The Olympian steps up

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The Olympian steps up

Submitted by Rick on Tue, 12/20/2005 - 11:08pm.

Good Job!

George Bush cannot protect democracy by destroying it.

Every American should be outraged by the president's attempt to justify domestic spying. It's wrong, and the president should acknowledge that fact. He must be held accountable.

Congress should immediately launch a truly bipartisan investigation into the administration's spying campaign. If the Constitution and laws of the United States were broken, Congress should censure the president. And if the lies, the deceit and lawbreaking continue, Congress should take even more drastic action.

Either we are a nation of laws and moral values or we are not. We cannot pick and choose which laws to abide by and which to ignore for the sake of convenience or expediency.

George Bush is not above the law.

Go read the rest. The comments are also interesting. The paper is going to take some heat for this stance. Some have suggested that this might be a good time show your support for this kind of editorial by subscribing to the Olympian.

I wonder, was The Olympian ju

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 12:37am.

I wonder, was The Olympian just as critical when President Clinton exercised domestic powers, as well?

I really can't get over this, actually.

"We cannot pick and choose which laws to abide by and which to ignore for the sake of convenience or expediency."

As I said before, are these people kidding? Do they really think President Bush is the first Executive to exercise questionable powers during a time of conflict?

We're fighting for survival and The Olympian is concerned that the NSA might be listening to your conversation.

To my knowledge, and please p

Submitted by Rob Richards on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 9:27am.

To my knowledge, and please prove me wrong if I'm wrong, but this goes beyond what other presidents have done and gotten away with. President Bush subverted the justice system by not getting warrants for the wiretaps. FISA says that you can get the warrant AFTER you begin spying. This destroys Bush's defense that they had to act quickly and couldn't wait for the courts.

Regardless, even if other presidents did worse, Bush did this, and has been caught. The democrats, and some republicans, are going to push for an investigation. Most likely there will be one, and Bush could be censured for this, maybe impeached. He's not a popular president (he's a war president), and now he's losing favor with members of his own party. It just doesn't look good for him right now.

President Clinton, Executive

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 12:22pm.

President Clinton, Executive Order 12949

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE PHYSICAL SEARCHES

Section 1.

Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) of the Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.

Here's the document: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12949.htm

Here's a recent article from the National Review on the subject:

In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.

Here's a link to the NR article: http://nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.asp

Do we know if Clinton used th

Submitted by Rob Richards on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 4:35pm.

Do we know if Clinton used these powers that he claimed to have, or was this merely in the realm of debate?

So now it's not a matter of w

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 6:34pm.

So now it's not a matter of whether or not an Executive would claim to have such power, just a matter of if it is used?

Either you believe the Executive has this power or you don't. Exercising it is irrelevent.

Again, though, we're going to hold the Bush Administration to a different standard (Kosovo v. Iraq, Executive powers) than we did for previous administrations.

I see you're comparing Kosovo

Submitted by Robert Whitlock on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 9:10pm.

I see you're comparing Kosovo to Iraq. Sure, there are some similarities. But there are FAR MORE Differences than there are similarities between these two conflicts.

The actual conflict? Yes, th

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 11:12pm.

The actual conflict? Yes, there are a great deal of differences.

Pre-conflict information? Both acted on intelligence which was later proven to be wrong. Just as we didn't find any significant amount of weapons in Iraq, the same can be said for bodies in Kosovo.

Both conflicts have come up far short of justifying their original intention.

Perhaps the time has come for

Submitted by stevenl on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 7:03pm.

Perhaps the time has come for Americans, regardless of political party, to question whether or not we really need the office of President.

We can give the Olympian posi

Submitted by Sarah on Wed, 12/21/2005 - 5:01pm.

We can give the Olympian positive feedback on this by calling 360-754-5400 or emailing them at news@theolympian.com.

I read on the OMJP list that some people are giving the Olympian negative flack for this article.

The comments on the Olympian web site for this are worth looking over.

If the Olympian did a "good j

Submitted by Deep Diver on Thu, 12/22/2005 - 2:02pm.

If the Olympian did a "good job" on this topic, TFI did a "better job" of pointing out how there is another side to the story.

Didn't you know? The Bush ad

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Thu, 12/22/2005 - 5:46pm.

Didn't you know? The Bush administration is the worst thing to happen to the United States. Never, ever, has any Executive come close to this presidency.

George W. Bush is setting all sorts of records. Alleged corruption? Skirting the Constitution? Smoke filled, back-room dealing? Never has the Executive ever had such words associated with it.

In fact, it's the end of the United States as we know it. At any moment the entire institution is going to come crashing down, all because of George W. Bush.

Or maybe everyone is just choosing to have a selective memory, speaking both from a contemporary and historical standpoint.

Your argument is that other p

Submitted by Rob Richards on Thu, 12/22/2005 - 10:47pm.

Your argument is that other people did just as bad or worse than Bush, so we should look the other way? By that logic, many guilty people should be let go or not charged for their wrongdoing. If Bush is dumb enough to get caught and congress investigates and busts him, then good. He gets what he, and many before him, deserve.

I don't think I ever thought for a second that the US was crumbling. To think that Bush could cause something like that to happen gives him way too much credit. I think we are going through some big changes right now, including dealing with widespread corruption, but out system is made for this. It's flexible. We'll be OK.

I'm merely advocating for con

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Fri, 12/23/2005 - 1:10am.

I'm merely advocating for context, that's all.

It's something a lot of people aren't doing, as evidenced by President Bush's decision to allow for the wiretapping of domestic conversations for foreign intelligence purposes.

The last portion of The Olympian's op-ed is why I mentioned the US is going to "fall apart." They act as if we've never had such action taken by the Executive.

And it's obvious that, separate from President Bush, we're going to have to decide how much movement we want the Executive to have regarding foreign intelligence gathering on domestic soil.

In fact, that's the real debate at hand. President Bush, for the most part, should be irrelevent to the discussion.

I'm curious about what the th

Submitted by Rick on Fri, 12/23/2005 - 9:39am.

I'm curious about what the threshold is for you? How much power is ok for the president to exercise? How far would you trust him? And why do we need "context"? Isn't this just the balance of power that was set up by the framers doing its job? If the president goes unchecked, that would result in the end of the US. Luckily, some smart folks 200 years ago knew how to prevent that from happening. They knew that there would be bad people, e.g., GB, that would try to abuse the system.

I believe the Executive, for

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Fri, 12/23/2005 - 11:01am.

I believe the Executive, for a limited period of time, should have the ability to conduct domestic surveillence for the purpose of collecting foreign intelligence.

The last two presidents would agree with me. It's also worth-noting President Carter also signed an Executive Order allowing domestic surveillence for foreign purposes.

That's why context is needed. People need to stop acting like President Bush just woke up one day and started doing all of this, as if there isn't precident.

I think it's funny you say, "bad people," and then list President Bush as an example. President Bush signed an order allowing for wiretapping and President Clinton signed an order allowing for physical searches. So does this mean President Clinton is even worse than President Bush?

Under your example, President Clinton also "abused" the system.

Just listening to the news, stating how an Executive conducting domestic surveillence after a catastrophic act of conflict is well within previous precident.

Chech the facts dude. The Ca

Submitted by Rick on Fri, 12/23/2005 - 2:23pm.

Chech the facts dude. The Cater/Clinton thing is bogus.

Good stuff, though searching

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Fri, 12/23/2005 - 2:41pm.

Good stuff, though searching an American isn't ruled out. There only has to be "substantial likelihood" that a physical search won't involve a US citizen.

This is why I've stated twice that the actual CIC should be irrelevent to the discussion.

Personally, I don't care if Clinton or Carter ordered the monitoring of US citizens. In fact, I was quite happy they did, though now I'm a bit disappointed they didn't authorize the lengths to which I would have preferred.

Maybe now we have an Executive who is finally going to put the threat to rest. Carter certainly didn't and neither did Clinton (and, to be fair, Reagan and the first Bush did nothing, either).

A heavy hand is going to be needed.

So you are in favor of "big"

Submitted by Rob Richards on Sat, 12/24/2005 - 9:49pm.

So you are in favor of "big" government?

I'm in favor of a government

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Sat, 12/24/2005 - 10:44pm.

I'm in favor of a government with teeth.

You don't need an endless amount of budget to conduct domestic surveillence and you don't need to intrude on the life of the average American, at least to their knowledge.

I'm not suggesting the government act on small information, either. Someone growing a marijuana operation? Don't act on it. Is someone going to commit a murder unrelated to the threat at hand? Again, it's not necessary to act on it (at least in any formal capacity. Informal connections could be used, though).

Domestic surveillence in a time of crisis can go a long way toward preventing and eliminating future threats against the nation.

There is absolutely no eviden

Submitted by Rick on Sun, 12/25/2005 - 10:25am.

There is absolutely no evidence to show this is true. Rather, there is far more danger in the loss of civil liberties.

Surveillance of U.S. citizens

Submitted by Ogre Mage on Tue, 01/03/2006 - 12:01am.

Surveillance of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorist activities is fine and legal if the proper procedures are followed. They were not. Why is it so difficult for the Bush Administration to follow FISA and get a warrant to spy on people they suspect are terrorists?

1. Warrants have never been needed for surveillance outside the U.S., so nothing would change there.

2. Surveillance involving calls made by foreigners to someone in the U.S. (and vice-versa) can still remain secret, because the warrants can be sealed by the court.

3. Surveillance can still be done as quickly as needed, because warrants can be filed 72 hours after the taps have started.

There is no security justification for not following the current law. What is disturbing is with warrantless spying, there is no paper trail of who has been spied on and therefore no accountability. There is nothing to stop the administration from spying on whomever they want and I am tired of listening to the administration's fear mongering tactics. They accuse people of undermining national security whenever the legality of their actions are questioned. Didn't Richard Nixon use this justification during Vietnam?

What should happen is burying

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Tue, 01/03/2006 - 1:40am.

What should happen is burying programs like this deeper. It's ridiculous they keep getting caught.

If you're going to use questionable tactics, at least do it in secrecy.

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