I was listening to Limbaugh today (I can only take small doses of his lies) and this idiot is spewing this crap about an article in the National Review and how every president from Reagan on has done this without court approval. I attached it below. My take on the article is that even though Clinton may have asserted that he as within the law to wiretap, he still didn't do it and stayed under the scrutiny of the FISA act. Also it looks as though Clinton's only intention was to use the authority on foreign offices in the US, not private US citizens. All still moot as he stayed under the oversight of the FISA court.
Anyone else see something different or know more about it than is available from York's piece? Also, the article mentioned Reagan signing into law the authority that Clinton cited. What precipitated Reagan's action? Did he get caught also?
BY Byron York
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.aspIn a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.
"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," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General."