Jon Stewart is right... Obviously we don't know Dick...

maybe THIS will smoke the big dick out of his undisclosed location and into the arms of sweet, sweet accountability... somehow, however, i don't think i should hold my breath...

Cheney Is Linked to C.I.A. Concealment of Terror Program

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a
secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years
on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the
agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and
House intelligence committees, two people with direct
knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal
the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the
mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush
administration had put a high priority on the program and its
secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of
its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two
intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions
the next day.

the clever daily show line notwithstanding, most of us who have paid the slightest bit of attention in fact DO know dick and have essentially been saying this all along... nice to see it making headlines in the traditional media, however...

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Greenwald: "Are there any limits at all on the willingness of Congressional Democrats to be bullied and humiliated by Republicans?"

glenn writes on bush's threatened veto of the 60-day fisa extension...

This veto threat is one of the President's most brazen acts ever, so nakedly exposing the fun and games he routinely plays with National Security Threats. After sending Mike McConnell out last August to warn that we will all die without the PAA, Bush now says that he would rather let it expire than give Congress another 30 days. He just comes right out and announces, then, that he will leave us all vulnerable to a Terrorist Attack unless he not only gets everything he wants from Congress -- all his new warrantless eavesdropping powers made permanent plus full immunity for his lawbreaking telecom partners -- but also gets it exactly when he wants it (i.e., now -- not 30 days from now).

If the Democrats had even the slightest strategic sense and/or courage -- just the slightest amount -- this is a political confrontation they would be uncontrollably eager to have. Just imagine if they sustain the filibuster today and instead pass a 30-day extension of the PAA, and then Bush vetoes it, knowingly choosing to leave the intelligence community without the ability to Listen In When Osama Is Calling. It would be the height of political stupidity for Democrats to be afraid of that outcome.

* * * * *

That's what is at stake today as Senate Democrats try to sustain a filibuster against the Republicans' efforts to force a final vote on the truly pernicious Senate Intelligence Committee bill. Are there any limits at all on the willingness of Congressional Democrats to be bullied and humiliated by Republicans, even by the most transparently disingenuous tactics such as these?

[...]

The veto threat from the President is so unbelievably corrupt and manipulative that if our national press had even the smallest amount of critical faculties and understanding of the issues, that veto threat would be a major story. After all, how can the President possibly threaten the country that he will veto a law that he himself has claimed for months is indispensable for Protecting Us All?

[...]

Any rational person has long ago given up the hope that Congressional Democrats will stand for any actual political convictions, but the most basic sense of personal pride and human dignity -- which one thought was an intrinsic part of human nature -- would preclude their capitulation today. If they don't stand up to the White House and Senate Republicans under these circumstances, one might as well accept that they never will do so.

when the results of the 2006 mid-term elections came out, i spent the entire day in a buoyant mood, thinking that perhaps, at last, the tide was turning and that the most corrupt and criminal presidential administration in history would finally be held accountable, that unfettered executive power would be put in check, and that the separate but equal balance of powers laid out in the constitution would be restored... after congress began its new session in january, it didn't take any longer than the first few weeks to see that my hopes were sadly misplaced... the much-ballyhooed democratic takeover of congress only served to throw the criminal complicity of the democrats into high relief... i spent many months after that, huffing and puffing, elevating my blood pressure through outbursts of indignation and outrage, all for naught... now, the thought of there being only one or two senators (dodd and maybe feingold) standing between the citizens of the united states, our constitution, and the darkest cabal in world history, is not a comforting thought...

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Whitehouse (the Senator, not the building) affirms that the president is the SOLE decider

anybody who thinks these findings are at all surprising simply hasn't been paying attention... very clear, observable patterns have demonstrated these specific, criminal, unconstitutional approaches to the rule of law countless times over the past seven years... the "legal propositions" uncovered by senator whitehouse, taken together with the concrete, factually-demonstrated policies that they've informed, have led the united states to, and, some would argue, OVER the precipice to an authoritarian, police state... what more do we have to know to seriously tackle the challenge of getting these criminals out of office...? waiting for 20 january 2009 is simply not acceptable...

Whitehouse said he has “spent hours poring over” secret opinions issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) — and he took notes.

Whitehouse is a lawyer, a former U.S. Attorney, a former legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and a former State Attorney General. He said he sought and received permission to have his notes declassified because he wanted to show the public “what the Bush administration does behind our backs when they think no one is looking.”

“To give you an example of what I read,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor, “I have gotten three legal propositions from these secret OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note-taking could reproduce them from the classified documents”:

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

it is impossible for the united states to even BEGIN the long road back to regain everything we've lost until the current cabal is removed from office, and, to cling to the myth that electing and inaugurating a democratic president is going to fix things is both wrong and irresponsible...

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John Bolton uses the Karl Rove tactic on the Iran NIE

you all know the karl rove tactic, i'm sure... that's where, on the biggest public platform you can find, using the biggest megaphone around, you point-blank accuse someone else of doing precisely what you routinely do yourself... it's jaw-droppingly effective because it's the essence of the "BIG LIE..." when you hear it, you can only shake your head and marvel at the incredible chutzpah of someone who could lie like this... here's one of the principal "POLITICIZERS" of intelligence in the entire world, one of the neocon vampires who lied us into an illegal war in iraq, accusing people in the intelligence community of POLITICIZING intelligence... it's breathtaking...

I really think the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have to look at how this NIE was put together because there are a lot unexplained points in here. […]

I think there is a risk here, and I raise this as a question, whether people in the intelligence community who had their own agenda on Iran for some time now have politicized this intelligence and politicized these judgments in a way contrary to where the administration was going. I think somebody needs to look at that.

so, WTF does having "their own agenda" mean...? is that an agenda that calls for NOT wanting to go to war...? NOT bombing another country back into the stone age...? does "contrary to where the administration is going" mean "contrary to death and destruction"...?

please, dear lord, spare me from this kind of man and this kind of thinking...

(thanks to think progress...)

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The FISA bill and telecom immunity

click the chart which will take you to chris dodd's site... then, all you have to do is click on the senator you want to call, and they will place the call for you if you provide a callback number...

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Feinstein joins Rockefeller in repudiating the rule of law

to say nothing of the united states constitution...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Thursday that she favors legal immunity for telecommunications companies that allegedly shared millions of customers' telephone and e-mail messages and records with the government, a position that could lead to the dismissal of numerous lawsuits pending in San Francisco.

In a statement at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering legislation to extend the Bush administration's electronic surveillance program, Feinstein said the companies should not be "held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities."

She endorsed a recent statement by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W. Va., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that companies assured by top administration officials that the surveillance program was legal "should not be dragged through the courts for their help with national security."

Feinstein, D-Calif., plays a pivotal role on the Judiciary Committee, which has a 10-9 Democratic majority. If she joins committee Republicans in voting next Thursday to protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits for their roles in the surveillance program, the proposal - a top priority of President Bush - will become part of legislation that reaches the Senate floor.

difi really doesn't care WHO knows she's a traitor, does she...? first mukasey, and now this... i bet joe lieberman is ecstatic... it's just gonna take some of the heat off of him...

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Virtually no daylight between Democrats and Republicans

booman expresses his serious frustration with democratic inaction on phase II of the pre-war intelligence investigation... remember that...? i had quite honestly forgotten...

Remember when Harry Reid was Minority Leader and he used some procedural move to shut-down the Senate until the Republicans would agree to move forward with Phase II investigation over pre-war intelligence? How's that Phase II investigation going now that Harry Reid controls the Senate?

Still, another Intelligence panel Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, said the status of the Phase II investigation was a “good question.” Feinstein said she has not “been at a meeting where it’s come up. But I can’t make every meeting.”

[Intelligence Chairman Jay] Rockefeller said last week that the investigation is “chugging along very nicely,” but quietly, “without pyrotechnics,” a reference to the fights of recent years.

Not so, said Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Intelligence panel. “They haven’t scheduled any time on it,” he said.

The Phase II investigation is supposed to focus on two things: "examining the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and...contrasting the statements of public officials with what the intelligence community was saying at the time."

The Democrats' excuse is that they are working on more pressing matters, like the FISA bill...which they passed out of committee last week with retroactive immunity for the telecommunications corporations.

The FISA bill is important, but not nearly as important as holding the criminals that got us into this catastrophic war accountable. The Dems are more concerned with covering the ass of the Establishment than they are with getting us out of this war.

i got chewed out royally last january by a woman friend of mine who does serious legwork for the dems in a rural county... i was expressing dismay that the new democratic congress wasn't picking up the ball in nearly the way i had hoped... she hit the ceiling and told me i was being unreasonable, that i needed to give them some time, that they had a strong "first 100 days" agenda and that they were getting things in place to make sure it all happened...

my expectation, which i now see to have been pure fantasy, was that a dem congress would take serious, forceful steps to remedy a downhill luge run to an authoritarian state... i was heartened when the investigations under waxman, conyers and leahy got rolling, although i still couldn't understand why, with clearly impeachable offenses just sitting out there beckoning, we weren't taking that step... then came the white house and doj stonewalling of congressional committee requests, followed by the subpoenas, followed by more stonewalling... and now...? crickets chirping...

the inaction on phase II is part and parcel of the whole pattern that's emerged, the truly horrifying part of which is that there's virtually no daylight between the dems and the r's... is the 2008 election, a democratic president and a stronger democratic presence in congress going to remedy this...? color me highly dubious...

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Robert Parry notices a hidden element of the Protect America Act: spying on Americans overseas

as a testament to the depth of my cynicism, i've basically assumed that i'm being monitored no matter where i am, inside or outside the country... although i'm certainly not a computer technology geek, i'm sure that, even when i'm in argentina and using an argentina isp and ip address, there are enough identifying bits and bytes coming from my laptop that, should anyone care, would make it easy to pinpoint both my whereabouts and my activities... simply monitoring my web-based email accounts, for instance, would easily reveal from where those emails were sent... and, of course, there's also tracking atm withdrawals, credit card transactions, and the local provider that my u.s. cell phone is registered with... about the only way i WOULDN'T be traceable is if i went completely off the grid, which would mean no laptop, no phone, no credit cards, no atm's, no web-based email... i could possibly make occasional use of a ciber (as internet cafes are known in argentina), but only rarely and very carefully...

Bush's Spying Hits Americans Abroad

By Robert Parry
October 19, 2007

In August after the Democratic-controlled Congress caved in to George W. Bush’s demands for broader surveillance powers, I noted that the new authority went far beyond what was advertised and that the President could obtain year-long spying orders on Americans who ventured outside the United States.

My , which was based on a reading of the law’s language, wasn’t shared by commentators in the major U.S. news media and even drew some reader criticism as alarmist for failing to take into account secret “minimization” provisions that supposedly would protect American citizens.

some recent developments have further served to convince parry that his analysis is correct...

[T]he Bush administration’s hostile reaction to a seemingly innocuous amendment added to a new surveillance bill by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, suggests that targeting Americans who travel abroad was a key goal of Bush’s “Protect America Act of 2007.”

Wyden told the New York Times that his amendment would require the government to get a warrant whenever it wants to wiretap an American outside the country, such as a U.S. soldier serving overseas or an American on a business trip.

“The individual freedom of an American shouldn’t depend on their physical geography,” Wyden told the Times. He said his amendment passed on a 9-6 vote in a closed Senate Intelligence Committee meeting on Oct. 18. [NYT, Oct. 19, 2007]

After the committee vote, the Bush administration and a key Senate Republican took direct aim at Wyden’s provision.

“We have strong concerns about that amendment,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “We certainly could not accept it.”

Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking committee Republican, said Wyden’s amendment was “problematic” and could scuttle the entire bill if not changed.

In other words, the seemingly loose phrasing of the Protect America Act wasn’t just an oversight or something that would be cleaned up with some internal technical adjustments. Rather, it was an important feature of the legislation that was slipped past the Democratic leadership and most of the Washington press corps in August.

like i've said repeatedly, you can only assume that EVERY transaction you make that takes place on a network of any type not totally under your control is potentially monitored...

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Dear John Ashcroft, the pleasure of your company is requested

standard business attire... rsvp to john rockefeller or silvestre reyes...

The Senate and House Intelligence Committees are asking former attorney general John Ashcroft to testify about a March 2004 hospital-room confrontation during which he refused to sign off on a continuation of President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program, according to congressional and administration sources.

The sources, who asked not to identified talking about sensitive matters, said the Senate Intelligence Committee has tentatively scheduled a closed-door hearing for later this month. The panel plans to question Ashcroft, his former chief of staff David Ayres and former deputy attorney general James Comey about a heated dispute with the White House that roiled the Justice Department three years ago. The House committee is also planning a separate closed-door hearing with Ashcroft, according to a spokeswoman for Ashcroft.

i find this encouraging for two reasons... one, i wondered when somebody was going to go after ashcroft... it seems he's got a lot to offer none of which he's shared... two, i'm glad to see the house and senate intelligence committees getting really cranked up in the oversight department... i definitely don't think silvestre reyes is the sharpest tack in the box, but maybe between him and rockefeller, they can put together a squeeze play... and, then again, maybe not... it does kinda sound like it might happen, tho'... if ashcroft and half of his gang were ready to resign as comey stated, john's got a lot o'splainin' to do...

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Insistence on accountability for intelligence programs inches forward

i'm not even sure "inches" is the right term... seems to me this falls into the same category as subpoenas and the iraq war funding proposal... the administration is going to do what they goddam well please... any legislation that has provisions they don't like, they will taser congressional republicans into opposing, and then, if they actually do get passed, will simply obviate with a signing statement...

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has demanded a legal review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program for terrorism suspects as part of its version of the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.

also...

• [T]he panel called for the president to make public the costs of the national programs whose budgets make up almost three-quarters of the roughly $48 billion proposed for intelligence collection and analysis next year.¹

• [A]ll panel members be notified of such briefings [the most sensitive operations, such as the warrentless domestic wiretapping involving terrorism suspects] and be told about the "main features" of such intelligence activities, including covert actions.

• Joined the House in requiring a study of the impact of global climate change on national security.²

• Increased the maximum penalty for intentionally disclosing the name of an undercover intelligence officer or agent from 10 to 15 years.

• Required the president to provide all President's Daily Briefs that deal with Iraq, from the last four years of the Clinton administration through March 19, 2003, when the U.S.-led coalition began its invasion of that country.³

• Called for presidential nomination and Senate approval of the deputy CIA director as well as the directors of the National Security Agency, which collects electronic intelligence; the National Reconnaissance Office, which designs, builds and manages intelligence-gathering satellites; and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which collects and analyzes imagery.⁴

• Found that the number of personnel in the intelligence community has grown by 20 percent since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and recommended that additional growth be halted pending further study.

naturally...

¹ The Bush administration has strongly opposed such a disclosure.

² While House Republicans opposed this provision, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) supported it.

³ [T]his requirement was described by the panel's Republican vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (Mo.), as "the most problematic provision in the bill."

⁴ The White House has said it opposes a similar provision in the House bill.

our shadow government...

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I believe that the Bush administration welcomes terrorism

there could be no other explanation for the strategy the administration has consistently followed... fanning the flames of anti-american sentiment through the continuing occupation of iraq serves many objectives - keeping the fear threshold high, running the defense and armaments machine at full speed, retaining the prerogatives of a wartime commander-in-chief, allowing the construction of military bases and the embassy complex to move forward, staying in control of iraqi energy resources, and insuring that swollen rivers of cash are flowing into the right pockets...

Thursday morning CBS News's Early Show criticized President Bush's latest justification for the Iraq War as being the first line of defense against al Qaeda, by citing an upcoming Senate Intelligence Committee report which states that the administration was warned before the invasion that a US presence in Iraq would actually increase terrorist influence.

[...]

When asked directly, "Is the United States winning the war on terror?" [analyst Paul Kurtz] immediately responded, "without a doubt no" and added that "our continued engagement in Iraq is spawning more terrorist activity."

in bushco's view, what's NOT to like about an ever-increasing threat of terrorism...?

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Getting comfortable with the domestic spying that's already been going on for years

the wapo comments on the proposed fisa "update..."

note the operative phrase in the snippet below...

[The revision to FISA] would go far beyond the administration's previously revealed warrantless wiretapping program, which, we are told, has now been put under court supervision.

didja catch it...? that's right... "we are told..."

and, ok, it ain't really an update, but a sweeping expansion of powers already proscribed under amendment 4 of the u.s. constitution......

The Bush administration, however, is seeking far broader changes in the law -- on which we would urge Congress to proceed with extreme caution. The administration says that it simply wants to modernize the law to make it "technologically neutral," applying equally to communications that take place through the air and by wire. Sounds sensible, but the administration proposes to deal with that problem in a way that could dangerously expand the scope of surveillance that the government could engage in free from court oversight.

oh, and then there's this...

The administration's proposal ... has no requirement that the person at the other end of the communication be a suspected terrorist.

what they're doing seems perfectly obvious to me... for some time, probably on the order of many years, the government has been conducting comprehensive "sniffing" programs via massively powerful computer systems and software that sweep through every byte of digital, voice, and video communication and all electronic transactions that are conducted in or routed through u.s. pipes... the "sniffing" software is programmed to detect certain words or patterns of words and certain code strings... if any of those appear, the communication, the source and the destination are grabbed and kicked out for further analysis...

the changes to fisa, as i see it, are intended to accomplish two things... one, they are trying to put their already-operational activities on at least a semi-legal footing... two, they are softening both congressional and public opinion to its existence, "prepping" us, as it were, for more to come...

for a number of years now, i've simply made the assumption that anything i do electronically through any kind of public or private network outside of my immediate control is available for government "sniffing," and i make that assumption whether i am inside or outside the country...

and, as i posted the other day, if there was every any doubt that mike mcconnell is one of the pod people, saying this should clear things up...

"Sir, the president's authority under Article II is in the Constitution," McConnell said. "So if the president chose to exercise Article II authority, that would be the president's call."

translation: bush is the commander in chief and the head of the unitary executive and, in time of war, is required to decide what is in the best interest of the national security of the united states even if violates part of the u.s. constitution...

so, class, for review... article II, sections 1, 2 and 4, and amendment 4...

Article. II. - The Executive Branch

Section 1 - The President

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected...

[...]

Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Section 4 - Disqualification

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

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.

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Article II and Amendment 4 of the U.S. Constitution vs. the extraordinary claims of George Bush

are we clear now on why bush nominated mcconnell to replace negroponte...?

Senior Bush administration officials said Tuesday that they believe the president still has the constitutional authority to continue his domestic wiretapping program without first seeking court approval.

"Senior U.S. administration officials have told the U.S. Congress that they could not promise that the Bush administration would fulfill its January pledge to continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program," reports the International Herald Tribune.

In January, the administration agreed to seek court-approved warrants for all wiretaps of US citizens and other living inside the US.

But during a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), that he could not promise that Bush would always seek warrants for domestic wiretaps.

"Sir, the president's authority under Article II is in the Constitution," McConnell said. "So if the president chose to exercise Article II authority, that would be the president's call."

what mr. mcconnell is saying, in effect, is that the president has chosen to interpret the united states constitution in a manner that suits his purposes... we are way, way past due to have this constitutional interpretation put to the test... the sooner we resolve this constitutional question and face up to the constitutional crisis our country has been experiencing since the coup d'etat was installed by the 12 december 2000 scotus decision, the sooner we can get on with our lives...

The United States Constitution

Article. II. - The Executive Branch

Section 1 - The President

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice-President chosen for the same Term, be elected...

[...]

Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

article II does not make mention of the president's authority to undertake warrantless domestic spying activities... however, amendment 4 to the constitution definitely does, and not in its favor...

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

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.

can we please get this settled...? like tomorrow...?

meanwhile, let's not forget article II, section 4...

Section 4 - Disqualification

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

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