Good luck with that.

Hey – vitriol and venom can at least be on subject. And your comment answers none of my quesions. For just one part – you have no knowledge that allows you to claim that it spied only on “foreign agents.” That is not close to being established, It is you, again, simply taking the president’s word, something I will never understand about the RW blogosphere. And it is a dodge anyway. You say “foreign agents” when the question revolves around “foreign soil,” or more importantly, domestic soil and Americans, who have the right to a warrant.

I read the post. I replaced “Tamm” with “Mann.” It was an error. (My six years of middle and high school German coming back to haunt me maybe.) Can we stick to the subject?

Oh come on, my mistake of using Mann is also in the post. The commenter said:

Before you go hanging anybody, make sure you’ve got the right fella.

Which means he was pointing to me seeing as how I said he should hang. In fact I left that typo in the post just for you but you still don’t get it.

And now we are to stay on subject? With your vitriol and venom spewing comments we should now stay on topic. Ok.

By what authority do you deem the wiretaps “perfectly legal”?

Read the comment that I left above yours at 8:34am and then get back to me. It answers all of your questions.

I read the post. I replaced “Tamm” with “Mann.” It was an error. (My six years of middle and high school German coming back to haunt me maybe.) Can we stick to the subject?

By what authority do you deem the wiretaps “perfectly legal”? I at least have a federal ruling, which called them unconstitutional, on my side. That case was dismissed, yes, but not on its merits, but on the grounds that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove they had been injured (gosh, I wonder why?).

One of the best gems in all this was former NSA director Michael Hayden saying, on national TV, in defense of the program, that the 4th Amendment carries no “probable cause” clause. Hayden was, of course, one of the directors of the program – and he didn’t know we have a “probable cause” clause in our constitution?!? And you defend this still?

Ad why did they lie about “congressional support” of the wiretaps?

And you probably know that a FISC court judge resigned in protest of the program.

Y’now, when it’s all said and done, maybe the leaker should go to jail. He or she probably knew that he risked that. But extenuating circumstances should have big play in the sentence given, and in how Americans regard him.

He did NOT violate the constitution by bypassing FISA seeing how the program spied on foreign agents, which is well within his power. Five former FISA judges agree:

A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president’s constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.

“If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now,” said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. “I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute.”

Is it your position that Clinton violated the Constitution with Carnivore? Was Carter violating the Constitution when he ordered wiretaps without a court order?

1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section.

Or Clinton’s us of his powers here?:

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.

Finally John Hinderaker put up a great analysis of the program:

Article II makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces. As such he is preeminent in foreign policy, and especially in military affairs. This was no accident; as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74, “Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand.” The federal courts have long recognized that when it comes to waging war, the President, not Congress or the courts, is the supreme authority. In Fleming v. Page, 9 How. 603, 615 (1850), the Supreme Court wrote that the President has the Constitutional power to “employ [the Nation's armed forces] in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy.”

No one questions this basic principle. If our soldiers or intelligence agencies discover a terrorist in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere, the President or his designees can order an air strike or other attack to kill him. It would be very odd if the President has the authority to kill a terrorist, but not to intercept his telephone calls or search his cave.

There is one relevant constitutional provision that acts as a restraint on the President’s inherent power as Commander in Chief. That is the Fourth Amendment, which states:

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.

So all searches and seizures of Americans or their property (including, as the courts have appropriately ruled, interceptions of telephonic and electronic communications) must be reasonable. Note, however, that this requirement does not apply to terrorists overseas. A Special Forces soldier can pick a cave arbitrarily and search it. He isn’t trying to prosecute terrorists, he is trying to kill them. He doesn’t need probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

[...]The federal appellate courts have unanimously held that the President has the inherent constitutional authority to order warrantless searches for purposes of gathering foreign intelligence information, which includes information about terrorist threats. Furthermore, since this power is derived from Article II of the Constitution, the FISA Review Court has specifically recognized that it cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional action.

That being the case, the NSA intercept program, which consists of warrantless electronic intercepts for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering, is legal.

Bush has not backed off his claim of that Constitutional power, that my friend is called ignorance. He, unlike the Democrats and you lefties, believe the best course of action is to come to an agreement with the Democrats. But to think he backed off that claim is just pure stupidity.

Currently, The Bush administration is asking Congress to give the telecoms retroactive immunity from criminal and civil liability. If they weren’t guilty of breaking the law, they wouldn’t need immunity.

I won’t sit here and call you ignorant nor claim that by reading some other website such as FOX NEWS or Drudge has comprimised your command of the facts, your judgments thereon, or the materials used to make your hat, Curt.

Presidents can break the law at will in wartime

Which law would that be?

Libby didn’t leak classified information, Cheney had Bush insta-declassify Plame’s identity first. Funny they never owned up to that implying rather it was the NIE that Bush insta-declassified. That was good cover. It worked.

Boehner went on FOX and blabbed about a classified FISA court decision for partisan gain; to blame the democrats -the white house has yet to claim they declassified the info. Shoudn’t Boehner get a trial?

This attorney whose home was searched, if he leaked information revealing illegal government conduct it’s a whole new ballgame. The problem with Bush theory that Presidents can break the law at will in wartime is that it’s not true.

I wrote “Mann,” not you.

Obviously you didn’t read the post then. Not surprising.

Your saying that if he is the one who leaked he should be punished is revealing.

And its quite revealing that your kind would award medals to people who reveal perfectly legal wiretaps that enable us to listen in on those who want to bring destruction to this country.

Quite revealing, but I doubt anyone would be shocked.

Go back to KOS little sheepie.

Your saying that if he is the one who leaked he should be punished is revealing. Any freedom-loving American thinker should be saying, at the very least, if what he leaked was illegal, he should be rewarded for his act.

Why is there so much following on the RW blogosphere?