All Hank, all the time.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The sole redeeming fact of this decision - if there is one - is that the Court affirmed that we can hold these motherfuckers "for the duration of active hostilities" - which, given their intent, may be sometime in the year 4054.

When you refer to "these motherfuckers," are you refer to the half who were fighting us or the half who got swept up for no good reason?

I'm impressed that you've already read the whole thing, since I haven't been able to download more than the first 15 pages.

[SlaveNoMore]

ironweed
The NSA in all of its incarnations has never been good for anything except smuggling cocaine out of Central America, selling weapons to Iran and shredding its files. If there was a plot involving several years of preparation and 19 or 20 foriegn nationals who intended to fly several commercial airliners into national landmarks after studying at US flight schools, do you think they'd be able to pick that up? It's because they couldn't listen to the calls and check the bank records back then, right? Wait -- don't tell me -- Clinton, right?

Gorelick. close enough.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Huh. Apparently not a single sentence of the NYT story revealed any new operational information about the program.

• But a search of public records -- government documents posted on the Internet, congressional testimony, guidelines for bank examiners, and even an executive order President Bush signed in September 2001 -- describe how US authorities have openly sought new tools to track terrorist financing since 2001. That includes getting access to information about terrorist-linked wire transfers and other transactions, including those that travel through SWIFT.
  
  "There have been public references to SWIFT before," said Roger Cressey, a senior White House counterterrorism official until 2003. "The White House is overreaching when they say [The New York Times committed] a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."
  
  Indeed, a report that [former State Department official Victor] Comras co-authored in 2002 for the UN Security Council specifically mentioned SWIFT as a source of financial information that the United States had tapped into.

Oh, my fucking God. Those goddamned government officials are aidng and abetting the enemy that's trying to kill us. Hopefully the execution of Bill Keller will stop THAT shit.

Hmmm...now let's see if the Wall Street Journal article contained any new information. What if it did? Would Ann Coulter call for the head of John Fund?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
So you like getting the anal cavity search? There's no expectation of privacy because governments do it, and nothing stops them. That doesn't make it right, however. Why else would we have the 4th amendment.

The 4th Amendment doesn't apply at the border. Once you leave the country the constitution does not apply any more. If you carry money into the United States, Customs can search it at the discretion. If you carry a message with you, customs can check it. Why should an incoming phone call or bank transaction be any different?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

How many more American soldiers will die to protect the jobs of Republican politicians?

• Why doesn't George W. Bush want to win in Iraq? Seriously. The past several weeks have forced him to choose between two big goals: demonizing Democrats to help the GOP retain control of Congress and fostering a domestic climate that gives the new Iraqi government the best chance to survive. And, again and again, he has chosen door number one. This is what ex-Bush officials like Paul O'Neill and John DiIulio warned us about--and what Hurricane Katrina reaffirmed: that what matters in this administration is not policy, but politics. For all his talk about America's historical mission to defeat tyranny and spread freedom, there is only one mission to which George W. Bush has shown consistent devotion: winning elections. He acts less like the president than like the head of the Republican National Committee.
  
  The situation in Iraq today is desperate but not hopeless. And, in the months to come, avoiding the abyss will require brutal compromises, not only in Baghdad, but in Washington--the kind that require support on both sides of the aisle. The good news is that the basic outlines of a deal to undermine the insurgency, break up the militias, and facilitate U.S. withdrawal are becoming clear. Sunni nationalist (as opposed to jihadist) insurgents seem increasingly willing to lay down their arms--if they are granted amnesty, the constitution is rewritten to accommodate their concerns, and U.S. troops leave. And, if Sunni insurgents stop massacring the Shia, then Shia militias may begin to disband.
  
  That's the good news. The bad news is that envisioning the outlines of a final deal is a lot easier than achieving one. Ending the Iraq war will require agonizing concessions, not only from Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds--but from Americans as well. For starters, the United States will have to resist imposing a timetable for withdrawal, even though many Americans want one and many Democratic activists are demanding one. Such a plan must come from the Iraqi government, as part of a broader agreement with the Sunni insurgents and Shia militias. If the Iraqi government tells us to leave, it strengthens them--especially among the Sunnis who want us gone the most. But if we tell them we are leaving, it looks like a vote of no confidence in their ability to survive--which might embolden the Sunni insurgents to think they can win on the battlefield and, in turn, make the Shia militias dig in their heels.
  
  For Americans, however, resisting a public withdrawal date is only the beginning. The truly gut-wrenching part will be looking the other way if Iraq's government allows insurgents who murdered heroic young Americans to go free....
  
  Swallowing these concessions will require a bipartisan bargain--the kind of ceasefire required for difficult domestic changes like reforming Social Security or the tax code. Were he interested in such a deal, Bush would have invited top Democrats into his office after the formation of Iraq's new government and the death of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi and said something like this. "If you resist a withdrawal plan so the Iraqis can announce their own, I'll bring you in on the negotiations. In fact, I'll replace Donald Rumsfeld with a secretary of defense that you trust--why don't you suggest a few names. And, if you don't demagogue this amnesty stuff, I'll tell Karl Rove and his henchmen to stop calling you cowardly defeatists. That might hurt me this November, since slandering Democrats is my best chance of luring Republicans to the polls. But I'm more interested in winning Iraq than winning Ohio. And, to do that, I need your help."
  
  Of course, over the past several weeks, President Bush has done exactly the opposite. Rove and company immediately wielded Zarqawi's death as a partisan club, saying that, if Democrats had their way, he'd still be loose. Then the White House and congressional Republicans rigged a phony, vicious Iraq debate in Congress, which saw Republicans call the main Democratic Senate plan (which didn't include a strict withdrawal timetable) "cut and jog"--only to announce days later that the Bush administration was considering something similar itself. All of which made Democrats trying to decide what was best for the country--as opposed to merely their party--look like chumps. Partisan acrimony, already stratospheric before the Iraq debate, is now even worse. And, among Democrats, the likely result will be greater demands for a public timetable for withdrawal and louder denunciations of amnesty for insurgents. (In Tennessee, Democratic Senate hopeful Harold Ford is already running ads on the subject.) It's hard to serve the national interest when the president of the United States does not.
  
  This has been the Democrats' dilemma all along. From the beginning, Bush has preferred the war on terrorism as a wedge issue to the war on terrorism as a unifying national cause. In 2002, he staged a fight on the Department of Homeland Security, when a bipartisan compromise could easily have been had. That fall, he told Congress he needed its support to disarm Iraq peacefully--when he was already intent on war. He has refused to seek congressional authorization for government surveillance, even though Congress would have given him most of what he wanted. In short, he has done everything in his power to alienate Democrats from an anti-jihadist struggle that, without their support, he cannot win. If Michael Moore did not exist, Bush would invent him.
  
  Politics, of course, does not--and should not--end in times of war. But mendacious, blood-sport politics should. Instead, it has emanated from the highest office in the land. And, if we lose in Iraq, it will be a major reason why.

Peter Beinart

[Spanky]

Originally posted by ltl/fb

On the body cavity search, is the standard at a border crossing (or going through customs or whatever when you get off an international flight) different from the standard at just a regular domestic flight? It seems like if you are a US citizen on US soil (incl. airport) you would have some, like, rights. Or is that a mini-Guantanamo? If so, why can't we relocate the Guantanamo people to airports or something?

I was only talking about international transactions. And if people and goods have to go through customs, why shouldn't internationl phone calls and bank transfers?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
The 4th Amendment doesn't apply at the border. Once you leave the country the constitution does not apply any more. If you carry money into the United States, Customs can search it at the discretion. If you carry a message with you, customs can check it. Why should an incoming phone call or bank transaction be any different?

Do you agree that the government should not be listening to domestic phone calls without a warrant?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
The 4th Amendment doesn't apply at the border. Once you leave the country the constitution does not apply any more. If you carry money into the United States, Customs can search it at the discretion. If you carry a message with you, customs can check it. Why should an incoming phone call or bank transaction be any different?

That's not my question. Given the apparent value you see in not having the 4th amendment apply outside the US, do you see it having any value in the US?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Do you agree that the government should not be listening to domestic phone calls without a warrant?

If the phone calls are between US citizens, yes. If two US citizens are talking to eachother on the phone with the phone call starting in the US and ending in the US, then absent exigent circumstances, the government needs to get a warrant to listen to such calls.

[Gattigap]

Obama gave a speech this week on Democrats' struggles with religion and politics that seems to be getting a lot of buzz in the blogosphere. Text here.

It's astonishing to me the degree to which Dems are openly grappling with this issue (as compared to anything pre-Clinton, say). FWIW, I agree with much of what Obama says here, though I don't know how well this worldview will be accepted in the Democratic Party.

Gattigap

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
If the phone calls are between US citizens, yes. If two US citizens are talking to eachother on the phone with the phone call starting in the US and ending in the US, then absent exigent circumstances, the government needs to get a warrant to listen to such calls.

You're stating what the law is, not what you think the law should be. If no 4th A. is so good for the foreign goose, why not the same for the domestic gander?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
That's not my question. Given the apparent value you see in not having the 4th amendment apply outside the US, do you see it having any value in the US?

Did I ever say it didn't have value in the United States?

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Spanky
Did I ever say it didn't have value in the United States?

You haven't recently articulated what unique values the principles of the fourth amendment have in the United States but don't have elsewhere.

Are the core values of the 4th amendment something only US citizens can benefit from, or, as a matter of some more general natural law or philosophical reason, uniquely entitled to enjoy?

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
How many more American soldiers will die to protect the jobs of Republican politicians?

• long article.

Peter Beinart

Was Beinart drunk like Hank when he wrote this?

His argument is based on some unfounded notion that the Democrats actually want to work with the administration and be helpful. Hogwash.

And the comment "If Michael Moore didn't exist, Bush would invent him" is an meaningless point. There is and always was a Moore, and a KOS and Dean and a Panda.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Do you agree that the government should not be listening to domestic phone calls without a warrant?

Do these "domestic" calls involve known terrorist supporters located outside of the country?