Here's one I really don't mind.

One More Obama +1
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Barack Obama has appointed Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman to be deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel.

Lederman was a harsh, outspoken critic of the Bush administration’s executive power grabs, specifically its positions on torture, surveillance, and secrecy, and the absurd lengths to which the OLC went to justify those positions.

The beautiful part: Lederman will be occupying the very position formerly held by John Yoo.


http://www.theagitator.com/2009/01/22/one-more-obama-1/

Yeppers, so far I like this guy.

Time to restore some balance and allow the executive, judicial and legislative branches function as intended.

Check the steady moves towards an imperial presidency.

Honestly...once power is gotten it's seldom surrendered. I have wondered if Obama would look at power grab that the last administration pulled off and decide he rather liked those powers as well.

I will feel better when and if Obama walks the talk on the issue of executive power.

For now there are hopeful signs but I will believe it when I see it.

Hey, if Obama makes this country more like America and less like Soviet Union, I have no problem saying he would be a good president to me.

I just have this feeling that he will do something bad. But, time will tell. I have been wrong before.

Lederman's no Judge Napalitano, but he's alright.

The appeals court has no problem with Warrantless wiretapping.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10143520-38.html


IT IS THE SOLE AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES TO PROTECT THE NATION FROM FOREIGN ENEMIES. The courts, Congress and the Senate have NO SAY WHATSOEVER according to the Constitution. So all of you people who have whined that Bush is taking away Constitutional rights, you either a) Are repeating a lie you heard or b) lying.

I really REALLY want to know how someone, with a desire to protect human life, can complain when a phone is tapped simply because the person who uses the phone calls or receives calls from KNOWN FOREIGN TERRORISTS.

With terroists, you always want to catch them BEFORE the crime, not after. Afterwards you could have 3,000+ dead. Or more, if they manage to get a WMD into the country.

What comfort will prosecution after the fact, of someone we knew before the fact was involved with terrorists, give to the victims and their families?

This is NOT KNOWN FOREIGN TERRORISTS.


Whistleblower: NSA even collected credit card records

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Friday, Jan 23, 2009

Ex-analyst believes program actually the remnants of ‘Total Information Awareness,’ shut down by Congress in 2003

On Wednesday night, when former NSA analyst Russell Tice told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann that the Bush administration’s National Security Agency spied on everyone in the United States, specifically targeting journalists, the Countdown host was so flabbergasted that Tice was invited back for a second interview.

On Thursday, he returned to the airwaves with expanded allegations against the NSA, claiming the agency collected Americans’ credit card records, and adding that he believes the massive, warrantless data vacuum to be the remnants of the Total Information Awareness program, shut down by Congress in 2003.

Asked for comment by Olbermann’s staff, the agency responded, “NSA considers the constitutional rights of US citizens to be sacrosanct. The intelligence community faces immense challenges in protecting our nation. No matter the challenges, NSA remains dedicated to performing its mission under the rule of law.”


Olbermann ran the quote under a banner which read, “Non-denial denial.”

“As far as the wiretap information that made it though NSA, there was also data-mining that was involved,” Tice told Olbermann during the pair’s second interview. “At some point, information from credit card records and financial transactions was married in with that information.”

At this point on the audio track, Olbermann can be heard taking a deep breath.

“So, lucky American citizens, tens of thousands of whom are now on digital databases at NSA, who have no idea of this, also have that information included in those digital files that have been warehoused,” said Tice.

“… Do you have any idea what all this stuff was used for?” asked the stunned host.

“The obvious explanation would be, if you did have a potential terrorist, you’d want to know where they’re spending money, whether they purchased an airline ticket, that sort of thing,” said Tice. “But, once again, we’re talking about tens of thousands of innocent US citizens that have been caught up into this trap. They have no clue.

“This thing could sit there for 10 years, then all the sudden it marries up with something else and 10 years from now and they get put on a no-fly list and they of course won’t have a clue why.”

Tice added that “in most cases,” spied-upon Americans didn’t have to do anything suspicious in order to trigger the surveillance.

“This is garnered from algorithms that have been put together to try to just dream up scenarios that might be information that is associated with how a terrorist could operate,” he said.

Ultimately, the technical explanation boils down to this: “If someone just talked about the daily news and mentioned something about the Middle East, they could easily be brought to the forefront of having that little flag put by their name that says potential terrorist,” said Tice.

“Do you know, or do you have an educated guess, as to who authorized this? Who developed this?” asked Olbermann.

“I have a guess, where it was developed,” he replied. “I think it was probably developed out of the Department of Defense, and this is probably the remnants of Total Information Awareness, that came out of DARPA. That’s my guess, I don’t know that for sure.”

Olbermann then asked if Tice knows who had access to the data.

“I started looking into this, and that’s when ultimately they came after me to fire me,” said Tice. “They must have realized that I’d stumbled onto something, and after that point I of course had no ability to find anything else out.”

Tice concluded that he does not know if the program, as he understands it, continues to this day, and he refused to specifically state which media organizations the Bush administration’s NSA had targeted for surveillance.


This is also NOT a KNOWN FORIEGN TERRORIST.

Sen. Rockefeller: NSA may have spied on me

David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
Friday, Jan 23, 2009

Russell Tice has been heard. Loud and Clear.

Following Wednesday’s revelation by the former National Security Agency analyst that President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program had spied on everyone, quite contrary to what the administration had claimed, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Thursday that he was “quite prepared to believe” the allegations.

He added: “I think they went after anyone they could get — including me.”

Tice, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann the prior evening, proclaimed, “The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”

“In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them,” Tice told Olbermann. “What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year — and it made no sense. … I started to investigate that. That’s about the time when they came after me to fire me.”

When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, “An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists.”

The allegation essentially changes America’s debate about domestic spying by the government, from one of listening to terrorists, as the Bush administration had framed it, to that of an intelligence operation beyond President Nixon’s greatest aspirations, if it’s true.

It should also raise new questions about a 2004 revelation in the New York Times that the paper had withheld a story for over a year, at the administration’s request, which described scant few, albeit now-known false details of the program.

“While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it said the N.S.A. eavesdropped without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time,” the Times wrote, shortly after the 2004 election. “The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands over the past three years, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.”

The paper also notes that additional information was omitted, again at the request of the Bush administration. The allegations at hand would seem to quickly dovetail into, ‘Why?’
Make that, Senators too?

On July 9, 2008, the US Senate passed a bill expanding legal authority for electronic wiretaps by spy agencies, handing victory to President George W. Bush after a standoff over anti-terror strategy. Then-Senator Obama, along with newly appointed Secretary of State Clinton, said they would support Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn) in filibustering the GOP effort, specifically when it came to immunity for the private telecom companies which allowed the NSA to conduct warrantless spying.

Obama ultimately “compromised,” saying: “The President’s illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people.”

Clinton maintained her position, voting against the majority.

“I’ve never seen contempt for the rule of law such as this,” said Sen. Dodd in Dec. 2007.

With this latest round of revelations, perhaps another new question should be, ‘Has Obama?’

Tice reappeared on Countdown the following night, bearing new allegations against the NSA.

from Rush...." the reason O'bama didn't come to the defense of Caroline Kennedy...is because he was too busy learning the Exectutive Orders written by Greg Craig "...

Do you watch him everyday?!

I listen to him everyday at work...I've been a huge fan since the late 80's...***don't tell anybody***...I also subscribe to the Limbaugh Letter...

Oxyies,lying, and Dr Shopping...Enough said!!!

I have never laughed at anyone's drug addiction, no matter how strongly I disagree with his or her politics.

Also, what you are doing is called the "Poisoned Well" fallacy. You are implying that because Rush was addicted to drugs, then he must be wrong. That is a fallacious argument.

Here's more of those "Known Foriegn Terrorists"

NSA spied on American journalists for Bush administration
January 22, 7:29 AM
by J.D. Tuccille, Civil Liberties Examiner

In a tale of widespread, warrantless wiretapping, Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, claimed that the Bush administration engaged in extensive electronic surveillance of Americans. His revelations were made on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show. The eavesdropping was extensive, the former spook says, revealing enormous -- though not unlimited -- NSA capabilities when it comes to listening in on electronic communications. According to Tice:

The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications -- faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications.
Of particular interest to the Bush administration, says Tice, were "U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists." That continues a pattern of surveillance of the news media. Just months ago, the FBI apologized for eavesdropping on the phone calls of reporters working for the Washington Post and New York Times. The surveillance detailed by Tice would seem to go further.


Tice's revelations come after earlier reports, details of which are in James Bamford's latest book, that the NSA was intercepting the international phone calls of journalists, military personnel and civilian aid workers.

Olbermann asks if Barack Obama's new administration can put a stop to this eavesdropping. The bigger question, of course, is if the latest gaggle of politicians even wants to curb such surveillance.


http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2009m1d22-NSA-spied-on-Americans-for-Bush-administration