If tapping someones phone prevents me and my family safe from the scum of the earth, thank you for having BALLS Mr. President. Too bad Bill didn't have them same balls. All those lives that would have been saved ie. WTC victims, soldiers and Iraqi's. That's what happens when your President is too busy chasing tail to be a real President.

Mike, if you don't agree with Bush, just say so. It's OK... Why bag on Clinton, yet again? Everytime you can't find a way to defend King George you resort to dragging the ghost of Clinton out of it's grave. It's pointless.

What makes you think I would approve of Clinton doing the same thing? If he did, then both he and Bush were both in the wrong. Either way, it's inexcusable behavior, unbefitting a President. Bush is thumbing his nose in the face of America, like a spoiled kid who is going to do whatever he wants. Must he destroy the nation's value's in an effort to protect them? It's like he's burning the village to save it. The village needs to impeach its' idiot.

Tapping my phone will not protect the nation from anything, except maybe insomnia. Far more non-terrorists have been arrested, tried and convicted because of the Patriot Act than have terrorists. Approximately 90%, 90%, of the convictions are for minor drug charges, resisting arrest, fraud, etc. The average time served was under one year, which means these people are not being accused of serious crimes. And the reamaing 10%? It's the same number of people who were being arrested before 9/11.

i agree with President bush;
as i read it the overseas communications of American s to questionable individuals was what was being listened in on , not the everyday BS e mails and phone calls and forum activity of regular people . i remember that the bad guys were encrypting communications into photos before they were caught doing it , who do you think caught them ? should Americans blissfully allow the bad guys to plan our deaths over our networks of technology ? or should we intercept their communications and use the info to destroy the enemy [ nod your head yes here ] .
carnivore is dead , long live talon . who knows what the NSA is using but whatever it is , i wish them good hunting .

                  so the courts have already decided that what the president is doing is legal , so why not let him do his job ?     see below from todays chicago tribune  for further clarification .  the link is at the bottom of the page .

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President had legal authority to OK taps

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By John Schmidt

December 21, 2005

President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.

In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.

Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.

In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the ... courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority."

The passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 did not alter the constitutional situation. That law created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that can authorize surveillance directed at an "agent of a foreign power," which includes a foreign terrorist group. Thus, Congress put its weight behind the constitutionality of such surveillance in compliance with the law's procedures.

But as the 2002 Court of Review noted, if the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches, "FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."

Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that "the Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."

FISA contains a provision making it illegal to "engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." The term "electronic surveillance" is defined to exclude interception outside the U.S., as done by the NSA, unless there is interception of a communication "sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person" (a U.S. citizen or permanent resident) and the communication is intercepted by "intentionally targeting that United States person." The cryptic descriptions of the NSA program leave unclear whether it involves targeting of identified U.S. citizens. If the surveillance is based upon other kinds of evidence, it would fall outside what a FISA court could authorize and also outside the act's prohibition on electronic surveillance.

The administration has offered the further defense that FISA's reference to surveillance "authorized by statute" is satisfied by congressional passage of the post-Sept. 11 resolution giving the president authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent those responsible for Sept. 11 from carrying out further attacks. The administration argues that obtaining intelligence is a necessary and expected component of any military or other use of force to prevent enemy action.

But even if the NSA activity is "electronic surveillance" and the Sept. 11 resolution is not "statutory authorization" within the meaning of FISA, the act still cannot, in the words of the 2002 Court of Review decision, "encroach upon the president's constitutional power."

FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation. What was needed after Sept. 11, according to the president, was surveillance beyond what could be authorized under that kind of individualized case-by-case judgment. It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court second-guessing that presidential judgment.

Should we be afraid of this inherent presidential power? Of course. If surveillance is used only for the purpose of preventing another Sept. 11 type of attack or a similar threat, the harm of interfering with the privacy of people in this country is minimal and the benefit is immense. The danger is that surveillance will not be used solely for that narrow and extraordinary purpose.

But we cannot eliminate the need for extraordinary action in the kind of unforeseen circumstances presented by Sept.11. I do not believe the Constitution allows Congress to take away from the president the inherent authority to act in response to a foreign attack. That inherent power is reason to be careful about who we elect as president, but it is authority we have needed in the past and, in the light of history, could well need again.

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John Schmidt served under President Clinton from 1994 to 1997 as the associate attorney general of the United States. He is now a partner in the Chicago-based law firm of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0512210142dec21,1,2062394.story?coll=chi-technology-hed

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-- Edited by mike of the mountain at 12:55, 2005-12-21

Jim Hufnagel wrote:

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Mr. Mike, Even assuming the author of this article is correct about the legality of Bush's warrantless eavesdropping on American private citizens, it's interesting that ;                the courts have decided it was legal for all of the POTUSs since 1972 , and have re affirmed as recently as 2004 that it is legal and constitutional .   these are facts .

a) FISA provides for a 72-hour grace period. In other words, you can wiretap me for 72 hours before applying to FISA for a warrant retroactively. This wasn't flexible enough?     i guess not , but remember this applies to communications between somewhere inside of America and somewhere outside . only , very important to remember this .

 b) The New York Times is yet holding back large chunks of this story for their own reasons, presumably because Bush asked them to for reasons of "national security".   yes , they broke the law , real law , not someones  opinion of law , they are subject to prosecution because of it.

 c) it's common knowledge terrorists use internet VoIP for their international calls. The NSA does not know how to monitor these yet. if you say so ,   i did not know that .

 d) You said: "as i read it the overseas communications of American s to questionable individuals was what was being listened in on , not the everyday BS e mails and phone calls and forum activity of regular people" "questionable" is your word, Mike. Where in the courts and decisions and opinions and Bush paranoid delusions is the word "questionable" defined? right , questionable was my word , and i could have picked a better word - read the article again for a clearer understanding of the targets of the "spying" activity

e) FISA clearly states that it is the final word on wiretapping in this country. It states that it is the exclusive authority on the practice notwithstanding all previous law and activities by this and that president with a propensity to bug average citizens. If Bush wasn't happy with FISA, and he is so damn right, why couldn't he go to Congress and ask the law be changed as part of the Patriot Act?          it was not needed , he already had the permission of the constitution and the federal courts , as clearly stated in the article         Because he thought the answer might be no, and like any child of similar mentality, he went ahead and did it rather than risk being denied permission. Please don't tell me, "Oh, Congress would have leaked it", as if the terrorists discuss their plots over the phone lines. Be serious. I think that bills of impeachment will be submitted on this,  there is  not the remotest chance of that , no laws were broken or even stretched .    but the partisan congress will keep him in office. Never mind. Between Valerie Plame, Tom DeLay, Katrina, Abramoff, Iraq and the fact that now we know the Pentagon has also been spying on domestics, this will go down in history with the administrations of Grant, Harding and Nixon. -- Edited by Jim Hufnagel at 14:19, 2005-12-21

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-- Edited by mike of the mountain at 23:56, 2005-12-21

Mindcrime wrote:

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If the President already had the legal capacity to do all this, why bother with the Patriot Act? Why not abolish it if he's going to do whatever he wants anyway?

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this is not covered by the patriot act - the stuff in the patriot act is different and seperate from this .

the POTUS is bound by law , despite what the demon-crats are shrieking ,  he is operating under the law .     

Mindcrime wrote:

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Look, by bypassing the judical and legislative bodies (aka checks and balances), Bush is whittling away at our freedoms. Period. The justification doesn't matter.

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  there is no bypassing here ;  the demoncrats are making a mighty tempast in a tiny teacup .....  culled from http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004090.htm      

Those who actually read the piece will note that the paper must grudgingly acknowledge that it is talking about the NSA's monitoring of international communications (e-mails, cellphone calls, etc.) only; the agency still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

And not until the 16th paragraph, some 1,110 words into the massive piece, does the paper tell you the important context in which the program was created and used:

What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, the officials said.

In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.

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At the National Review's raucous conservative caucus The Corner, however, Mark Levin suggests the public outcry is much ado about nothing. "What is clear is that this is not some Watergate-type rogue operation, as seemingly hoped by some," he writes. "In addition to repeated congressional notification, the program has been heavily lawyered by multiple agencies, including the Department of Justice and NSA and White House, and is regularly reviewed. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condi Rice have both insisted that program is legal. The fact that some might disagree with whatever legal advice and conclusions the president has received does not make them right or the program illegal."

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 The ends do not always justify the means. If it did we would have nuked the country long ago.    /????? there is nothing in all this  to support such an idea or proposal  ????/       Yeah, we'd kill a lot of innocent people, and irradiate the entire region, but we can't let the terrorists win, right?

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Jim Hufnagel wrote:

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Despite all the twisted contortions and rationalizations by the right-wing columnists and the Bush administration, the bottom line is that FISA is the exclusive and final authority in the area of wire-tapping, it was created by Congress and signed by the President,

please be so kind as to support that opinion with some documentation ......  everything i have found says FISA has control of internal / domestic communications , nothing more. 

 i can understand why some people might not want their conversations monitored , but i guess i dont care , i dont have anything to hide and most of my communications are not going to interest anyone .  

 and provides for retroactively securing warrants to monitor phone lines. There is no reason Bush had to bypass FISA other than the fact that they were eavesdropping on average citizens for whom a FISA warrant would not have been forthcoming due to lack of probable cause. For example, I have been publicly vocal about security vulnerabilities at the Power Project, and I make occasional phone calls to Canada. When I find out that I've been listened in on...

what would you do ? what can any one person do ?  if you make a big noise then "they" really really might get interested in your communications and activities and ......     watch out.

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