Good News: Warrantless Wiretapping Deemed Legal

After years of hysteria from the left, they're sure to be thrilled to know Barack Obama will have the ability to wiretap international calls made by the bad guys. Of course to them the bad guys are Republicans and conservatives, so this may not work out like we planned.

Don't expect much reaction. What was "illegal" for Bush will be just peachy keen for The Messiah.

A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans’ private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.

The court decision, made in December by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, is expected to be disclosed as early as Thursday in an unclassified, redacted form, the person said. The review court has issued only two other rulings in its 30-year history.

The decision marks the first time since the disclosure of the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program three years ago that an appellate court has addressed the constitutionality of the federal government’s wiretapping powers. In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping.

The appeals court is expected to uphold a secret ruling issued last year by the intelligence court that it oversees, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, court. In that initial opinion, the secret court found that Congress had acted within its authority in August of 2007 when it passed a hotly debated law known as the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad power to eavesdrop on international communications, according to the person familiar with the ruling.

House GOP tells Dems to party on...without us

The Republican members of the House walked out of the capitol in a dispute with the Dems over the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). At issue is voting to continue the program. It is scheduled to expire Friday at midnight unless it is approved. The Dems have decided that it is more important to honor former representative Tom Lantos, grill baseball players, scrutinize football teams, and to continue their Don Quixote act of issuing contempt citations for two former White House aides Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten.

So while the enemies of this country wait in breathless anticipation that the Dems win to provide them even the smallest window of opportunity for them to slip something past us, the Dems continue to show all Americans that your lives are nothing more then something else to be used as a tool to make their grandiose gestures of servitude to the MoveOn crowd who now control their party.

Try to imagine this Congress with a Democrat president. Hug your children, for if the Dems have their way the comment about acting like you need to show them love because you don't ever know what is going to happen will become all too frighteningly real.

Your Government At Work

Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills
WASHINGTON (AP) - Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government's most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

"We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence," according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

Assistant FBI Director John Miller said wiretaps were dropped only a few times because of the backed-up billing, which he said didn't significantly set back the investigations under way. He said the FBI "will not tolerate financial mismanagement, or worse," and is working to fix the problems.

"While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted in interruptions of the timely delivery of surveillance results, these interruptions were temporary and in our assessment, none of those cases were significantly affected," Miller said in a statement Thursday evening.

The report released Thursday was a highly edited version of Fine's 87-page audit that the FBI deemed too sensitive to be viewed publicly. It focused on what the bureau admitted was an "antiquated" system to track money sent to its 56 field offices nationwide for undercover work. Generally, the money pays for rental cars, leases and surveillance, the audit noted.

The American Civil Liberties Union called on the FBI to release the entire, unedited audit. The group, which has been critical of some of the government's wiretapping programs, also took a swipe at telecommunication companies that allowed the eavesdropping - as long as they are getting paid.

"It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being 'good patriots' when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security investigations when the government falls behind on its bills," said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU's national security policy counsel. "To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say the check is in the mail."

The audit also found that some field offices paid for expenses on undercover cases that should have been financed by FBI headquarters. Out of 130 undercover payments examined, auditors found 14 cases of at least $6,000 each where field offices dipped into their own budgets to pay for work that should have been picked up by headquarters.

The faulty bookkeeping was blamed, in large part, on an FBI employee who pleaded guilty in June 2006 to stealing $25,000 for her own use, the audit noted.

Cool. They have a fall guy.

"As demonstrated by the FBI employee who stole funds intended to support undercover activities, procedural controls by themselves have not ensured proper tracking and use of confidential case funds," it concluded.

Fine's report offered 16 recommendations to improve the FBI's tracking and management of the funding system, including its telecommunication costs. The FBI has agreed to follow 11 of the suggestions and one additional recommendation was found unnecessary. But it said that four "would be either unfeasible or too cost prohibitive." The recommendations were not specifically outlined in the edited version of the report.

- - - On the Web: DOJ Report

Via MyWay/The AP

Also at A Tangled Web

Democrats Working OT to Make You Less Safe

When I first read the headline, the thought occurred to me that perhaps they've come to their senses and are getting on board in the terror war.

Alas, the headline is incredibly misleading and they're doing all they can to hinder the surveillance of America's enemies.

Silly me, thinking Democrats had our best interests in mind.

Democrats to unveil wiretapping bill

The Justice Department would have to reveal to Congress the details of all electronic surveillance conducted without court orders since Sept. 11, 2001, including the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, if a new Democratic wiretapping bill is approved.

The draft bill, scheduled to be introduced to Congress Tuesday, would also require the Justice Department to maintain a database of all Americans subjected to government eavesdropping without a court order, including whether their names have been revealed to other government agencies.

The Bush administration has refused to share that information with Congress so far.

The Terrorist Surveillance Program [wait, what happened to "so-called"? -- ed.] was a secret eavesdropping program undertaken after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks without the approval of an intelligence court created 30 years ago to monitor such programs.

Yes, it was secret. For good reason. Then the New York Times revealed the information. We never did find out which Democrats leaked that information.

The Democratic legislation is certain to draw sharp objections and possibly a veto threat because it lacks at least one feature the White House demands: it does not grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with government surveillance between 2001 and 2007 without the court orders. Around 40 lawsuits name telecommunications companies for alleged violations of wiretapping laws, according to administration officials.

The measures are included in a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to be proposed by Democratic leadership on Tuesday. The bill would replace the Protect America Act of 2007, the controversial FISA revision adopted by Congress in August. That bill was hastily adopted under pressure from the Bush administration, which said changes in technology had resulted in dire gaps in its authority to eavesdrop on terrorists.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates voiced strong concerns in the weeks after the law was signed, saying it gave the government far more power to eavesdrop on American communications without court oversight than was initially understood.

In other words, the nutroots base of the Democrat Party kicked and stomped their feet. And the Democrats are nothing if not beholden to the far left.

Now get a load of the name these idiots came up with.

The "Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed and Effective Act of 2007" — or RESTORE Act — would clarify that no court orders are required for the government to conduct surveillance on communications outside the United States even when the surveillance is conducted on U.S. soil, provided the target of the eavesdropping is not known to be a U.S. person.

So all the terrorists need to make sure of is the people they're communicating with are U.S. citizens.

I guess any calls to Lynne Stewart types would thus be off limits.

Yes, I feel so secure that Democrats are looking out for us.

Horrors: Fewer Than 100 Americans Surveilled Under FISA Act

This gross abuse of power cannot go unchecked. What's this country coming to under the brutal, fascistic reign of the war criminal Bush when nearly one in 3 million Americans have their phones tapped?

Where is the ACLU when we need them?

Oh, they're busy defending child molesters. Never mind.

WASHINGTON - No Americans' telephones have been tapped without a court order since at least February, the top U.S. intelligence official told Congress yesterday.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell testified before the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing on the law governing federal surveillance of phone calls and e-mails.

In a newspaper interview last month, McConnell said the government had tapped fewer than 100 Americans' phones and e-mails under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a secret intelligence court.

McConnell is seeking additional changes to the law, which Congress hastily modified just before going on vacation in August, based in part on the intelligence chief's warnings of a dire gap in U.S. intelligence

Inflated Self-Importance Leads to Delusions

This is what happens when you indulge children too much. Keep telling them how special they are despite their churlish and infantile behavior, and pretty soon they start running your life.

Keep them in line, instill some discipline, punish them when necessary and they behave well, develop an earned self-respect and grow into mature adults.

Well, the Democrats, barely beyond the juvenile stage as it is, have been catering to the insane left nutroots bloggers for several years now, and coming off the heels of their recent meeting of Koslamists in Chicago, the puerile left has grown to think they actually wield some real power in the Democrat Party.

They don't realize they're just being pandered to and are disposable, ready to be thrown under the bus on short notice.

Predictably, like spoiled children, they're now having a temper tantrum, and it isn't pretty.

The Blogs Are Alive With the Sound of Angry Democrats

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 -- Progressive and liberal groups and left-leaning blogs are furious, tossing around fighting words like "spineless," "craven" and "weak."

So much for the hopes of Democratic leaders that they could avoid a withering political attack by clearing the way for Congress to approve an expansion of the Bush administration?s terrorist surveillance program before the August recess.

"Democratic leaders in Congress didn't put up much of a fight and they didn't stand up and say "no" to Bush," said an e-mail message that political operatives for the group MoveOn sent Tuesday to the organization's members, urging them to sign an online petition calling on Congress to reverse the new law.

Translation: Enough Democrats retain their sanity to realize this country needs to protect itself. The kook fringe at MoveOn are too stupid to realize that.

Activist groups were somewhat forgiving earlier this year when Democrats backed down in a fight with President Bush over war spending, but the concession on changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act seems to have touched a nerve.

From the perspective of liberal critics, Democrats again let themselves be hoodwinked into handing Mr. Bush substantial new power on the basis of White House warnings of an imminent threat. And they did so when Mr. Bush's poll numbers are low.

Yes, but their numbers are much lower than Bush's, so did they really have a choice?

The idiots cannot grasp that.

Chimpy McHitlerburton is such an idiot, and he outsmarted you! How can this be?

"Ultimately, it was the Democratic leadership on the Hill that rolled over to this demand," said Caroline Fredrickson, a top lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Instead of standing strong and standing on principle, they panicked and gave the administration not only what it has been asking for, but more."

The caterwauling continues on.

Read the rest if you need a good laugh.

Hypocritical Democrats Want More Eavesdropping Powers

Forget about pandering to the kook fringe nutroots base and their masters at the ACLU, it's all about appearances for the Democrats. Since they obviously are pathetically weak on national security and fighting terrorism, they need to pretend to be tough. So there goes another principle out the window.

Democrats Scrambling to Expand Eavesdropping

WASHINGTON, July 31 -- Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are scrambling to pass legislation this week to expand the government?s electronic wiretapping powers.

Democratic leaders have expressed a new willingness to work with the White House to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier for the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on some purely foreign telephone calls and e-mail. Such a step now requires court approval.

Of course, they're all for domestic eavesdropping when they're in power. Just ask Newt Gingrich and John Boehner about that.

Of course, now that they're scrambling to appear tough, Mr. 19%, Dingy Harry, is seeking comity and bipartisanship.

“We hope our Republican counterparts will work together with us to fix the problem, rather than try again to gain partisan political advantage at the expense of our national security,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said in a statement Monday night.

Naturally, the terrorist supporters at the ACLU won't stand for any of it.

Some civil liberties groups oppose the proposed changes, expressing concern that there might be far-reaching consequences.

“Congress needs to take its time before it implements another piece of antiterrorism legislation it will regret, like the Patriot Act,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “The Bush administration clearly has abused the FISA powers it already has and clearly wants to go back to the good old days of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying. Congress must stop this bill in its tracks.”

Sorry, not going to happen.

As a sidenote, the paper of record ought to do a better job proofreading, as they misspell the name of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales three times.