Yup, you can hear me, and see me (good, get some good reads, fascists), and smell me, and kill me for all I give a shit.
But you will NEVER RULE ME!!!!!!!!!!
"New law expands power to wiretap; Diminishes oversight of NSA spy program" by Charlie Savage/Boston Globe August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed a new law yesterday that expands the government's power to wiretap phone calls and e-mails on American soil without court oversight, capping a sudden victory for the White House despite loud criticism from advocates of civil liberties and privacy rights.
Just before midnight on Saturday, Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007, which was largely drafted by the White House and received no committee hearing. The bill carves out a broad exemption from a 1978 law that requires the government to obtain a judge's permission to monitor calls and e-mails on US soil.
[Yup, White House wrote it and NO COMMITTE HEARING from shitstink fucking democraPs!
They are a bunch of FUCKING FRAUDS who have thrown in with Bush.
That's why this site is being redesigned to eliminate most political bullshit.
And when I think of the TIME I WASTED on getting the democraps elected to Congress last year, I think what a WASTE.
There is only one solution to the tyranny of George W. Bush, and that is
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present [King George] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. "
And the facts are limitless on this president's LYING LAW-BREAKING!
If it takes armed insurrection, so be it.
I've written the papers, Congress, I've protested, given money, nothing's worked.
I don't need your CIVIL WAR, but I'll take it to save the Republic from this TYRANNICAL MONSTER!
The new law allows the National Security Agency to spy freely on foreigners overseas when they communicate with Americans. It enables the NSA to resume a form of the once-secret warrantless wiretapping program that Bush launched after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that ended when it was brought under court oversight last January.
[Right, like they stopped doing it 'cause of some law.
After all the "SIGNING STATEMENTS" Bush has penned, saying he need not abid by the law, that HE is the LAW?
Pfffttttt!!!!]
The law also makes clear that the NSA does not need to obtain a judge's permission to monitor phone calls and e-mails if both parties are overseas, even if the communications happen to be routed through switching hubs on US soil. Such telecommunications networks did not exist in 1978, when the warrant law was originally written.
[Yup, so you can TAP a HUB and get ALL the CALLS, that's how it works, folks!]
In a statement issued after he signed the bill, Bush praised Congress for giving his administration the extra power he said it needs "to defeat the intentions of our enemies" and "to prevent attacks in the future."
"Today we face a dynamic threat from enemies who understand how to use modern technology against us," he said yesterday. "Our tools to deter them must also be dynamic and flexible enough to meet the challenges they pose. This law gives our intelligence professionals this greater flexibility while closing a dangerous gap in our intelligence-gathering activities that threatened to weaken our defenses."
[9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB, asshole, and WE ALL KNOW IT, fucker!!!!!!
With your new power, shit fuck, another "TERROR EVENT" better NEVER HAPPEN, and you will then LEAVE as SCHEDULED, you fucking MASS-MURDERING WAR CRIMINAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
But privacy rights groups said the new law goes too far by allowing the NSA to evade warrant requirements for calls and e-mails involving Americans. They accused Democratic leaders of "spinelessness" in the face of Republican threats to blame them for any coming terrorist attack if they did not give the president the new power before leaving for their annual August recess.
[Yeah, notice how HE ALWAYS waits right 'til the end of a session then says, " Gimme this power, I need it or else?"
Well, FUCK YOU!
Real people in real life almost NEVER AGREE to that kind of pressure 'cause they KNOW WHAT IT IS!
Fucking STINK democraPs!! You are DONE!
This SPY POWER going to enable Repglicans to TAKE BACK Congress and WIN the White House in 2008, dipshit democraPs!!!
You SIGNED YOUR OWN DEATH WARRANT, you INEFFECTUAL COCKSHIT-POPSICLE-SUCKING SHITTERS!!!!]
"We are deeply disappointed that the president's tactics of fearmongering have once again forced Congress into submission," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
In two respects, the law grants the executive branch even broader warrantless wiretapping powers than the ones Bush said he had a right to exercise under his original program.
[Yup, BROADER POWERS given to this asshole!
Thanks you fucking asshole democraPs!!
I HATE DEMOCRAPS MORE THAN I HATE BUSH NOW!
You WILL BE DEFEATED NEXT YEAR, I WILL MAKE SURE OF IT!!!]
First, the law requires telecommunications companies to make their facilities available for government wiretaps, and it grants them immunity from lawsuits for complying. Under the old program, such companies participated only voluntarily -- and some were sued for allegedly violating their customers' privacy.
[Yup, so now the copanies MUST COMPLY, and no citizen will ever get redress from the violations of their privacy.
Sniiiffff.... OH! FASCISM STENCH, oh!]
Second, Bush has said his original surveillance program was restricted to calls and e-mails involving a suspected terrorist, but the new law has no such limit.
[Oh, NO LIMITS, huh? Pffffftttt!!!!!!!!]
Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal.
[WTF? "Reasonably believe?"
The person not even required to be a suspect?
This is STALIN'S WET DREAM right here!
Hey, Uncle Joe! Get out that grave and WEEP over THIS!
Too bad you didn't have this spy capability, 'eh, Uncle Joe?
Looks like Bush has you and Hitler beat BIG-TIME for HISTORY'S GREATEST TYRANT!]
The law requires the government to delete any American's private information that it picks up, but it contains an exception allowing agents to maintain files of information about an American that has foreign intelligence value or that may be evidence of a crime.
[Yup, and since you MIGHT committ a "crime" in the future, NOTHING WILL BE DELETED, as usual!!
So, can I SEE MY FILE, you fucking fascist shitbags?!
Seig! Heil! Seig! Heil! Seig! Heil!]
As a check against abuse, the law requires Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, to design procedures for the program and to submit them for review by a secret national security court that normally approves warrant applications for intelligence-related wiretapping on US soil.
[Yup, completely bypass the courts. Now THAT'S A DICTATORSHIP!]
The court can reject the procedures only if it decides that the executive branch officials' plan for complying with the statute is "clearly erroneous." The program will be able to continue for a year, although the law will come up for renewal in six months. In any case, the warrantless eavesdropping can start immediately, even before the security court signs off on the procedures.
[Yeah, it can start immediately. It NEVER STOPPED, assholes!!!]
The debate over surveillance dates back to the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Bush signed a secret order authorizing the NSA to wiretap Americans' international e-mails and phone calls without a court order -- even though the 1978 warrant law prohibited it. Bush asserted that his wartime powers gave him an unwritten right to bypass such a law.
[Yup, using September 11 to "assert... an unwritten right."
WHAAAAAATTT?
So it's an INFERRED RIGHT then?
By you STRICT CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRUCTIONISTS?
Funny. I read through the Constitution, and Bush is right.
There is NO EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE WRITTEN INTO the Constitution.
So WHY DOES HE GET TO CLAIM IT, then? WTF?!
In January 2007, Gonzales announced that the program had been brought under the oversight of the national security court. A judge on the court had issued an unusual classified order allowing some form of the surveillance to continue.
[So we had a WHOLE LOT OF ILLEGAL SPYING by this LAW-BREAKING ADMINISTRATION before!!!
WAKE UP and IMPEACH, Congress!!!!]
But several months ago another judge on the court ruled that the order was unlawful, shutting down some part of the program and leading to the White House push to get Congress to amend the surveillance law.
The House of Representatives passed the bill late Saturday, following the Senate's approval on Friday night. In both chambers, Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill and were joined by enough Democrats to make a majority. It passed 60 to 28 in the Senate with 16 Democrats in favor, and 227 to 183 in the House, with 41 Democrats in favor.
Legal specialists who have criticized the expansion of executive power during Bush's tenure compared the law to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which expanded the White House's power over detainees in the war on terrorism, and the Iraq war authorization in 2002.
Both times, Bush abruptly urged Congress to give him greater national security powers shortly before lawmakers went on recess, warning that there was no time to wait. That strategy was echoed in the White House's sudden rush to enact the Protect America Act last week.
[democraPs FOOLEYED AGAIN!!!!!
I was a democraP for practically my whole life, but NEVER AGAIN!!
NEVER!!!!]
"The new bill shows that the Republican Party can get the Democrats to surrender almost any civil liberty -- indeed, to give the President just as much unchecked power as he might obtain under a Republican controlled Congress-- simply by playing the fear card repeatedly and without shame," wrote Yale law professor Jack Balkin on his blog.
But David Rivkin, a former White House lawyer under President George H.W. Bush, said Congress had acted wisely by restoring presidents' power to wiretap foreigners overseas without warrants -- a power that had eroded because of fiberoptic networks.
"The people who are engaged in scaremongering are the ones ranting about privacy," Rivkin said. "
[Good! Then I got NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, right, Dave?
Therefore, I SCREAM to the WORLD that my president, George W. Bush, is a LYING, MASS-MURDERING WAR CRIMINAL.
I'm a NON-VIOLENT PACIFIST, who LOVES THY ENEMY as a GOOD CHRISTIAN WOULD!!!
And I've got privacy and Freedom of Speech, so NO PROBLEM RIGHT?!
Sorry about the cursing, but I believe my God -- the one I believe in -- will understand.]
Here is the Times' reduced, stink coverage:
"Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping" by JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.
[See how the Times' soft sells, as if it's only overseas?]
Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.
[Yup, the changes went WAY BEYOND what was needed!!
FUCK THE STINK-FUCK, FUCK-SHIT democraPs!
What SPINELESS WEASELS!!
It's good, though. I won't be wasting anymore time on BULLSHIT POLITICS!
They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.
[So the spying being done was OUTSIDE the LEGAL FRAMEWORK?
Sounds ILLEGAL!!!]
“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.
[Which means it was ILLEGAL before!
IMPEACH THESE FUCKING CRIMINALS, dammit!!!!]
Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.
Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.
[Yup, latching on to switches means they get EVERYTHING that GOES THROUGH that switch!
Foreign, domestic, ANYTHING!
WAKE the FUCK UP, America! We need a REVOLUTION!]
By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.
[So when Hayden said at the National Press Club that the Fourth Amendment said "reasonably believe," not "probable cause," is this what he NEW and MEANT?
That the Bill of Rights and Constitution is going to be REWRITTEN?]
For example, if a person in Indianapolis calls someone in London, the National Security Agency can eavesdrop on that conversation without a warrant, as long as the N.S.A.’s target is the person in London.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Sunday in an interview that the new law went beyond fixing the foreign-to-foreign problem, potentially allowing the government to listen to Americans calling overseas.
But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.
“It’s foreign, that’s the point,” Mr. Fratto said. “What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target.”
The legislation to change the surveillance act was rushed through both the House and Senate in the last days before the August recess began.
The White House’s push for the change was driven in part by a still-classified ruling earlier this year by the special intelligence court, which said the government needed to seek court-approved warrants to monitor those international calls going through American switches.
The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.
The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.
[So ALL the POWER is now in the EXECUTIVE BRANCH, huh?
Sure smells like a DICTATORSHIP!
Need your NOSES RUBBED IN IT to SMELL IT, fucking lazy-ass, uncaring Amurkns?
Wake the fuck up and SMELL the FASCIST SHITSTINKS, shitfucks!!!!
WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!!!!]
The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.
[See how the Times writes these pieces? Couch the truth and hide the facts.
Savage did a much better job in his Globe piece of explaining the implications of this DASTARDLY ACT!!!!]
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.
[Thank God for the GOOD TELECOMS!!
They recognize that going down this fascist road any further is going to KILL BUSINESS!!!
I have already dropped several services and companies due to this totalitarian nightmare.
I am going to RESIST, as YOU SHOULD, reader!]
In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.
In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.’s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.
Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.
But the change suddenly swamped the court with an enormous volume of search warrant applications, leading, in turn, to the administration’s decision to seek the new legislation."
[Yeah, right, Bush reacted to pressure. BULLSHIT!!!
Just like the news conference with Karzai when Karzai told him Iran is being helpful in Afghanistan.
Bush said he listened, BUT!
So he don't respond to pressure from NOBODY -- SAVE ISRAEL!!!!
Just gonna web the Times from now on.
NO BUY EVER AGAIN!
The NEW FORMAT turned it into TOTAL CRAP, even to the eye!]
