Senator Feingold Sums Up Warrantless Wiretaps
...I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t...We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.
We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.
At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”
Right on. He also points out that we ALL agree that wiretaps are absolutely necessary. And they can be done legally with warrants. These warrants can be even be issued retroactively! Without a warrant, wiretaps are illegal. The President has effectively said "I'm the President and there are mean people out there, so I can do whatever I want." Unfortunately for him, that's not true. The Executive branch is subject to the laws passed by congress, and the FISA law passed decades ago is clear:
President Bush is breaking the law.
Liberals: Supporting Our Troops
I've already posted about how
Bush told troops in training that they would have the equipment they need. I also described how
that was a lie: military families are buying body armour to protect their sons and daughters when the military fails to do so.
Now the Bush administration is
charging injured troops for body armor lost in the injuring event. Classy.
Liberal blogger John Aravosis of AMERICABlog was so apalled by this treatment of our troops that he put a button on his website to raise money for a soldier forced to pay the government $700 for the body armor torn off his bloodied body by rescuers as they rushed him to medical help. The readership of AMERICABlog, it should be noted, is rather rabidly anti-war. Nonetheless,
in just two hours, these liberal readers donated over $5,000 to reimburse the wounded soldier.
Liberals support our troops. The Neocon administration, by contrast:
Practice Free Speech - And Get Arrested
Cindy Sheehan, who was given a guest pass to the State of the Union by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), was arrested shortly before the President's address for wearing a T-shirt reading "2,245 Dead. How many More?"
According to CNN,
"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman.
Schneider said Sheehan was arrested around 8:30 p.m. on charges of unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail.
What unlawful conduct? It sounds to me like she was exercising her right to freedom of speech. Sheehan has since written about how she had no intention of causing problems.
I didn't feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn't disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket and I didn't want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn's office had already called the media and everyone knew I was going to be there so I sucked it up and went...I was never told that I couldn't wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things...I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later.
I don't necessarily agree with Cindy Sheehan on many topics, but the horrible truth of this incident is unavoidable: Cindy Sheehan was arrested and imprisoned last night for wearing a T-shirt that read "2,245 Dead. How many More?"
This was not hate speech. This was not disruptive. This was T-shirt that asked a very valid question. And for this very small act of personal expression, a mother whose son died protecting our "freedom" was imprisoned.
