Post by Not PCPost by Adam AlbrightA. Good question. Why indeed. Because what he authorized is illegal,
immoral, violates the forth Admendment of the Constitution and
places himself and other high official at risk of impeachment.
working so "well", you don't want any proof do you?
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Here "is" the 4th or Fourth amendment. The key word here is
"unreasonable" Now tell us how Bush has abused the 4th
amendment. And also please quote me the Article, section
or Amendment in the constitution where it says that everyone
has an absolute right to privacy,, it doesnt exist.
Bush has been upheld by the courts stating he has the right to do what
he has done. here is what the court said
The three judges made up what is known as the FISA Court of Review. It
was created in 1978 by the now-famous Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. The act required that the president go to the so-called FISA Court
to seek a warrant for surveillance in top-secret foreign-intelligence
cases. For any disputed decisions that might arise, Congress also
created the Court of Review, a sort of super-secret appeals court.
But in all the years between 1978 and 2002, there had never been
occasion for the Court of Review to actually meet. Not until Sealed
Case, and the three-way collision between the executive, legislative,
and judicial branches that it involved. Today, a look at the
circumstances of the case provides not only an insight into the
administration's rationale for the secret, warrantless surveillance
program but also important clues to the mystery of how the whole thing
got started in the first place.
The conflict began with the passage of the Patriot Act in October 2001.
The act tore down the "wall" that had arisen in the Justice Department
that blocked intelligence officials and criminal investigators from
working together and sharing information. That wall had been cemented by
a set of internal department guidelines written in 1995, in which
then–attorney general Janet Reno outlined the department's constricted
surveillance procedures.
The Patriot Act was designed to fix that problem. But a month after the
act was passed, when the Justice Department submitted surveillance
requests to the FISA Court under the new, looser standards passed by
Congress, the FISA Court in effect rejected the Patriot Act, and instead
reaffirmed the old 1995 Clinton-era standard.
A standoff ensued. In early 2002, the Justice Department adopted new
surveillance procedures based on the Patriot Act. In March 2002, the
department informed the FISA Court that it would use those new standards
in surveillance applications. In May, the FISA Court said, in effect,
not so fast, and ordered modifications in the procedures. Among other
things, the FISA Court ordered that "law enforcement officials shall not
make recommendations to intelligence officials concerning the
initiation, operation, continuation or expansion of FISA searches or
surveillances" — a reasonable facsimile of the old wall. The FISA Court
also ordered that the Justice Department include certain staffers in all
surveillance debates, an order that quickly became known in the Justice
Department as the "chaperone requirement."
The Justice Department resisted, and in July 2002 filed a surveillance
application — the details are still a secret — using its new procedures,
without the FISA Court's mandated changes. The Court approved the
application but insisted that the modifications be made according to the
court's dictates. And then, in August, the FISA Court took the
extraordinary step of making its decision public, accusing the Justice
Department of habitually misrepresenting evidence and misleading the
court. That's when the department decided to take the matter to the
Court of Review, leading to the September 2002 session in that secure
room in department headquarters.
"We're here today," Theodore Olson said as the secret In re: Sealed Case
court argument began, "because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court's May 17th order . . . has perpetuated a serious and increasingly
destructive barrier which has hamstrung the president and his
subordinates" in their work to protect "the United States and its
citizens from attack and from international terrorism." The FISA Court's
ruling, Olson continued, was "inexplicable."
Olson and the judges went back and forth over the history of the wall.
Nobody really knew how it first came into being; the judges later said
its origin was "shrouded in historical mist." They went over what
Congress intended when it passed the Patriot Act. And they went over the
question of whether the FISA Court had the power to tell the president
how to conduct investigations.
The answer was no, Olson said. "To the extent that the FISA Court is
purporting to reorganize the executive branch, the so-called chaperone
function, I don't think Congress could constitutionally tell the
executive or the attorney general that he could not talk to this
subordinate without involving that subordinate," Olson told the judges,
"and I certainly don't think the court can do so."
The entire session lasted just a few hours, and the Justice Department
waited for the Court of Review's ruling. When it came, in November 2002,
it was a slam-dunk win for the government.
In its opinion, the Court of Review said the FISA Court had, in effect,
attempted to unilaterally impose the old 1995 rules. "In doing so, the
FISA Court erred," the ruling read. "It did not provide any
constitutional basis for its action — we think there is none — and
misconstrued the main statutory provision on which it relied." The FISA
Court, according to the ruling, "refus[ed] to consider the legal
significance of the Patriot Act's crucial amendments" and "may well have
exceeded the constitutional bounds" governing the courts by asserting
"authority to govern the internal organization and investigative
procedures of the Department of Justice."
And then the Court of Review did one more thing, something that has
repercussions in today's surveillance controversy. Not only could the
FISA Court not tell the president how do to his work, the Court of
Review said, but the president also had the "inherent authority" under
the Constitution to conduct needed surveillance without obtaining any
warrant — from the FISA Court or anyone else. Referring to an earlier
case, known as Truong, which dealt with surveillance before FISA was
passed, the Court of Review wrote: "The Truong court, as did all the
other courts to have decided the issue, held that the President did have
inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign
intelligence information. . . . We take for granted that the President
does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not
encroach on the President's constitutional power."
It was a clear and sweeping statement of executive authority. And what
was most likely not known to the Court of Review at the time was that
the administration had, in 2002, started a program in which it did
exactly what the Court of Review said it had the power to do: order the
surveillance of some international communications without a warrant.
Read today, In re: Sealed Case does more than simply outline the
president's authority. It also puts the administration's
warrantless-surveillance decision in some context. What was going on at
the time the president made the decision to go ahead with the
surveillance? Well, first Congress passed the Patriot Act, giving the
administration new powers. Then the FISA Court refused to recognize
those powers and attempted to impose outdated restrictions on the
administration. Then the White House, faced with the FISA Court's
opposition — and with what administration officials believed were some
inherent weaknesses in the FISA law — began to bypass the FISA Court in
some cases. And then, in In re: Sealed Case, the administration received
irrefutable legal support for its actions.
After the decision was handed down, the American Civil Liberties Union,
which had submitted a brief in support of the FISA Court's actions
restricting the administration, asked the Supreme Court to review In re:
Sealed Case. The justices declined to take any action. That is not the
same as the Court's upholding the ruling, but it does mean that the
justices looked at the decision and chose not to intervene.
Today, the opinion stands as a bedrock statement of presidential power.
And ironically, it came from a case that was not about whether the
president had overstepped his bounds, but about whether the courts had
overstepped their bounds. The Court of Review ruled strongly in favor of
the president, and the Supreme Court declined to reconsider that
decision. Reading the opinion, it's no wonder that George W. Bush has so
strongly defended the surveillance program. If the FISA Court of Review
is right, he has the Constitution on his side.
steve