Comin’ Out Swinging…

It was wrong of Congress to have enacted FISA and made these sorts of wiretaps seem illegal in the first place. And it would be wrong for Congress to rewrite FISA to make these sorts of wiretaps seem legal. Because both actions imply that Congress has some kind of oversight over the President. And we all know the President has plenary power when it comes to this sort of thing. Like a dictat… Oops. I’ve said too much.

I’m just counting on him having the same success selling this plan as he did with Social Security. Problem solved.

i say make things fair. make all wiretaps legal but you have to do with an empty drinking glass against the door.

The Ignobel prize-winning researchers behind a definitive study of the fluid dynamics of projectile penguin poop* are reportedly hard at work on identifying the energy source for the phenomenal discharge of smoke from the asses of White House officials. Comparable phenomenon are known mainly from the mid-ocean ridges (”black smokers”), which is ood because the Bush Administration seems to have no knowledge of plate tectonics.

* http://www.improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html

I feel like such a fool. Can you ever forgive me, Right-Hand-of-God-Man? I doubted you, and even worse, I believed in the rule of man’s law.
I prostrate myself, begging mercy on a poor legalistic nitpicker like me, unworthy of citizenship even though native born to native borns of native borns of native borns of native borns, one branch extending back terribly presumptuously ten millenia or more. How could I be such fool, believing the Bill of Rights mean what they say, when clearly they mean what His Most Illustrious Exalted Omnipotent Defender of Our Safetiness says they mean, or don’t mean, or should mean, or shouldn’t mean.

I bow in humblest submission, My Lord. Please ignore the mistletoe on my shirt tail.

Another blogger asserts that while Google recognizes the text of the 4th Amendment, MSN’s search engine does not. Big surprise. This is yet another reason why we must not allow brick-and-mortar libraries to become extinct. (Says the future librarian)

Here it is, just as a reminder and as yet another magnet for the attention of the NSA and FBI: “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.” Which part of “right” does GWB not understand?

Sharon, my thoughts about W and what he actually understands; well, an inanimate pretzel snuck-up & damn near killed him. Do you really think he understands anything about civil rights and Constitutional Law? He probably needs help getting his feet properly positioned on the pedals of his mountain bike.

siobhan, did you write a letter to the editor of the S.F. Chronicle just recently, saying about what you just said?? If so, hi, neighbor (speaking from Oakland).

Ice, I know what you mean.

I recommend to everyone an article in the San Francisco Chronicle on why Bush decided to bypass FISA and just roll his own. If you run the numbers, you’ll find he was inconvenienced because FISA modified or rejected, as not showing adequate probable cause, 1/3 of 1% of the wiretap requests the administration submitted…

Theres no plausible reason for Bush to bypass FISA - unless he was doing something so agregiously wrong that even the FISA court would be likely to nix it. (Hmmm, why does writing ‘nix’ in this context make me think of ‘Nixon’?) There’s more to this iceberg than we see on the surface.

“…why should they give a tinker’s damn about the Fourth Amendment, or believe they are accountable to anyone for anything, since they won re-election?”

In winning the election, the President liked to remind us, he earned political capital; as in so many other areas, he’s engaging in deficit spending.

The FBI has said (or was it leaked? I lose track) that most of the so-called leads it got from NSA were dead-ends. Whatever one may think of P.E.T.A. and its tactics, it’s no al-Qaeda. We are squandering our precious human resources chasing people who spray paint fur coats, while our borders remain as porous as wet tissue paper. The only reason I can come up with doing the end run around FISA and the 4th Amendment is that the White House cabal doesn’t want anyone to know who is really on its Enemies List. Richard Nixon, in whatever dimension he currently exists, must be laughing his ass off.

For years now I always took solace in knowing that no matter how stupidly this country governed itself, I could always move back to Canada (I lived there from 55-66). So what does this bastion of intelligent governing do?

Elects its own W.

Great, just great.

And quit tracking mud across my nice, clean kitchen floor.

Siobhan? Siobhan Ruck, the famous raptor photographer from San Francisco? You’ve taken some truly beautiful pictures. The ones of the Prairie Falcon and the Merlin on the wing are amazing. BTW, is that you standing in the earthquake fault? Just curious.

Yeah, that’s my hawk and I want it back, too, dammit… I suppose you’re digital these days, not like my old school daughter who uses only film. Oh, and tell Nancy if she lived in Minnesota, she’d be sticking her tongue to a metal flagpole right about now.

There’s a raptor center just north of here, where they take in wounded birds of prey, nurse them back to health and release them. Or if they can’t take care of themselves, the birds are held on to and are occassionaly taken to nature talks out in the community to help make people more aware of these animals.

Terrific pics, Siobahn. Thanks, Cooper, for getting Siobahn’s post-daguerrotype hackles up. Otherwise, I would never have gotten to see these gems of the photographer’s art.

Wandering back to the topic, and being the last cyberdog on the block to be dipped for ticks, blogwise, here, for anyone who missed it, is an excerpt from the Good General at NSA’s understanding of the Fourth Amendment (kind of like James Baker’s understanding of the Equal Protection Clause, which the Supreme Court bought), an understanding to which “Any Angle Which Produces the Desired Interpretation” Alito
likely subscibes (damn, is that a sentence or what?):

General “What’s this fucking constitution thing you keep talking about?” Hayden today:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I’d like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use —

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the —

GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable —

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says —

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard —

GEN. HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, “We reasonably believe.” And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say “we reasonably believe”; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, “we have probable cause.”

And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.

(Copped from Atrios)

I can’t access the links to Siobhan’s pictures, but Lt. Brad Shaw (I always thought it was Bradshaw) cracked me up. Ah, good ol’ Morse Science High…
Any chance that Gen. Hayden is thoroughly embarrassed today?

Ann,

Those bastards are incapable of being embarrassed. Banana Republicans just keep on keeping on until something or someone slaps the living shit out of them (figuratively speaking here, of course - unelecting the schmucks and, by extension, their appointees is our only recourse in modern America. Civil disobedience has apparently ceased to be a viable option, ecoterrorism is our number domestic threat according to the FBI, and God help you if you’re a Quaker).

Raptor photos, great! (And great raptor photos, too…) I’ll bookmark that site, siobhan. We visit raptor exhibits wherever we travel, they have a great one at the High Desert Museum in Bend, and we saw a wonderful raptor talk (complete with bald eagle on speaker’s wrist, and a small screech owl that sits around the lobby and keeps the receptionist company) at the Raptor Center on the Alaska coast (where was that? Ketchikan?)

Hedera, that is so cool! You saw a raptor talk? Excellent! I’ve always wanted to go to Bend (mainly ’cause of it being the location of ‘Micro Cornucopia’ in the 80’s), now I’ve got another reason.