I'm Confused.........
 

1. There are any number of reasons, ranging from distrust of those law enforcement agencies to a lack of clarity in the law. At the heart of it, however, was the Church Committee Report, which detailed abuse after abuse of governmental agencies engaged in espionage. It was one of those events Congress politically had to respond to, like the 9/11 Report or Enron - they HAD to do something.

2. The Patriot Act did - FISA limited permitted survellants to foreign powers and their agents, which had already been expanded to cover agents of foreign terrorist groups, but the Patriot Act extended it to also cover "lone wolves" that were engaged in terrorism but couldn't be connected to a known terrorist group. The Patriot Act, however, did not change the provision that limits those who can be surveilled (here or abroad) to non-US Persons.

3. They can. I'm not sure it solves the issue legally, but this strikes me as a moral response.

4. I think your point 4 raises the fundamental question. Most of us are willing to give government some leeway, but when an argument is made that government has unlimited authority to do what it wants without limitation, most of us will take offense. I think the Administration needs to, and is trying to, be clear that they respect a system of limited government. But they have put themselves in a position where it is hard to see that their legal arguments do not effectively eliminate any such limitations.

I'm Confused.........
 

There's the problem that Bush reauthorized the "mistakes" more than 30 times.

Ben Franklin agreed with you. See my sig line for details.

I'm Confused.........
 

TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 36 > SUBCHAPTER I > § 1811 Prev | Next

This is the biggest problem I have with the entire process. 30 reauthorizations means reauthorization every couple of weeks, and the only place in FISA I find something that has a period of about two weeks is here:

Now, in that little clause, as I read it, the fifteen days follows "a declaration of war by the Congress" rather than the Presidential authorization. It seems clear to me that only one authorization is allowed.

I would hope that people in the executive branch would have a basic command of grammar. Particularly Republicans.

I'm Confused.........
 

New rule: From now on, Spanky must preface all of his posts with the word "Whoa!" He must also type them using his best Keanu voice.

I'm Confused.........
 

My wife has a nephew, let's call him "Jailbird." He also thinks that the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply to him. He also has a history of fondness for cocaine.

He's been diagnosed a sociopath. However, unlike some sociopaths, he's never really managed to either restrain his more grandiose impulses nor has he enticed other, more balanced people to act as his handlers.

The biggest problem we've always had with him is, how do you get someone to follow the law when they've been relatively successful in finding people to run interference for him all his life?

I'm Confused.........
 

I should have been more specific. I have no problem with the government listening in on calls made by foreign nationals, or calls that originate or end up outside of US borders. When I ship something in or out of the United States, or when I go in and out of the United States the US Government has authority to search that stuff without a warrant. The government also has a right to keep tabs on any foreign nationals in the United States. I think all that is good for national security and doesn't threaten civil liberties. I think the same should apply to communication. And I don't understand why it doesn't.

I'm Confused.........
 

Given how he likes to stalk, can you imagine if he could get control of travelling in the Matrix? Heavy! Bitches would be giving it up.

I'm Confused.........
 

Whoa Dude, that was like really immature and not at all funny

OK, Spanky, here's a response to your free market screed of a few days ago.

Please see that whether this is true or not depends (in part) on what property rights you started with. At common law, you don't have the right (broadly speaking) to use your property to harm others. For example, if you burn leaves on your property such that you smoke your neighbor out of his house, he can sue you under a nuisance theory. Environmental laws take this principle, and apply it in the context of what we now understand about how the world works. If you never had the right to use your property to harm others, it's not a taking to prevent you from doing this now in a more subtle way.

First, we have a conceptual problem, about what you mean by "free markets." No market is free of government regulation, in the sense that the common law (at the least) governs the conditions under which people exchange goods and services.
It defines who owns what, and how they can be exchanged. And what people can do in the absence of such deals (tort law). In this sense, no market is free, except maybe those in Somalia right now, and no one thinks that model works particularly well.

Moreover, if we assume that the government defines who owns what and how it can be exchanged, neither statement is always true. Markets sometimes fail, for predictable reasons. Participants lack information, or abuse a commons, or there is a monopoly, etc. Setting aside blatant redistribution, much government regulation is a response to perceived market failure.

Sometimes. But sometimes government intervention makes markets work better. For example, the Truth-in-Lending Act arguably makes credit markets work better because consumers have adequate information to assess the products they buy.

Here, you are describing a form of market failure begging for government action: Consumers externalize part of the cost of operating vehicles by polluting the air.

I'm Confused.........
 

dissent.
SS is funny because he's immature. What his post was, was not nice. But I will commit to this SPank- I will coerce him to become as nice next year as i was this year. Kumbahfuckingyah

I'm Confused.........
 

You wouldn't care one bit unless you had something to hide.

What the hell is your real name? Akbar Muhammad?

If you use your property to harm others something is exiting your property and effecting someone elses. You are responsible for your property and everything that exits it. If smoke is leaving your property and going into your neighbors property you are infringing on his property rights. The stuff I was talking about is if the government decides that your property is a wetland and says you can't build on it. That is a taking without just compensation. Or if you own a shop and the government decides your area is now not zoned for commerical use. These things should be compensated (not prevented - I believe in the power of eminent domain - just compensated).






If regulations are instituted to make the markets more efficient I have no problem with them. For example information usually makes a market perform better. But the market is almost always a better determiner of price, demand and need than the government is.



Again - making the markets more efficient. Sometimes the government intervens for reasons other than making the markets more efficient. When this is done for health, safety or environmental reasons, that is fine, but any other reason is usually bad.


Your problem is that you equate free markets with anarchy. They are two different concepts. The term market implies that you have a functioning market that requires a system of government. Without a government to enforce the rules of the "market" you don't have one. The strongest simply gets the goods. You need a respect for private property and contract law which the government needs to enforce. The first step in creating an efficient market is a respect for property rights. Without property rights you get no market. Externalities are an infringement on property rights. The most basic rule of markets. If you are dumping stuff off your property (be it a gas, liquid or solid) you are infringing either on your neighbors property rights, the public's property rights or both. The government needs to start enforcing property rights for individuals and for public property.

I'm Confused.........
 

I guess I am not very funny because that post was supposed to be a joke.

I'm Confused.........
 

I don't care how much you defend him in your stupid columns, your man Delay is going down.

The Administration went to far......
 

Well. Go Figure. George Will agrees with me:

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/will1.asp

and Ann Coulter does not:

http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/welcome.cgi


I think I am in good Company.

Chalk up two for Spanky.

Padilla
 

Judge Luttig bitch-slapped the DOJ today in the Padilla case. Ouch.

Here's a taste:

• For, as the government surely must understand, although the various facts it has asserted are not necessarily inconsistent or without basis, its actions have left not only the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake –- an impression we would have thought the government could ill afford to leave extant. They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the President possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror –- an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant. And these impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government’s credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today. While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be.

Padilla
 

Here's what I can't get by from you guys, and why the 2004 election was such a cakewalk,

Hypo: on 9/11 in Little Rock 4 saudi nationals were stopped at the airport because the baggage screener saw box cutters in their bags. They were held for a little bit, then 9/11 happened, Now the FBI has them- what do you charge them with? trying to bring something wrong on a plane? Me, my wife and both kids are guilty of that.

You, and the rest of the people looking at this shit from the "how do we investigate the crime that was 9/11" crowd just don't see. Fortunately, for my kids and your's Ty, the majority of American voters understand- Bitch now- bitch 40 years from now BECAUSE BUSH MADE AMERICA SAFER.

Padilla
 

A judge whom Bush almost picked for the Supreme Court a few months ago does this, and that's all you've got?

Do you understand why the Padilla facts are unlike your hypothetical?

Do you think it should be OK for the government to arrest a US citizen here in the US, lock him up in a military prison, and refuse to charge him or give him access to counsel?

Padilla
 

Ask Judge Luttig about that -- your boys had him short-listed for the Supreme Court.

What I can't get from you guys, and why you're out on your asses in 2008, is an understanding of a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.

You can get there without being a knight in shining armor but also without wading knee-deep though the shit and turning into what you despise. There is a happy medium. This administration seems too often to lose sight of that concept.

S_A_M

Padilla
 

S_A_M -- Check your PMs.

Padilla
 

I don't give a fuck what the judge is short listed for- and change my hypo from Saudis to US citizens. What would you do with them? Let them go, right? They didn't do anything wrong.

Here is reality. The laws do not reflect where we are at. The Uk has more realistic laws on this. I'm glad the admin says that it will hold onto some guy who had Afghan training. What do you think he was up to- just wanted to become a lean mean fighting machine?

Padilla
 

OK, I will answer your dumb-ass hypo, and then maybe you can try to say something intelligent about Luttig's opinion, which is much more interesting. I pick those guys up, and I lock them up for as long as it takes to find evidence that they've acted in concert -- not very long, to be sure -- and then I try them for attempted murder, conspiracy, terrorism, tax evasion, and anything else that will stick, after which they get sentenced for the rest of their natural lives to a maximum security prison in Colorado.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Hank and Ty etc.

I am a little confused by your debate.

Hank: are you suggesting that US citizens can have their phones tapped without warrants? Or that US citizens can be held in Jail without access to a lawyer indefinitely? No phone call?

I would rather have twenty towers taken out and toxins released in the Bay Area than that be a standard precedent. Wouldn't you?

You are arguing something else correct?

Ty:

From the other point of view if Two Saudi citizens were caught getting onto a flight on 9-11 with paper cutters put them in jail and throw away the key. The only reason I can see for letting them out is if Saudi Arabia complains. Otherwise they are history.

Do you have a problem with that Ty?

If the people with the paper cutters were American citizens then they are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

I invite you to review the portion of my post that referred to "a maximum security prison in Colorado" and "the rest of their natural lives."

They're committing a crime, so prosecute them. If the evidence is clear -- and the hypo is that it is -- then they'll go away.

What kills me is that it's the conservatives who are talking the most about how important it is to bring democracy to Iraq who seem to lack faith in our institutions and rule of law here.

Suppose Hillary Clinton wins in '08. Would you feel comfortable living in a country where she asserts the unfettered power to conduct warrantless searches of U.S. citizens' communications, in the name of terrorism?

If conservatives don't step up to Bush now, he's not backing down. And if he pulls this shit for three years, y'all are going to have a hard time reining the executive branch in when it's run by someone you don't like.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Ty and Spank- my 7 year old son (at the time) tried to bring a laser gun on a plane- if we had caught M. Atta version 2 with his box cutters that morning he would only be different because he was an Arab. My boy doesn't belong in prison and neither does that guy, right- that where your socratic method leads. The law doesn't fit today- the UK's might- our's does not.

the only real question is whether you let the killer go because the law doesn't address the crime yet-. Ty I know your answer, but Spank I'm still hopeful.

Padilla
 

At least one person figures Stevens is holding out for 2009.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

I have no problem when prosecutors exercise their discretion and decide not to charge someone they could charge, if they do so wisely. Zero tolerance policies are an abdication of judgment. Any prosecutor should recognize that when you bring the force of the government's power to bear on people, you don't do it lightly.

But that's completely different from announcing that the executive branch gets to lock people up, or snoop on people, without telling peopel and free of judicial review.

I find it hard to believe that you don't grasp the distinction between those things, but there you go.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Warrantless searches on US citizens and detention of US citizens without access to a lawyer and a speedy trial is not cool. I don't know if I really qualify as a conservative (most Republicans think I don't, most Dems think I do), but I don't need this power in the hands of a Dem to be scared of it. I don't want anyone having that kind of power. Up until a few days ago, the investigations into my background, credit checks (I have had sixty five credit checks run on me and all my alma maters have been contacted at least five times) etc. have seemed humourous. But once they can throw people in jail for no reason and deny them legal council all of a sudden this stuff ain't so funny anymore.

Full page newspaper ads attacking incumbant Republican congressmen are going up in five districts next week with my signature on them (one of the criticisms is that they voted for torture - I am not sure how the votes worked out on the McCain thing but for some reason the ED thinks we can safely see these guys voted for torture). When they start rounding people up for the camps it looks as though I will be one of the first ones able to pick which bunkbed I want.

However, what they do with foreign nationals doesn't bother me so much. I would like to see them not tortured and not brutalized. But when we need to weigh their well being with National Security, I vote for national security (this may seem hypocritical being that I am attacking these guys for voting for torture - but politics is hardball baby. If the good Lord give you an AK47 you use it).

On a final note, if you think that the Bush loyalists are going to complain about this you are wrong. It is up to you and me baby. We need to sing like canaries (I always do anyway) because no one else will. Even if things go swimmingly well for now on in Iraq the hard core liberals are never going to think the war was a good idea. On the flip side no matter how much Bush (although I must say I prefer Gonzales looking into my dirty laundry than Ashcroft) infringes on civil liberties his loyalists will think it is OK. Complaining is the job of the loyal opposition.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

For me the dividing line is whether or not Mr. Atta is a US citizen. If Mr. Atta is not a US citizen send him to Gitmo and throw away the key. But if he is a US citizen he needs to be arraigned and found guilty by a Jury or let free. Was that the answer you were looking for?

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Au contraire -- if folks like me are the ones complaining, with a few of you maverick GOP types, but most Republicans stick with the White House, then Bush is not going to back down, and Congress will not push the issue. It's up to Republicans to make him see why he's wrong.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Do you really think that legal permanent residents should have no constitutional rights?

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Oh. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. say we caught Mr. Atta hinself. One tower of the WTC still stands. We charge him with everything we can- nothing. You would be in favor of letting him go. Got that, but do you see why others might want to just hold on to him and ask for the laws to catch up. I mean, why do you think people went to Afghansitan during the Clinton protectorate, just to get the training to make them more well-rounded?

Conf to fringey- I made this post much less nasty soley because of you. Nasate.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

That ain't going to happen. Trust me. Since two branches are locked up time to go for the third. I don't know about you Dems but us maverick GOP types are already planning law suits. (Actually other people are planning law suits - I spend to much time posting to this board, I am just taking credit for other people's work like I usually do).

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

That's the dumbest hypothetical you've ever posted here, to the best of my wine-impaired recollection.

If you have that little faith in the legal system, why do you think that democracy is a good idea? Do you think that the framers were onto something when they created a democratically elected government with checks and balances, or do you think we would have been better off under a monarchy, hoping that our despots would be enlightened and benevolent?

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Arlen Specter is planning hearings. I have some hope that there are enough principed Republican Senators that they'll be able to get something done.

As for the other branch, check out the decision today by Judge Luttig.

Who is bringing the lawsuit? Who has Article III standing to test what Bush is doing? He asserts the power to violate the law, and to not tell people when or how.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

During a war? Maybe some but not many. I have been a legal resident of many other countries and I always assumed that I basically had no rights. I either kept my nose clean or was toast.

Maybe they should get a military trial with a preponderance of the evidence or something but not like they were citizens. Until you have that passport you need to keep your nose clean. It is like being on parole, don't even associate with people that might be guilty of something.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

Namaste?

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

If you were married to a legal permanent resident who had lived here for 30 years, you think the government ought to be able to seize her land and property with paying just compensation?

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

I don't hate Bush. I actually like the guy. Ditto with Cheney. When it comes to National Security I think their collectives hearts are in the right place. But I run in circles with many Republicans who loathe the two of them. People that take politics very personally.

In additon, these people have more money than God. From what I understand, they have decided to go legal and are leaving it up to the various law firms to establish standing. I talked to a developer from Orange County this morning who was so angry about this stuff he could barely speak and every other word was a curse. I felt like I needed to give him a tranquilizer. This civil liberty stuff really gets people excited.

I don't know exactly what they are going to do, but they are going to try something. And the State Party Chairman is going to blame me. Business as usual.

No surprize here but I am confused again.....
 

No. But that is not related to national security. If it turned out she was friends with a guy that conspired with someone else to release small pox into the water supply I wouldn't expect them to be nice to her. If they arrested her, interrogated her and expelled her from the country, I think I would have trouble arguing with them.

If there was strong evidence that she assisted them in any way, or knew about it before hand and said nothing I don't think I could complain if they locked her up and threw away the key without a trial.

If you are not a US citizen you need to be careful who you associate with, and when it comes to national security the State Department is going to have to lean towards the safe side. I think I would understand that.