Saturday, September 02, 2006
"Uphold, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution..." (or not)
Don't think 'cos it happened a few weeks back I forgot about it:
A federal court confirms that the Bush administration broke the law with their NSA civillian wiretapping but the biggest media story that week was the JonBenet Ramsey case. That alone got a quadruple "WTF????" from me. Of course, the right immmediately tried to swiftboat the judge who ruled in the case while we all know how that JonBenet story turned out. Once again, nice job Fifth Estate.
But Bush a lawbreaker?! Who knew?? Well actually...
"President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution." (click here for more from the Boston Globe article "Bush challenges hundreds of laws")
"The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks [emphasis added], lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court." (click here to read more)
While Bush personally blocked a DOJ investigation of the NSA wiretapping program.
Plus:
"Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials... That access to large amounts of sensitive data was highly unusual, several officials said, and stirred concerns inside the administration about legal and privacy issues [emphasis added]." (click here to read more from the NYT article "Bank Data Secretly Reviewed by U.S. to Fight Terror")
"[I]ndicted phone jammer Shaun Hansen may offer an affirmative defense at his upcoming fall trial, arguing that the phone jamming scheme which his company carried out [to jam Democratic phone lines on Election Day in 2002] had the seal of approval of both the Republican National Committee and the White House." (click here to read more)
And finally: "In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important [Republican] Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters." (click here to read more | Spotted via AMERICAblog)
I could probably go on but I think you get the idea....
