Gonzales Suggests Legal Basis for Domestic Eavesdropping

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States. "I'm not going to rule it out," Mr. Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The attorney general made his comments, which critics said reflected a broadened view of the president's authority, as President Bush offered another strong defense of his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls and e-mail messages to or from the United States. Mr. Bush, in an appearance in North Carolina, told a questioner who attacked the program that he would "absolutely not" apologize for authorizing it. "You can come to whatever conclusion you want" about the merits of the program," Mr. Bush said. "The conclusion is I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program."

At the House hearing, Mr. Gonzales faced tough questioning from Democrats and Republicans but declined to discuss many operational details. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of the administration's staunchest allies, accused the administration of "stonewalling."

"Mr. Attorney General, how can we discharge our oversight responsibilities if every time we ask a pointed question, we're told that the answer is classified?" Mr. Sensenbrenner asked. "Congress has an inherent constitutional responsibility to do oversight. We are attempting to discharge those responsibilities." The House and Senate have conducted limited inquiries into the surveillance program, which many Democrats contend is illegal. Republicans on the Senate intelligence panel have agreed on measures to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days.

more
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/washington/07nsa.html?hp&ex=1144382400&en=9aedb40ee43d7452&ei=5094&partner=homepage

they think everything they do legal.
So, their basis is...scrub said he could.

Bu$hCo's attitude is that of every 3rd rate Dictator and schoolyard bully that has ever lived. It boils down to a taunt and a smirk and the statement, Ok, Punk what are u and your 3 midgets going to do about it? Remember The Movie Back to the Future? Right we remember the bully that was always on top of Michael J. Fox right? That's Mr. Bu$h and his pals and were the target.

Its something to watch, a man so obviously limited in his intellectual ability, he learned the trick of manipulating the symbols, but he doesn't really know what they mean, if you know what I mean.

Its like he's in the special olympics of law.

You said this so well, I found myself LOL!!! I've observed his stupid demeanor and couldn't put it into words. Thanks for articulating this for me.

like many other lawyers. No, he doesn't do disability claims, no, he doesn't do accident/injury claims, no, he's not a divorce lawyer. His particular specialty is chopping the first two letters from "illegal", sanding off the rough edges, coating it with smooth bullshit, then delivering it with a condescending smirk.

It's all he does, and I for one don't think he's very good at it - but I seem to be in the minority. Everyone in Congress and the media seems to think he's some kind of oracle.

You can put icing on a pile of shit, but it doesn't make it chocolate cake.

Hi guys, DU is my homepage, read every day.

and thanks for the great saying. Might have to use it sometime :) :hi:

Use at will. My pleasure.

I'm originally from Pittsburgh-take care of the Santorum idiot for me, will you?

I am misplaced, also (fort worth, tx)

but so many of our fellow Amurikans are eating it. Welcome to DU, Felinity!

Don't know you from Adam but i LOVE you simply because of that very wise saying of yours. Regards, saskatoon

He has been letting * get away with murder for a long time now.

Welcome,to DU.

Where sanity returns and freedom rings in civil tones.:hi:

NT!

Well, they got to keep on keepin' on! Doin' what they do! Which is, uhh...

how US citizens value their privacy rights. And yes, he is not very good at it. I must research his professional background.

He worked for Bush in Texas. There. Your research is done! :)

learned of this!

You too, can be a terrorist just by being an American!

Sitting by the phone waiting for OBL to call, hoping to be spied on?

Stop your waiting! You're already under suspicion!

As I have said, we have met the terrorists, and they are us. Where, oh where is leadership? Oh - busy spying on American citizens (who are probably terrorists because they oppose Bush's policies), busy making deals with terrorist-sponsoring nations for our port security. Busy outing CIA agents for trying to find the truth about WMDs. Busy accusing Democrats of having partisan motives and "pre-9/11 mentality." Busy not imagining someone flying planes into buildings. Busy lying about legal reasons for lying about leaking classified information which they lied about not having leaked. They're just too effin' busy to "lead."

You know, if the Dems could see the value in going after lying criminals.

indeed.

Bush is our King and his word is law. Simple gig actually for the "consigliere" of the BushCo regime.

bush*t's right wing base would be rioting in the streets. Ever since the '00 election theft, anytime I discuss the questionable activities of bushco with a conservative, I always ask them to put Al Gore's name in place of bush. That usually get's one of two responses; 1. they stammer and sputter about how the Dems do bad things too, or 2. they get that blank, kool-aid induced stare in their eye and change the subject real quick.

But bush and his thugs have crossed the line now. Even the thickest repug has got to start remembering high school civics and the marvelous checks and balances that the constitution provided. I truly do not believe that anyone on the right (well, maybe some of the religious right) wants to be ruled by a dictator. But that's what's unfolding right before their eyes and they can't deny it any longer.

I used to be worried that we were going to have to put up with the neocon stranglehold on our government for many years, but with every new revelation about the corruption, crimes and stupidity of the bush regime, and the absolutely idiotic responses and justifications that they give for their acts, I now know that the American people will not put up with this any longer. It may get ugly, but we, at our core, know what is right; both on the left and on the right. And in the end, We The People will not be lead by criminals.

.

I read the entire NYT article. No where did I read where Attorney General Gonzales cited to relevant law granting authority that Gonzales claims is granted to the U.S. President as Commander-in-Chief. If Gonzales cited to some legal authority then the NYT didn't print it. Of course, I believe Gonzales never did cite to relevant law bc there is no relevant law as Gonzales claims. And, I say that as a lawyer.

I find it extraordinary that the U.S. Supreme Court has jumped into the fray a tad bit when it writes formal legal Notes denying certiorari but chastising this government u/GWBush nonetheless. Unreal.

This administration and all its lackeys will go down in history as one of the nation's most corrupt, both in ethics and in attempts to broaden the authority of the U.S. president beyond that authorized by our federal constitution. Will criminality enter as well due to their behavior?

I think history is already judging them as such.

.


Only one rational response to that: IMPEACH !!

The Bu$h gang's attitude about the law could be summed up with one Movie line. "Law we don't need no stinkin law! hey, plus they even have a real Mex. to deliver it. U can't say they don't have a sense of humour.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-1.html

Q Can you just give us one assurance before you go, General?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALEZ: It depends on what it is. (Laughter.)

Q Can you assure us that all of these intercepts had an international component and that at no time were any of the intercepts purely domestic?

GENERAL HAYDEN: The authorization given to NSA by the President requires that one end of these communications has to be outside the United States. I can assure you, by the physics of the intercept, by how we actually conduct our activities, that one end of these communications are always outside the United States of America.

Lying bastard.

I want you to do time after you are impeached. Maybe Mr. Gonzales could be your cellmate.

I am in awe of their audacity, even when they are in a weak position, they keep trying to grab more power.

A war without end, limitless executive power, when will the 36%approvals finally wise up?

A department spokeswoman, Tasia Scolinos, said, "The attorney general's comments today should not be interpreted to suggest the existence or nonexistence of a domestic program or whether any such program would be lawful under the existing legal analysis."

How scary is this?

What WOULD have been, then, the purpose of the attorney general's communication?

to keep YOU in the dark.

Also: Don't think what Gonzo says is confirmation that there IS a domestic spy program or ISN'T one. Also, don't think that Gonzo is saying such a program is lawful because it's not and even repukes are getting the heevy jeevies about it.

"...should not be interpreted to suggest the existence or nonexistence of a domestic program..."

So this program might or might not exist. If it did exist, it would be legal, but we can't really debate that because it might not exist, or if it did exist then we would be helping the terrorists by discussing the merits of it. Quite a rationale there.

It drives me insane that he's just barely keeping himself from laughing in our faces while he does this...

he wet himself and several memebers of Congress.

he makes me fucking sick.

All the legal weaseling in the world will
not make spying on Americans without
a warrant the RIGHT THING TO DO.

Republicans are either incredibly dumb
or blindingly ignorant of our Constitution.

What assh*les.

Big DUH!, right?

You know, people can tell themselves that the damage Bush has done can be corrected - but it can't.
You can't bring the dead back to life. You can't undo years of detention. You can't undo the scars of torture. You can't regrow arms and legs. You can't just wake up one morning and trust your government again.

My biggest fear though is America not learning from this...

I won't be one of those who breathe a sigh of relief once Bush is out of office. To me, unless the entire Bush Regime is tried for their crimes - all of their crimes - America will have shown it has no intention of learning anything. That America has no intention of fixing a very broken system. If we don't have integrity enough to punish Bush for his corruption and his abuse of power and his crimes, how can anyone think America has integrity enough to correct election fraud? Unless the Bush Regime goes to prison - we will get another regime like Bush's in the future. And I can't find any comfort in that. None. So no sigh of relief from me...I'll still be holding my breath - waiting - for the next outrage that will surely come.

That's the problem, we have the integrity, it's our elected officials who have failed the integrity
test.

:)


but I was allowing for the fact that "we" (Congress,included) are all Americans and this problem (Bush) belong to us all...unfortunately.

At least not all of them, until they stand up to this traitor and his minions.

The only Americans are those who hold the US Constitution paramount, those that put Bush and the
Republican party above the good of the country are no better then those who supported Hitler and
his ilk.

Is it too ridiculous to say that we are on the path to having an Adolph as our leader? Frankly I"m scared---that's the way it began in Germany, little by little and not anyone doing enough to stop it.

And we already saw that Americans don't learn SHIT after Iran-Contra.

Hence, Canada for me.

Just getting Bush out of office, through impeachment or running out his term, is not enough. This criminal gang must be held accountable for their actions, or the damage they have done will permanently erode the already tenuous integrity of our government.

unless they're held accountable - and then as a nation, we might have a chance.

And maybe others in the past have felt the exact same way about the times they lived in - and then I think of how the past is never really the past, especially when actions have far reaching consequences, so far reaching that future generations are still paying the price for the horrible mistakes, incredible bad judgments, and crimes against the people that passed for government policy

If Bush walks free, that is our legacy to future generations. A tyrant...a war criminal...a man of treason...we can't undo all the damage but the least we can do is hold him accountable....if we don't do that, history won't exactly be kind and forgiving to us either.

It's not just the shuck and jiving Gonzales, but all the criminal sleaze and hustlers pardoned by senior, that now form a protective and perpetual junta around junior.

So much corruption, and so much now that seems fundamentally lost, trashed and broken. Not a day goes by anymore that I don't think the very same things you've expressed throughout this thread. Impeachment is not enough to repair the damage.

They are drifting away from looking for al Qaeda terraists and now conducting searches for the true patriots that are trying to sound the alarm on the neocons. The main priority of the * White House has turned to self-preservation. Basically they are now using our tax dollars to try to stay out of prison.

"Mr. Attorney General, how can we discharge our oversight responsibilities if every time we ask a pointed question, we're told that the answer is classified?" Mr. Sensenbrenner asked. "Congress has an inherent constitutional responsibility to do oversight. We are attempting to discharge those responsibilities."

YEAH? LIKE 5 YRS AGO, ASSHOLE!

"Stonewalling" - no shit, dude. Where the fuck have you been? Any idiot would have gotten these guys' M.O. after the secret energy task force meetings!

Tough questions from Rethuglicans my behind! I saw this on CSPAN. The Repukes didn't ask questions, they 'embellished and clarified' Mr. Gonzales' remarks. Gonzales' answer to everything was "The Commander-in-Chief HAS DICTATORIAL POWERS DURING WARTIME!" (Or words to that effect!) It was horrible thing to behold!

Would he use previous similiar cases from '30's Berlin?
Would he claim the U.S. Constitution was partly written in invisible ink
so lots of stuff isn't real clear to the average citizen?
What a Maroon.

making sure that if he ever gets caught about "other" programs he can say he was only commenting on the program in question. But, as we are now learning, there are other programs we are not suppose to know about.

secret

Why doesn't anyone care that they're gutting the Bill of Rights? Where is the outrage?

Let's put him on the list as number 1

I mean, I've taken Constitutional law classes, and even I know his commentary is bogus!

I Gonzalez must have skipped class a lot the semester he was supposed to be taking Constitutional Law. Or, he was doing this :beer: instead of studying.

That's the thing that bugs me the most every time they start hearings and questions over spying. Quickly, they categorize it to be "TSP" as if that covers all spy programs (plural).

:(

The whores just parrot the outrageous lies as if all the Bush administration has to do is say something and saying it automatically makes it true. No analysis, no context, no opposing viewpoint, they're just stenographers.

Gonzales should be coming out with a way to justify the declassification of the NIE report and Valerie Plame's identity.

It was on a 3:00 a.m. Fox Radio news report today.

I've always said there's a correlation between how conservative you are and how ignorant you are on history.

I'd like to have heard that soundbite again just to confirm what I heard, but Fox hasn't given me the satisfaction.

during the confirmation hearings, but none of the panty-waist news commentators on the MSM wanted to talk about it. They preferred to talk about race and torture. When I called CSPAN and said as much, there was dead silence and they quickly switched to the next caller.

impeachment is the one thing that has the greatest legal basis.

The rest is chitter-chatter by the criminals within it, seeking a foothold as they ooze down a very slimy slope.

to say (esp. when discussing BFEE matters), "Are you listening, NSA?" It's my little shout-out :) to the G14 grunts who probably are having to do the grunt work of the actual domestic monitoring.

A friend of mine always makes sure he says "Insh'allah" (or something like that) every time he talks on the phone, the idea being to so flood their in-boxes with background noise as to render their work meaningless.

He's just a failed attorney who made friends with a political crime family. It would really be interesting to see him in a trial------------as a defendant. He has violated the public trust and played a key role in damaging this nation's image and reputation. For approving war crimes and torture he could find himself in a cell at The Hague awaiting trial.
The words he'd hear most often at Leavenworth would be, "Isn't this the guy who violated your civil rights," and "You sure got a purty mouth."

This is preemptive on their part, so that when we finally discover that they're spying on average Americans, they can point back to this claim as 'precedent' for it.

Who can stop these evil men???

He is an enemy of freedom and the America we all know and miss.
His aggressive actions in destroying our freedom is essentially an act of terrorism.

PETA, NRDC, Greenpeace. Oh yea. Right.

In other words, he needs more time to spin an excuse for der Fuhrer.

In the sixties, this was an issue as well. Ironically, Bobby Kennedy authorized the FBI to wire-tap MLK after he was shown evidence that MLK was meeting with known communists, blah blah blah. Hoover used this against Bobby for the rest of his life. Nixon was criticized as well for his tapping the phones of journalists and his own employees. And now AG the AG and Bush-boy claim that those controversies were over nothing? That the executive branch has had the power to tap willy-nilly since FDR? BS!

To read about the incompetence/criminality of the last president from Texas:

http://homepage.mac.com/bkohley/Menu18.html

I know it's history, but the funny thing about history is it never goes away...

Hello, everyone. I'm new here to DU, but I've been on a few other political forums as well. I hope to talk to some fellow Bush-haters here.

As for the topic: This is just plain scary to a hardcore civil libertarian like myself. Since when has the Constitution become something to be got around rather than the supreme law of the land, which even the president must obey? It was designed to protect citizens from government abuse of power, and now it is itself under attack. And this administration -- excuse me, I meant, regime -- just wants us to trust them? To that I resond simply, "Why?"

may know in real life who make similar demands of you to "just trust them", are, as a rule, the least deserving of that trust, and prove it time and again.

"authorities across the continent are getting more powers to electronically eavesdrop, and meeting less apparent opposition than President Bush did over his post-9/11 wiretapping program"

and, "the European Parliament in December approved legislation requiring telecommunications companies to retain phone date and Internet logs for a minimum of six months in case they are needed for criminal investigations."

and, "the complaints are relatively muted compared to the criticism that has arisen in the U.S."


well, Italy is referenced a lot (Berlusconi?)

across the continent ... more powers ... less opposition ...

what exactly is the purpose of this article?
comparing notes?
what's the Associated Press selling, if anything???
who is the Associated Press helping, if anyone???


guess something similar could have been said about Mussolini and Hitler in their heyday

something should be said of why the Founders wrote a Declaration of Independence and a Bill of Rights


Wiretapping on the Increase in Europe
`````````````````````````````````````

By VICTOR L. SIMPSON (Associated Press Writer)

From Associated Press

April 08, 2006 11:43 AM EDT

ROME - In Europe, Big Brother is listening - and being allowed to hear more and more.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the terrorist bombings that followed in Madrid and London, authorities across the continent are getting more powers to electronically eavesdrop, and meeting less apparent opposition than President Bush did over his post-9/11 wiretapping program.

As part of a package of European Union anti-terrorism measures, the European Parliament in December approved legislation requiring telecommunications companies to retain phone date and Internet logs for a minimum of six months in case they are needed for criminal investigations.

In Italy, which experts agree is the most wiretapped Western democracy, a report to parliament in January by Justice Minister Roberto Castelli said the number of authorized wiretaps more than tripled from 32,000 in 2001 to 106,000 last year.

~snip~

Still, the complaints are relatively muted compared to the criticism that has arisen in the U.S. Congress and among civil liberties groups over the Bush administration's surveillance operations. After the Sept. 11 attacks Bush granted intelligence officers the power to monitor, without court approval, international calls and e-mails between people in the United States and suspected terrorists overseas.

~snip~

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EUROPE_WIRETAPPING?SITE=OHWIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

How about a little straight talk, nytimes? How about "Invents"? Or "Pulls Out Of His Ass"? I don't think he meant to "Suggest" anything. I think he's running it up the flagpole of Neoconservative Certainty.

of hatred for Americans and disrespect for our US Constitution.

Need I say more?

Find legality in anything that his neo-fascist bosses do. Justice has nothing to do with it. He would be great at the so-called "supreme" court.

Whatever you say Gonzales.