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The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by k at 10:16 am EDT, May 16, 2007 |
I'm sure Dems will do their best to commit political suicide by pressing this issue right through a massive terrorist attack. Fundamentally the American public expects any President post-9/11 to do whatever it takes to stop terrorists. Civil rights concerns be damned. Pushing legalisms only tells Americans one side is not serious about fighting terrorism. I'm sure Bush wants to be thrown into that briar patch.
Levaing aside the actual article, this is the scariest thing I've read in weeks. People actually think like this. |
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RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by Decius at 11:09 am EDT, May 16, 2007 |
k wrote: I'm sure Dems will do their best to commit political suicide by pressing this issue right through a massive terrorist attack. Fundamentally the American public expects any President post-9/11 to do whatever it takes to stop terrorists. Civil rights concerns be damned. Pushing legalisms only tells Americans one side is not serious about fighting terrorism. I'm sure Bush wants to be thrown into that briar patch.
Levaing aside the actual article, this is the scariest thing I've read in weeks. People actually think like this.
Seriously, ignore the thread, read the testimony. |
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RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by k at 3:01 pm EDT, May 16, 2007 |
Decius wrote: k wrote: I'm sure Dems will do their best to commit political suicide by pressing this issue right through a massive terrorist attack. Fundamentally the American public expects any President post-9/11 to do whatever it takes to stop terrorists. Civil rights concerns be damned. Pushing legalisms only tells Americans one side is not serious about fighting terrorism. I'm sure Bush wants to be thrown into that briar patch.
Levaing aside the actual article, this is the scariest thing I've read in weeks. People actually think like this.
Seriously, ignore the thread, read the testimony.
I did, but I couldn't help commenting on this. It's people like this that are going to tear the country apart when the next terrorist attack happens. I don't deny that it probably will, mainly because Bush's DHS has fucked up priorities. But I'm equally sure it'll happen after a Dem is elected in the next election, because it'll do more damage then. The testimony itself seems pretty damning of the white house and the president in particular and shows a side of Ashcroft i didn't know was there honestly. Not that i'm his biggest fan, but I appreciate that he had enough scruples to not be bullied into something by WH goons and the integrity to point at his acting AG and tell them to talk to the guy who's making the decisions now. Fairly surprising all in all. |
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RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by Decius at 3:59 pm EDT, May 16, 2007 |
k wrote:
I did, but I couldn't help commenting on this. It's people like this that are going to tear the country apart when the next terrorist attack happens.
I agree. Some of these perspectives are deeply authoritarian. There are a lot of people on the right who simply do not care about right/wrong or the rule of law or constitutional rights based on both a stupid misconception that they holding the reins and an ignorant, perhaps actually evil, beleif that the innocent people who'll be swept up in their security measures aren't like them and they have no reason to protect them. The idea of checks and balances is a joke to these people at best, at worst they think it undermines the "consequences" that they get to extract from winning an election. They have a different conception of what America is than I do. They don't see it as a system, a set of ideas about how to run a society. They see it as a place and a group of people and a pile of cash. They don't really care how its governed as long as their direct personal interests are satisfied. To them, the slightest risk is worth sacrificing the greatest ideal. I don't deny that it probably will, mainly because Bush's DHS has fucked up priorities. But I'm equally sure it'll happen after a Dem is elected in the next election, because it'll do more damage then.
I'm not sure Bush will be "to blame." Its inevitable that these things happen because they are impossible to absolutely prevent no matter how competent you are. Its also inevitable that civil liberties will be torn down at the first opportunity, and inevitable that new found police powers will be used far outside the scope of anti-terrorism. This is because they still aren't really serious about this. They are still playing games. Thus far, however, the federal government has successfully prevented another attack on our soil, as they prevented many attacks prior to 9/11. The testimony itself seems pretty damning of the white house and the president in particular and shows a side of Ashcroft i didn't know was there honestly. Not that i'm his biggest fan, but I appreciate that he had enough scruples to not be bullied into something by WH goons and the integrity to point at his acting AG and tell them to talk to the guy who's making the decisions now. Fairly surprising all in all.
I'm not sure I agree. It seems, perhaps, a bit more human than the perspective we usually get from reading externally facing statements. Organizations like the WhiteHouse are not monolithic. They have internal disagreements about decisions. While Ashcroft did the right thing here, it is interesting that he signed off on this program for years before his lawyers got around to reviewing it! Would you sign off on the legaltiy of an executive program without actually analyzing it's legality? Its not clear that Gonzales knew how creepy he was by showing up at the hospital with that paperwork. He may not have truely grasped Ashcroft's condition and they may have felt uncomfortable having such a policy reversal presented by an acting AG. Furthermore, I think the President comes off smelling like roses, in offering that Comey should do what he felt was right. What is most interesting to me is the statement at the very end that the legal staffer was turned up for a promotion because he chose to take this stand... Retribution, but from whom? Its not clear! What is clear is that prior to this event the NSA surveillance program had a different, and likely more invasive, character than the one with which we are familiar. |
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RE: The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by k at 6:33 pm EDT, May 16, 2007 |
Decius wrote:
What is clear is that prior to this event the NSA surveillance program had a different, and likely more invasive, character than the one with which we are familiar.
That's part of what makes Bush look bad... what we know about is bad enough, but contemplating what even less acceptable shit was going on back then is pretty scary. On top of that, I don't see the concession to Comey as a concession at all but rather as a last ditch effort to salvage what he could before a string of resignations blew the lid off the fucker. It's hardly laudable in my mind. |
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The Volokh Conspiracy - Full Transcript of Comey Testimony on NSA Surveillance Program:
by Decius at 11:53 pm EDT, May 15, 2007 |
WOW. This is quite a dramatic moment. Its hard to imagine Ashcroft, who really was no friend to civil liberties, taking such a stand. It says a lot about this program. If I'm reading the transcript correctly, it seems that most of the highest-level officials in DOJ were ready to resign over the NSA Surveillance program when the White House decided to continue it without DOJ approval. The Office of Legal Counsel under Jack Goldsmith had come up with parameters under which DOJ was willing to approve the program as legal — perhaps within the scope of the AUMF? who knows — and it sounds like the then-existing program was broader than what OLC thought was permitted. Comey agreed with OLC's legal analysis, so he wasn't willing to give DOJ's approval to the program. So Card and Gonzales (then WH Counsel) go to Ashcroft at the hospital to try to persuade Ashcroft to overrule Comey. Comey gets word of what is happening, and he gets to the hospital first and tries to get Ashcroft ready for Card and Gonzales. Comey explains: And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off . . . I tried to see if I could help him get oriented. As I said, it wasn’t clear that I had succeeded. Soon Goldmsith and the ADAG are there by Ashcroft's bedside, and a few minutes later Gonzales and Card arrive... They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval . . . . And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me — drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier — and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. . . . There is the attorney general, and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left.
Feingold says: "Some of the most dramatic testimony that I've heard in 25 years that I've been a legislator." |
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