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Thom Little Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 03:47 AM
Original message
A Time to Impeach
When the U.S. Senate last Friday refused to renew the liberticidal Patriot Act -- with its provisions for spying on Americans' use of libraries and the Internet, among other Constitution-shredding provisions of that iniquitous law -- it was in part because that morning's New York Times had revealed how Bush and his White House had committed a major crime.

By ordering the National Security Agency -- the N.S.A, so secretive that in Washington its initials are said to stand for "No Such Agency" -- to wiretap and eavesdrop on thousands of American citizens without a court order, Bush committed actions specifically forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Passed in 1978 after the Senate's Church Committee documented in detail the Nixon administration's widespread use of U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement and other political dissidents, FISA "expressly made it a crime for government officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping 'other than pursuant to statute.'", as the director of the Center for National Security Studies, Kate Martin, told the Washington Post this past weekend.

.......

A Zogby poll released Nov. 4 showed that, when asked if they agreed that, "If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment," Americans answered yes by 53 percent to 42 percent. It is therefore not simply extremist raving to suggest that impeachment of George Bush should be put on the table.

Remember that, in the impeachment of Richard Nixon, Article 2 of the three Articles of Impeachment dealt with illegal wiretapping of Americans. It said that Nixon committed a crime "by directing or authorizing agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office."

There was no national security justification for Bush's illegal NSA wiretaps -- which could easily have been instituted by following the FISA law's provisions -- and, instead of being related to "enforcement of laws," Bush's eavesdropping was indisputably in contravention of the law of the land.



http://www.alternet.org/story/29826/
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dorktv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 03:58 AM
Response to Original message
1. I actually had a fight with a traitor who says we should ignore the
constitution whenever needed.
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driver8 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 04:38 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. There you have it -- the freeper ideology in a nutshell. Use the
Constitution only when it helps you. If not...ignore it.

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dorktv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 04:44 AM
Response to Reply #3
4. Yep...we (another guy in the room) just completely tore into him.
The other guy told him to move out of America and that he would pay for the ticket.
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Rosemary2205 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 04:37 AM
Response to Original message
2. Was he wiretapping?
It's my understanding it is more like a general dragnet to see what turns up rather than a specific wiretap.
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fasttense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-20-05 05:42 AM
Response to Reply #2
5. It was a general wiretap without a specific person named.
Brush tells us he did it in his own words. Here is the link http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/17/bush.nsa/index.html

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