Unfinished Business - Bush Spying

TheCigSmokingMan

TheCigSmokingMan

Rift Surfer
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/opinion/17sun1.html
Editorial NY Times
Unfinished Business

Published: December 17, 2006

Some recent images from George W. Bush’s war on terror:

¶Jose Padilla, the supposed dirty bomber, submitting while guards blindfolded him and covered his ears for a walk from his cell to a dentist’s chair.

¶Government lawyers arguing that a prisoner could not testify that he was tortured by American agents, because their brutality was a secret.

¶A judge dismissing another prisoner’s challenge to his detention, after a new law stripped basic rights from those Mr. Bush has designated “illegal enemy combatants.”

¶The White House scorning lawmakers’ attempts to rein in Mr. Bush’s illegal domestic spying.

This is the legacy of a Republican Congress that enabled the president’s imperial visions of his authority. It leaves the new Democratic majority with much urgent, unfinished business to restore due process, civil liberties and the balance of powers.

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A nice opinion article on what has to be cut and replaced in Shrub's World.

TheCigMan
 
House approves Democratic surveillance bill -Veto?

House approves Democratic surveillance bill
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-03-14-terrorist-surveillance_N.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Friday narrowly approved a Democratic bill that would set rules for the government's eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails inside the United States.
The bill, approved as lawmakers departed for a two-week break, faces a veto threat from President Bush. The margin of House approval was 213 to 197, largely along party lines.

Because of the promised veto, "this vote has no impact at all," said Republican Whip Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri.

The president's main objection is that the bill does not protect from lawsuits the telecommunications companies that allowed the government to eavesdrop on their customers without a court's permission after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The vote sent the bill to the Senate, which has passed its own version that includes the legal immunity for telecom companies that Bush is insisting on.

The surveillance law is intended to help the government pursue suspected terrorists by making it easier to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mails between foreigners abroad and Americans in the U.S, and remove barriers to collecting purely foreign communications that pass through the United States_ for instance, foreign e-mails stored on a server.

A temporary law expired Feb. 16 before Congress was able to produce a replacement bill. Bush opposed an extension of the temporary law as a means to pressure Congress into accepting the Senate version of the surveillance legislation.

Bush and most Capitol Hill Republicans say the lawsuits are damaging national security and unfairly punish telecommunications companies for helping the government in a time of war.

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Bush pledges to "veto" this bill... Because it doesn't make "telecommunications" companies "exempt from lawsuits" and "doesn't continue to spy on Americans...."

Mr. Bush...

Stop using "National Security Letters" against Democratics, Independents, Intellectuals and Artists...

And stop "listening to our phone calls"...

And stop "dating mining our internet usage" and "emails"...

Thank you.


TheCigMan
 
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