Impeach Bush
Impeaching Presidents — and Messengers: Bush, The New York Times and the Patriot Act
By DOUG IRELAND
Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 12:00 am
When the U.S. Senate last Friday refused to renew the liberticidal Patriot Act — with its provisions for spying on Americans’ use of libraries and the Internet, among other Constitution- shredding activities — it was in part because that morning’s New York Times had revealed how Bush and his White House had committed a major crime.
By ordering the National Security Agency to wiretap and eavesdrop on thousands of American citizens without a court order, Bush committed actions specifically forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Passed in 1978 after the Senate’s Church Committee documented in detail the Nixon administration’s widespread use of U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement and other political dissidents, FISA “expressly made it a crime for government officials ‘acting under color of law’ to engage in electronic eavesdropping ‘other than pursuant to statute,’” as Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, told the Washington Post last weekend. And the FISA statute required authorization from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in each case to make such domestic spying legal. Bush and his NSA sought no such authorization before invading American citizens’ right to privacy — a blatant flouting of the law that made both wavering, pro-war Democrats and libertarian Republicans mad enough to vote against extending the hideous Patriot Act, which will now expire at the end of the year
Bush not only acknowledged, and defended, this illegal eavesdropping in a Saturday radio address, he went further in a Monday morning press conference, saying he’d “suggested” it. But as Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold — who, together with conservative Idaho Republican Larry Craig, led the filibuster that defeated the Patriot Act’s renewal — said this weekend, “This is not how our democratic system of government works — the president does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow.”
By DOUG IRELAND
Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 12:00 am
When the U.S. Senate last Friday refused to renew the liberticidal Patriot Act — with its provisions for spying on Americans’ use of libraries and the Internet, among other Constitution- shredding activities — it was in part because that morning’s New York Times had revealed how Bush and his White House had committed a major crime.
By ordering the National Security Agency to wiretap and eavesdrop on thousands of American citizens without a court order, Bush committed actions specifically forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Passed in 1978 after the Senate’s Church Committee documented in detail the Nixon administration’s widespread use of U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement and other political dissidents, FISA “expressly made it a crime for government officials ‘acting under color of law’ to engage in electronic eavesdropping ‘other than pursuant to statute,’” as Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, told the Washington Post last weekend. And the FISA statute required authorization from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in each case to make such domestic spying legal. Bush and his NSA sought no such authorization before invading American citizens’ right to privacy — a blatant flouting of the law that made both wavering, pro-war Democrats and libertarian Republicans mad enough to vote against extending the hideous Patriot Act, which will now expire at the end of the year
Bush not only acknowledged, and defended, this illegal eavesdropping in a Saturday radio address, he went further in a Monday morning press conference, saying he’d “suggested” it. But as Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold — who, together with conservative Idaho Republican Larry Craig, led the filibuster that defeated the Patriot Act’s renewal — said this weekend, “This is not how our democratic system of government works — the president does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow.”
posted by littledevilworks at 1:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home