This is infuriating.

Feingold, who today flat out called the program illegal and who last March... went on to attack Gonzales for a speech he made in November, where he said that critics of the government's warrantless wiretapping program believed in a definition of freedom that was "superficial" and a "grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Feingold took issue with that and asked who in the country actually believed that terrorists should not be wiretapped.

Gonzales said he knew that it wasn't Democrats and his real targets were blogs, where you can find people who don't see that the government is trying to protect them.

Unfortunately, this is the closest thing I can find to coverage of this hearing. Transcripts do not seem to be available. If anyone has the exact quote from Gonzales, please post it. I DO have the exact quote and context for his statement in November.

Some people will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program targets. Instead of seeing the government protecting the country, they see it as on the verge of stifling freedom.

But this view is shortsighted. Its definition of freedom – one utterly divorced from civic responsibility – is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.

As Justice Robert Jackson remarked in the case Terminiello v. City of Chicago, “The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.”

The central quote was decontextualized and passed around in the media. Of course, you can find crazy people on the Internets, but the people out there who "will argue nothing could justify the government being able to intercept conversations like the ones the Program tagets," and I have never, ever seen anyone make that argument, but they are clearly too far and inbetween to constitute "a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people."

Gonzales is almost Chomskesque in his careful use of language which simultaneously means many things and nothing. If you support the idea that the executive need not get court approval for domestic surveillance, what you hear when he says this, particularly given the lawsuit quote at the end, is that the people who are raising legal objections are a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people. But when brought to task about that comment he can argue that he wasn't talking about those people, he was talking about some other group of people, who are a straw man who exist largely as ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Alberto Gonzales on Bloggers

Alberto Gonzales, the nation's first Hispanic attorney general, announced his resignation Monday _ ending a nasty, monthslong standoff over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Justice Department.

Not only is he out, but there's no one in the wings. That's new. Rummy-Gates, already there. Fleisher-Scotty-Snow, all ready on the spot. O'Neil-Snow, set. Ashcroft-Fredo, set. Fredo-ummmm.... Whoops.

FREDO OUT!

Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?

The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

That would be means, motive and opportunity, and as RFK Jr pointed out a year ago in Rolling Stone there is little question that it happened. The end is nigh.

Network Hosting Attorney Scandal E-Mails Also Hosted Ohio's 2004 Election Results

This op-ed could also be titled, Yet Another Display of Public Indifference.

This scandal is too important for the public or Congress to move on. This story should not end until Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is gone.

The degree of partisanship in the department is shocking.

It is hard not to see the fingerprints of Karl Rove.

In his upcoming HBO special, Bill Maher explains (I'm paraphrasing), "What angers me the most is how few people are angry."

Why This Scandal Matters

By Alberto R. Gonzales
Sunday, April 15, 2007; Page B07

My decision some months ago to privately seek the resignations of a small number of U.S. attorneys has erupted into a public firestorm. First and foremost, I appreciate the public service of these fine lawyers and dedicated professionals, each of whom served his or her full four-year term as U.S. attorney. I apologize to them, their families and the thousands of dedicated professionals at the Justice Department for my role in allowing this matter to spin into an undignified Washington spectacle.

Watch for the hot legislative testimony Tuesday on C-SPAN. (Check local listings) This Attorney General Gonzales's opinion piece from the washington post.

--timball

Alberto R. Gonzales - Nothing Improper - washingtonpost.com

You don't like the idea of federal wiretaps? Don't like the idea of the goverment having your cellphone records? File your own FOIA request . It only takes a couple of minutes. When you go tell Alberto I sent you.

Here's a link to the FOIA guide that explains the nitty gritty of the FOIA system.

It's totally legit. You should do it. Why? Because this ain't no fucking police state bitch.

USDOJ: FOIA: Department Components

Last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a Republican, gave a speech saying that data retention by Internet service providers is an "issue that must be addressed." Child pornography investigations have been "hampered" because data may be routinely deleted, Gonzales warned.

Now, in a demonstration of bipartisan unity, a Democratic member of the Congressional Internet Caucus is preparing to introduce an amendment--perhaps during a U.S. House of Representatives floor vote next week--that would make such data deletion illegal.

Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette's proposal (click for PDF) says that any Internet service that "enables users to access content" must permanently retain records that would permit police to identify each user. The records could not be discarded until at least one year after the user's account was closed.

Congress may consider mandatory ISP snooping

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

Here you go. Here's your "War on Terror." I'd like to thank the current administration for lowering the human rights standards of the United States into the area of such towering 20th century figures as the Somozas, and Hideki Tojo.

How many people have been killed in Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, Bagram and the black prisons being operated? Hell, how many people are even IN them? This is AMERICA. When we say something about "the rule of law" it's supposed to mean something. It does not mean, "Hey, we caught this guy skulking around over there, let's beat the shit out of him until he says what he was doing, and if he croaks well too bad." It does not mean making the middle east once again safe for forced protitution and slavery.

When this country fought World War II it was to stop the agression of Germany and along the way it became about genocide. When this country fought in Korea it was to stop the commies who were doing this kind of thing in Russia under Stalin and in China under Mao. When this country fought in Vietnam it was ostensibly for the same reasons and when we realized the people we were supporting were no better and it was turning us into the same kind of people we were fighting, we got the hell out. We stopped propping up the Somozas. We stopped supporting the Shah. We stopped supporting the Duvaliers. We stopped supporting Augusto Pinochet. We stopped supporting Ferdinand Marcos. We fought against Slobodan Milosovic. We stopped supporting Saddam Hussain and fought to remove him from Kuwait.

The people who acted at Bagram and Abu Gharib bear direct responsibilty for their actions, and those actions are called war crimes. They have done what John Demjanjuk was accused of. The people who oversaw and approved those actions are no different from the people ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Acosta's stated goal of prosecuting distributors of adult porn has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office. They say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.

His own prosecutors have warned Acosta that prioritizing adult porn would reduce resources for prosecuting other crimes, including porn involving children. According to high-level sources who did not want to be identified, Acosta has assigned prosecutors porn cases over their objections.

Speechless...

law.com - U.S. Attorney's Porn Fight Gets Bad Reviews

CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT
18 USC 2257

Yes, that is correct. The wonderful things that used to be here, the very funny things that you want to read, have been made retroactively illegal by the US government, in a side-handed attack on the pornography industry.

We might mention that the material here isn't even pornography as you normally think of it -- this site is just adult humor, in essay format, with some illustrations. The government is mandating that we meet certain bookkeeping requirements, ones impossible to meet for this site. Never mind that those requirements do not actually gain the public anything. This is the strongest attack on free speech since the passage of the CDA, and oddly, the media seems to have hardly noticed. The penalty for not abiding by these bookkeeping requirements is five years prison.

The regulations were promulgated by Alberto Gonzales, US Attorney General appointed by George Bush. If you voted for Bush, this is your fault. If you think this country is free, you are sadly mistaken. No nation has freedom when it is run by religious zealots.

Regulations effective 24 June 2005.

The Gaping Maw - rotten.com Editorial