across ideology, firmly opposes Bush's amnesty plan.
Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury, and should have been removed. He didn't just lie, he lied while under oath in a court of law, which is a **felony**. Bush did far worse. The case against him should be a lot easier.
Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:5, Insightful)
What bush has done to freedom, to fiscal security, and to the world is deserving of far worse than impeachment.
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Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:5, Insightful)
He was being asked about an entirely consensual (by all accounts) sexual act, to try to establish that he was a harasser? Can you really not see the flaw in the logic there?
Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky was utterly irrelevant to the case at hand, as the only allegations of impropriety were related to infidelity, which is not what the lawsuit was supposed to be about.
However, since the lawsuit actually was about the infidelity (as it was not a serious attempt to find him guilty, but only to ruin his reputation) the whole thing was a farce to begin with.
The point remains that nothing Clinton did was as bad as what we've seen from Bush. If you believe that Clinton did wrong, then you can only believe that Bush did more wrong, or you are simply a hypocrite.
I despise lies, but I despise partisan political bullshit even more.
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Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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Geneva is a red herring. (Score:4, Informative)
The US ratified the first four (through 1949) but not the last two protocols (1977).
They are a treaty. As such they are binding on the several states as long as the federal government considers them to be in force. But the fed (like any other government) abides by them or not as it finds convenient, and can declare them null and void at any time it finds convenient. (Meanwhile, treaties have no direct force within the country except through implementing legislation or executive orders. Such legislation is subject to the usual constitutional limits on congressional power. Congress' powers over the other two branches are severely limited. Executive orders are just the orders of a president to his underlings, automatically superseded by any later orders.)
Further, most of the Geneva Convention protections explicitly are not extended to terrorists and other paramilitary forces that don't themselves obey certain of their provisions - such as identifying themselves, wearing uniforms, not deliberately blowing up non-combatants (who aren't in the way of an attack on a "legitimate" military target), etc. The idea is to encourage everybody else to play by "the rules of civilized warfare".
Which is not to say that what the administration is doing is the right thing to do. Just that an appeal to the Geneva Conventions is not a particularly useful charge to make against a president and his administration. It's an attempt to seize moral high ground but has no force in law.
If you want to mount a binding legal attack on a sitting president it needs to be based on constitutional grounds.
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Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Just impeach his sorry ass (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the intelligence reports and letters handed to the President before speaking to Congress have been made public. They're in direct contradiction to his statements. An agency reported that the aluminum tubes which the President claimed in a State of the Union address were evidence of nuclear arms buildup were not of a grade capable of deploying nuclear weapons. The man who investigated and officially reported no requests for uranium were made to an African nation was very surprised to hear the opposite claim by the President and Vice President.
There's plenty of direct evidence.
Lying to the public about a tie between Iraq and 9/11 is also impeachable, by the way.
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Legalities and such (Score:3, Insightful)
And, if you actually take the time to look into the entire program, I think you'll find that these alleged wiretaps are NOT occuring on domestic phone calls between American citizens. They are happening between people residing in this country (not necessarily citizens) and another party typically in al Queda-linked countries.
BULLSHIT! (Score:5, Insightful)
And since NONE of the facts have been released, exactly HOW is it that YOU know who has and has not been tapped?
IF that was the case, THEN it would be EXACTLY the kind of situation that FISA was supposed to handle.
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Re:Legalities and such (Score:5, Interesting)
The only real question is whether the court will agree with Bush's interpretation of the Constitution. The question of whether he complied with FISA has already been answered. And somehow I doubt the Judicial branch will agree that the Judicial power of granting warrants is irrelevent to the Executive branch.
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Re:Legalities and such (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/26489prs20
It is flat-out wrong to call them overtly politically motivated and not to call them illegal.
Incidentally, I am a registered Republican and I am incensed that Bush and Gonzales call themselves Republicans.
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What I find astonishing is... No impeachment yet?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dubya and his cronies spy on EVERYBODY, brag about it, torture people to death, invade other countries for personal gain, "out" CIA agents, fire U.S. attorneys, get cozy with the commies in China, kidnap people (extraordinary rendition)...
And nothing! Not a whimper! And the Red States think he's a Good Ole' Boy!
Seriously, people -- WTF???
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
One is both illegal espionage on a POPULAR group and ALSO an attempt to disrupt the basic running of your own government.
The other is an is an illegal espionage on a totally unpopular group for the legal purpose of supporting the basic running of our country.
While popularity may not be a reasonable counterargument, the disruption vs. support is a good one.
Re:How about some facts? (Score:5, Informative)
Hmm... Let's take 'em one by one.
Spying on Everybody: How this works is, the NSA sets up filters at choke points in the network (where the majority of packets will pass through on their way somewhere else). They configure their gear to automatically start recording and analysing whenever certain phrases are detected. These phrases can be anything from "Bush sucks" to "bomb" to "protest march". The fact that it's targeted means they can tell the public anything they want about who they're supposedly after, while making it look like they aren't filtering all packets. Look up Echelon sometime. And that's the OLD system everybody knows about.
This is how the "Big Brother" concept works, by the way. It stifles conversations because you know they're listening, and you never know whether they'll take an interest in this particular phone call. This is why the constitution is supposed to ban this sort of thing, by the way.
And why would they do that? BECAUSE THEY CAN. Because it gives them more power than they had before. Because it enables them to crush dissent and remove opponents. Duh.
Next up... The FISA court oversees only what Bush et al allow it to oversee. They're supposed to ASK FISA for permission to do wiretaps. So far they've been IGNORING IT and doing whatever they want, so don't talk to me about FISA.
Next... Who have they tortured to death? Are you serious? THEY ADMITTED THAT THEY'VE DONE THIS. There are photos circulating around the web of bodies of people who've died in interrogation in Afghanistan and Iraq. There have been coroners reports stating matter of factly that people have been tortured to death. Don't you read the news? Ok, fine, here's an article. It's from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has a nice interview for you: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2006/s1576271.h tm [abc.net.au]. Ok, here's one more, from Amnesty International: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR5106120 06 [amnesty.org].
Ok, next up... The paragraph about the justification for Iraq was just dumb, man. All of that has been debunked long ago, and if I gave you a list of articles this post would be a mile long. The fact is, Bush lied about Iraq to trick everybody into the war, and he keeps lying about it. I don't even respect your claim enough to discuss it further. Let's move along.
Next: Scooter's going to jail; that's good enough for me. Of course, Bush will try to pardon him -- no justice for friends of the president, don'cha know! Cronyism at its best. Totally unAmerican. And you know damn well the order to out poor Ms. Plame came down from on high, don't be ridiculous. Her husband outed Bush on the phony yellow cake claims, and the administration wanted to punish him for it. It's telling that they picked on his WIFE, it shows you what juvenile scum they are. These people don't deserve to run a world power.
U.S. Attorneys are NOT supposed to be fired for refusing to act as tools of a political agenda, pal! They're supposed to be civil servants guarding the interests of justice, not the republican party's attack dogs! So your suggestion, here, is crap.
Cozy with the commies in China = allowing China to hold all of our debt, not doing anything about trade imbalances with China, not taking any action to force China to improve its human rights record, not making any effort to force China to throttle back their amazing level of air pollution (which is contributing to global warming and air pollution throughout the region)... Come on, are you serious?
Extraordinary Rendition -- YES, which has been used against several TOTALLY INNOCENT PEOPLE who were torn from their families for a year for torture in a foreign country. Remember that poor Canuck who got yanked out of JFK in NY, s
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Okay (Score:4, Insightful)
Blatant and ongoing violations of the law (Score:5, Insightful)
What about me? (Score:3, Insightful)
Need a court ruling on this (Score:5, Insightful)
The most telling thing to answer the question though of "were these wiretaps illegal without any new law needing to be passed making them so?" is the Bush team's defense of the program. They have never argued that they are operating in compliance with FISA, that the program was operating within the written law. They have only argued that Bush, being the President, has the inherent authority to conduct such searches as he deems fit in the interest of national security.
Obviously Bush's administration has been pushing very hard to increase the power of the Executive, and this is part of that. But if there was an actual legal explanation for the program that made it clear that Bush was complying with the law, wouldn't it be better to avoid the scandal and ongoing conflict? He wouldn't have to abandon the stance that he can do whatever he wants. So when his best reply is "yes I ignored the law but I can do that because I'm president", that's pretty much all I need to hear.
I highly doubt that should it come to it that SCOTUS would agree with the President's views.
P.S. I'm sure someone will bring up the "other presidents did warantless taps!" talking point, but if you actually read what all these other presidents did from Carter on it was in compliance with the terms of FISA that allow warrantless tapping. Bush isn't even pretending that he is doing the same thing, which is why it's only conservative talk show hosts and not the White House PR who bring this up.
Sticktuitiveness (Score:5, Insightful)
The White House is nothing, if not consistent. It will not give ground on issues it deems important. They are convinced that the only way to catch terrorists on American soil is to tap everyone's phones and read everyone's email. While it may be a laudable idea in theory, the practice is far from certain to net anything useful. This is the information age. The terrorists no doubt know what is being tapped or watched. They haven't exactly proven themselves to be stupid or they would never have been able to pull off 9-11. So while the White House is sure that they'll catch them red-handed, the terrorists are no doubt finding other avenues of communication that the government can't tap into.
Al Qaeda took advantage of our false sense of security, and this is just more of that, only with bells, whistles, and the cry of "See?!? There hasn't been a terrorist attack here lately!". We're no more secure now than we were then, just more aware. What we do with that awareness will count for more than all the tapped phone calls the NSA listens to.
G8 (Score:4, Insightful)
gang1 (gng) pronunciation n.
A group of criminals or hoodlums who band together for mutual protection and profit.
A group of adolescents who band together, especially a group of delinquents.
A pack of wolves or wild dogs.
One with a logical mind has to clearly wonder what this administration is really up to at this point. They've subverted laws across all boundaries (national and international) yet nothing is done. The second a prior idiot played with a cigar, they tried impeaching him. I don't know about you but a cigar is nothing in comparison to privacy invasion, AT&T wiretaps, warrantless searches and phone taps... Did this man never read the federalist papers let alone any paper outside of Hustler magazine.
Did you hear about this one? (Score:5, Informative)
This is the testimony of James Comey, who was the acting AG while John Ashcroft was in the ICU after surgury. Al Gonzoles and Andrew Card sought to push a sick, bed ridden old man to agree to their illegal program (according to the AG, they guy who's job it was to determine that). It took the FBI (guys with guns) to ensure that the acting AG would NOT get pushed out of the way. Essentially, FBI direct Meuller ordered his men to protect the AG from the White House's representitives.
This is sh!t that's supposed to happen only in 3rd world dictatorships, not the US of A!
The White House went ahead with the illegal program anyway. And yes, according to the TOP guy hired to enforce the LAW of the USA, it was illegal!
Re:This is new how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bear in mind that the parties have essentially reversed. In the 1950s/1960s, the Democrats were the party of the South and the Republicans the party of the North. It's backwards now. What happened is complicated, but it includes a number of factors including the decline of unions, the rise of the Religious Right, the general polarization of the parties into a "conservative party" (Republicans) and a "liberal party" (Democrats), the increasing geographical divide between secular and religious values, and a whole host of other issue.
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Stop right there (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that other presidents may have done something wrong doesn't excuse this one.
"He was charged with purgery for presenting a false document to a grand jury... that is a felony offense. I bet none of you think he should have been impeached."
He was impeached, and he should have been.
"Why should George Bush, who hasn't been charged with a crime let alone convincted of one even be considered for impeachment"
do you know what impeachment means? your post doesn't seem to reflect that if you do. Impeachment does not mean removal from office.
Just in case:
impeach
-verb (used with object)
1. to accuse (a public official) before an appropriate tribunal of misconduct in office.
2. Chiefly Law. to challenge the credibility of: to impeach a witness.
3. to bring an accusation against.
4. to call in question; cast an imputation upon: to impeach a person's motives.
5. to call to account.
So an impeachment would be the finding of misconduct, or not.
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