FISA, reductio ad absurdum
So, apparently despite the flatulent braying of incompetent buffoons trying to pass as experts, President Bush was conforming to the law and past practice in authorizing surveillance on foreign agents. Once again, progressives have damaged a national security program to try and convince the sane world to share their BDS. Once again the treasonous whores at the Gray Slut have diverted attention from success in Iraq to their latest transparent attempt to recycle old news to “get Bush”.
I didn’t much like it when this pompous jackass Glenn Greenwald called my co-blogger Al Maviva dishonest, simply for posting an off-the-cuff analysis of potential WH and DOJ legal justifications for foreign survellience. I liked it even less when the lying sack of … fertilizer contended Al had deliberately misquoted FISA, when in fact it was the not-too-bright Greenwald who was misquoting Al. Most of the time, I let this kind of progressive revisionism go – correcting liberal lies is a full-time job I’m just not interested in. But not this time, punk. This time, I want an apology. Since I know you candy-assed progressives don’t have enough personal integrity to admit you’re wrong, let alone apologize for being a putz, I’ll just have to settle for insulting you right back.
Now, you might think that once these self-righteous progressive lawyers with over-inflated egos are shown to be mere partisan hacks, they would display enough personal integrity to be ashamed of making obvious lies and distortions. Especially since it turns out Al was exactly right, while Glenn was exactly wrong, on the very point Glenn misquoted lied about. Silly conservative; you must remember their progressive agenda forgives all such transgressions – as long as they’re the ones transgressing, of course. After all, you have to break a few eggs to hatch a Known Fact™ .
Al may be too gentlemanly (or show too much professional courtesy) to call Greenwald a phony and a hack, an incompetent boob who can’t understand simple statutes, a liar who can’t see past his ideological blindfold, or a liberal dimwit who thinks any disagreement with the World According To Greenwald must be a lie; but that doesn’t mean I can’t. A little advice to anyone unfortunate enough to have retained this clown in a three-piece suit: you might want to think about alternate, competent representation. Greenwald can resort to all the ever more desperate and technically obtuse refinements of his “Bush Lied!” meme as he likes; meanwhile, his erstwhile supporters are quietly backing away, reduced to hoping this kerfuffle will become another accepted truth, one of the Known Facts™ in the “reality based community”. But I’ll be watching you now, Glenn. I’ll be happy to point out all the lame-ass and half-baked legal “opinions” you post from now on, even though (thank God) I am not a lawyer. But then, you’re not much of one, either.
Welcome to the other 97% of the blogging world, bitch.
Update! Jeff destroys the rest of Greenwald’s feeble arguments here. Goalposts will commence shifting in 5…4…3
- Entries
Bush lied people died! Where are the DubyaEmmDeez?!?
Wow - that's quite a counter-argument there! Oh wait, it's not an argument at all, it's a meaningless putdown. My bad.
Boy, it sure makes me want to keep reading, though. Oh wait, no it doesn't.
If you don't have anything to say, just don't write anything that day.
(1) Al's point was that the Administration's warrantless surveillance of Americans was authorized by and within the scope of FISA.
(2) The Administration itself acknowledges that this is not the case. It has acknowledged it all week by arguing why it had to eavesdrop outside of FISA, and the DoJ Memorandum yesterday - which you presumably looked at, if not read, because you linked it - did not say that the surveillance was within FISA. They said that the Administration could eavesdrop outside of the scope of FISA because Congress authorized it to do so with a different, subsequent law (the AUMF).
Thus, the DoJ Memorandum says precisely the opposite of what you seem to think it says. It also says precisely the opposite of the point which Al made.
(3) Even if the DoJ Memorandum did say that Al was right - and it plainly does not; it says that Al was wrong - isn't it too absurd, even for this blog, to assert that this constitutes some sort of proof that Al is right? The DoJ is run by the AG, who is Bush's long-time lawyer and political appointee. The fact that THEY say Bush complied with the law is hardly "proof" that he did.
Strange to comment to you here, but thanks for your detailed and insightful commentary. I learned quite a bit in your discussion of "Youngstown."
I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about this Joe fella. He is not engaging you on substance, he just wants to shout over you.
Just for you, Glenn - faster, and as many times as you need for it to sink in:
1) No, Al's point was "It seems the President probably does have the power to order NSA to monitor suspects, without a warrant, in terrorism cases, where the communications are between controller/co-conspirator, and target, and the terrorist group is tied to foreign countries or particular factions in foreign countries. It’s tied to particular circumstances though, so it’s worth knowing more about the details if you wish to comment intelligibly on the issue." You still can't comprehend basic English.
2) "They said that the Administration could eavesdrop outside of the scope of FISA because Congress authorized it to do so with a different, subsequent law (the AUMF). Thus, the DoJ Memorandum says precisely the opposite of what you seem to think it says. It also says precisely the opposite of the point which Al made." I made no such argument, and neither did Al. My belief is that the President has Constitutional authority to surveil foreign agents, and needs no Congressional or judicial oversight to do so, so that FISA only applies if a US citizen is somehow involved. See the memorandum: "But under established principles of statutory construction, the AUMF and FISA must be constued in harmony to avoid any potential conflict between FISA and the President’s Article I1 authority as Commander in Chief."
3) You might have a point here, except that it isn't just the DOJ saying Al was right; it's pretty much everyone but you and your progressive buddies. As Goldstein told you, just because you wish the law were different doesn't make it so. The fact that YOU say Bush didn't comply with the law is hardly proof that he didn't.
It's interesting that Al's "staggeringly dishonest" post has only made your little hissy fit look like the dishonest one, isn't it, Glenn? Don't you just hate when that happens?
I can't thank you enough for your tireless defense of me from the ad hominems, and for reiterating, over and over again, the point I made as an essential presumption of my initial post on FISA, which Glenn necessarily dismisses in order to call me a liar. I see his further proof that I am wrong, is that DOJ didn't make the same argument that I made. Oh well. I suppose the FISA court, should it choose to issue a highly unusual advisory opinion on this program, might use different arguments too, along with different punctuation, perhaps some verbs I omitted and some adjectives I didn't even consider - further making me a liar in Glenn's eyes. So I appreciate the bene dicta.
I would ask, however, that you refrain from the ad hominems directed at Greenwald and his acolytes and fans around the web. Let them indulge in it. As conservatives (and speaking for the honest liberals who frequent this site and engage in civilized debate) we claim to be boosters of civil discourse, and travelers on a higher road. Don't forget, one of the first things the hard left ditched in the 60's, was good manners and basic decency. This was dictated by their neo-marxist north star, Herbert Marcuse, who insisted that revolution - or he would call it resistance, probably - needed to take place on all levels, and destroying the possibility of good manners and civilized argument was just one more way of chucking bombs at the social order. A jibe is one thing, but Joe, buddy, that was endzone dancing. I was waiting for you to pull out the Sharpie and sign the entry... Yeah, I know it's tempting. I used to do it a lot, I try hard not to do it any more because I think it's inconsistent with the larger points I'm trying to make.
If we call them names, then the SDS will have won...
测温仪
防水涂料
That's easy for you to say...
Greenwald, et al...
What part of "when acting as an agent of a foriegn power you shall be treated as such" is so hard to understand here? What if (for the sake of arguement) the Russians were to get a wild hair up their backside & invade Alaska. Would we have to Miranda-ize any of their soldiers we happened to capture & file a warrant to listen in on their radio chatter? This isn't the Mafia or the Yakuza we're dealing with here, even if there's some organizational similarities. These are illegal combatants posing as civilians to better carry out attacks against this country for the purpose of deliberately inflicting civilian casualties and generally targeting sites protected from attack by the Geneva Conventions. The only thing they're entitled to upon capture (under the various Geneva Conventions & Laws of Land Warfare) is a bullet in the back of the head.
Most of the time, I let this kind of progressive revisionism go – correcting liberal lies is a full-time job I’m just not interested in. But not this time, punk. This time, I want an apology.
You never let me have any fun!
But yeah, you're right - I just had to get it out of my system. I'll throw the little fish back in his pond - he wasn't all that interesting, anyway.
I remember you now, Glenn; you said I was a "GOP shill" for claiming that CBS slants their polls--and that I owe them an apology. Yeah; that's gonna happen. CBS has been lying to me my whole life--but I'll give them consistancy.
I'm a Reluctant Republican. Only because there is no true Constitutionalist party. And because my former party has located itself on the part of the map that says "Dragons Live Here!" The Democrat party I once knew believed in defending this country, imperfections notwithstanding. In 'content of character, not color of skin'. In Israel's right to exist. It stood for the working man. Now it wants to tax that working man into poverty and take his daughter for an abortion without telling him. The party I knew is dead--and what's left of it can't die soon enough.
You've claimed that we're all mind-numbed Rove-bots; hardly. I think Bush is okay--for a liberal. And a politician. But he's shown us some guts, whereas most Democrats have shown only their asses. And I'm in no mood to entertain "Cult-of-Personality" arguments from those who think nothing of Bill Clinton selling pardons and Hillary trading them for votes in New York, to name but one crime. An actual crime, not an "OMG!-John-Ashcroft-caught-me-lingering-in-the-bathroom-poring-over-a-Gore-Vidal-novel!"-imaginary crime.
As for your analogy to Truman's desire to quash striking steel-workers and Bush's desire to counter-spy on terrorist cells, well, you'd better run that past Mr. Trumka first. At least Harry wanted to win the war. That puts him miles ahead of today's Democrats.
I further am convinced -- as an attorney who has engaged in the lawyerly yacking about the NSA warrantless surveillance issue at several legal sites -- that Bush has likely been operating illegally. There are colorable arguments that he has not, and I discuss those at Greenwald's site. He sees no colorable arguments; I disagree -- they exist but are weak and not persuasive.
Glenn is a tad too young to understand that CBS has long been biased to the left, and it is beyond reasonable debate that this is so. He is wrong about them. But he is NOT a left-winger, and calling him a "progressive lawyer" is simply hilarious.
Have you read his posts about European anti-Americanism or gun control? Or his dissing of Communists turning out in anti-Bush demonstrations? Not all of us neatly fit into the sharp dichotomies and polarities of left v. right. I don't. Neither does he.
As a general rule, it is more useful to engage the substance of people's arguments rather than resort to demonizing them with political epithets. I know, y'all are pissed that Glenn called Al a liar. Well, it did strike me as strange that Al omitted the FISA provision that undercut his whole argument. But Glenn should have ered on the side of charity and simply declared Al to be wildly mistaken. Which he was.
I have no trouble at all engaging in honest and good-humored debate; that doesn't mean I can't or won't return an ad hominem attack with equal invective, should I become sufficiently irked. Perhaps you could teach your friend Glenn that difference?
Glenn Greenwald has not said he is a Democrat or denied being a Republican. It is possible he is neither (which is true of me). He is certainly not left-wing, and few people would be more capable of slicing and dicing SDS revanchists than he.
I disagree with much of his criticism of Bush's foreign policy, and it is understandable that most would read it as of-a-piece with lefties afflicted with BDS, but he does not come at it from that POV. If y'all would peruse his posts that don't address Bush or foreign policy, you will see that your presumptions are simply wrong.
Of course the DoJ says what Bush is doing is legal. Come on! What do you think, they are going to announce that they authorized an illegal program? You and everyone should approach that as a legal brief from a highly interested party, not a neutral and objective statement of the law.
As to this purported preponderance of legal authorities, I don't see that. If you mean former Clinton Administration lawyers like Cass Sunstein (now a Con Law prof of high repute), then you are missing that, at the end of the day, this is not a Dem v. GOP argument. It is Executive branch v. Legislative, and that turf war has been furious since the dawn of the Republic. It is not the least bit surprising that former Clinton Executive branch lawyers agree that Executive power is as vast as Bush says it is. Bill wanted lots of Executive power, thought he had it, and so does Bush.