W. and Wire Tapping (Page 3)

Heh. Same link I found.

I was told today that I am a theory nut. I guess this proves it.

Can't we sum up everything that comes out of the White House these days with this simple Truth de Renee.

Hold on yourself there, cowboy. This is the BT, that wild west town where lawlessness and uninformed opinions rule! I don't need no stinkin' JD to tell you what's right and what ain't. 

dontracy - 2005-12-20 1:04 PM
Hold on, cowboy.

This is just one question that I, a non lawyer, had from a quick reading through the law.

You're proposing an unreasonable standard. The average person does not have the time or inclincation to become fully informed to the point of expertise on each issue of governance. For this reason we use a representative democracy rather than a true democracy and we rely on an unencumbered, diligent press to provide us with reliable information about the doings of our government.

"Informing oneself fully" as a citizen does not require reading case law or combing through government records. The only reasonable mean available to Americans to do this is with a judicious and critical examination of the information provided by the press.  Hence the First Amendment.  Implying that only those who have read the case law and the relevant government documents are the only ones who could possibly have valid opinions implies a disdain for some of the most basic underpinnings of American democracy.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Thomas Jefferson (1787)

Nooooooo.... second coming of King George. You're getting your despots confused.

Come on, Don, keep up.

OK for once I am agreeing with Jim. But before I state my next point I do need to say that. Jim a lot of congress did know. See news story here.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi confessed late Saturday that she signed off on President Bush's decision to have a top intelligence agency conduct "unspecified activities" to gather intelligence on possible terrorists operating inside the U.S. in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

"I was advised of President Bush's decision to provide authority to the National Security Agency to conduct unspecified activities shortly after he made it and have been provided with updates on several occasions," Pelosi admitted.

The San Francisco Democrat claimed she expressed "strong concerns" about the "unspecified activities" at the time, but offered no evidence to that effect.

Pelosi declined to explain why she didn't make public her concerns about the authorization, which Democrats now say was an outrageous abuse of civil rights.

BUT...

That being said, I still think if we have laws that are required to get wire taps then we need to follow them for all American citizens. If we begin to let the government trample on a few rights and think it is ok, they will do the same to other ones and then say well you didnt think it was a problem before. We need to protect all of all rights, not just the ones that are important to us.

So W. stepped out of his bounds...

Uh...I don't think signing off agreeing to "unspecified activities" constitutes knowing what the POTUS was doing.

 That's like telling your kids it's ok to go do "stuff" and then having them tell you that you said it was OK for them to smoke weed.

Oh Jim, come on. It is Nancy Pelosi; she hates W. You think she would really sign off on something giving him that much latitude? They all knew, just now it is coming to bite them on the ass. What do you think unspecified activites are???

And for a correct analogy would be:

Letting your kids go to the keg party but being pissed because you didnt tell them they could drink an drive when you told them they had to have the car home at 12.

Didn't you read the Jay Rockefeller letter posted earlier? 

Well now you're just talkin' crazy, dude.

1 - All public laws are a matter of public record, but many of them, particularly federal law, require years of education and experience to decipher one you've found the one you care about. For the majority of Americans, functionally, the letter of the law is inaccessible.

2 - Being well informed is not an unreasonble standard. I believe it's our duty as citizens. What I do believe is unreasonable is your definition of "well informed".

3 - "a judicious and critical examination of the information provided by the press" means an examination of multiple sources of news from different points on the political spectrum. This is how to get around the fact that "the press is far from an unbiased reporter "

4 - The quote about the press was to show that Jefferson considered the most important function of the press to be informing the citizenry of the doings of government. I could have found a better quote. Edit: This implies that Jefferson considered a reliance on the press to be ok.

My basic position is that not being an expert on just about everything, I have to rely on the opinions of those who are expert in their fields. Usually that expertise is found via the press.

I believe it's reasonable for the average citizen to use the press to come to a reasonably well informed opinion on most issues as long as they use multiple sources of information that are easily accessible (intellectually as well as physically) to them.

And I wasn't at all offended. I was making a point of discussion. You explain your positions far too lucidly for them to be considered offensive.

You mean like this: "Oh, and RED bikes are fastest"

10 points to the first person to identify the source of this quote:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

To those folks who do not object to the President George W. Bush authorizing searches of US Citizens without any oversight - would you be equally comfortable if President Hillary Rodham Clinton were to do the same?

Ahem. From wikipedia:

 [Lincoln's suspension of Habeus Corpus] was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order.

And

 Critics vehemently attacked him for violating the Constitution, overstepping the traditional bounds of executive power, refusing to compromise on slavery in the territories, declaring martial law, suspending habeas corpus, and for ordering the arrest of some adversarial state government officials and a number of publishers.

I have also been pondering the comparison of the Civil War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Great minds think alike. (so, apparently, do mediocre ones.

The Civil War was obviously extremely divisive to the nation;

The President is viewed by many to have overstepped the limits of his Constitutional authority.

It took a lot longer than anyone expected due, in part, to tactical and strategic errors made by leadership early in the course of the war;

Ultimately the right side prevailed (and let us hope and pray this proves to be the case in Iraq);

The war remained controversial for generations afterward. (To this day some people do not agree that the "right side prevailed".);