The site for ranting and reporting by John Masters
Constitutional issues and questions are posted to this category.
In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration’s original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago.
Read moreMy final word on the VP Dick Cheney shooting scandal.
Read moreWell, it is interesting that after Little Al Gonzales got ripped a new one during the Senate Hearings on King George’s domestic warrantless spying, the King suddenly decided it was OK to declassify some bogus “threat” so he could tell us about it (you know 9/11, airplanes into buildings, be afraid, be very afraid). Bush says he will not talk about specific security threats to America. Unless, of course, he needs to talk about a specific threat to Los Angeles to confuse the public and gain some cheap political advantage.
Read moreBush’s defense of his illegal domestic spying program in the State of the Union was almost entirely disputed yesterday by legal specialists across the ideological spectrum. “Bush’s assertion that his program was legal prompted a group of 14 prominent law professors, including both liberals and conservatives, to pen a joint letter objecting to his arguments.” Legal scholars disputed three false claims made by Bush.
Read moreSection 605 of the House version of the Patriot Act renewal legislation. It calls for the creation of a Federal Police Force. Your imperial presidency at work.
Read moreKarl Rove says that this year’s midterm elections will be about security. Were but that true.
Read moreJust over a week ago, the White House promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.
Read moreThe confirmation of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court is all but completed. The addition of the Big-Brother-government-and-corporate-friendly Alito to replace a relatively moderate O’Connor is going to result in a more authoritarian society in which a few dictate to the majority what the rules will be. The American Republic is in its final days. Bin Laden won…or was it just the Bush Cabal taking over for good?
Read moreWhen our nation was founded, we had men of real character and courage fighting for their nascent America, one in which liberty and freedom trumped the authoritative tendencies of the monarchy. Patrick Henry gave words to those efforts: Give me liberty or give me death!
Read moreThe former head of the National Security Agency and the current principal deputy of National Intelligence, Michael Hayden, yesterday revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of the 4th Amendment.
Read moreNSA SPYING ON UNITED STATES CITIZENS may be the least of it. The Department of Defense, in its “?force protection??tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States? is spying far more than the government would like you to know. It?s doing it on the internet, it?s hiding its tracks through the use of proxies, and even the most innocent Americans may be in data bases longer than the law allows.
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