OK, Listen, People, You need Education on Patriot Act vs NSA Spying

Normally, the Government needs a court order to get a wiretap.

With the Patriot Act, the rules of this are changed when getting taps for calls WITHIN, repeat, WITHIN the USA.
With the NSA Spying, the rules of this are SUSPENDED UTTERLY when getting taps for calls that go INTO or OUT OF the USA to a FOREIGN country.

That is the difference. I am not saying that the NSA thing is legal, I am just spelling out the freaking difference, because people are still quoting that old quote from Bush about roving wiretaps and the Patriot Act, and they are looking like fools to the Neocons.

Patriot Act Wiretapping != NSA Wiretapping.

Stop associating the two. If you want to bitch about the PA, do so clearly. Its like associating 9/11 and Iraq!!!

:D (<---- note smily face which indicates I still love you all)

Constitution are Impeachable offenses.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 16, 2005
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=print