1 Boring Old Man

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, the President—in light of the broad authority to use military force in response to the attacks of September 11th and to prevent further catastrophic attack expressly conferred on the President by the Constitution and confirmed and supplemented by Congress in the AUMF—has legal authority to authorize the NSA to conduct the signals intelligence activities he has described. Those activities are authorized by the Constitution and by statute, and they violate neither FISA nor the Fourth Amendment.

We’ll all sleep better tonight. The above is from a Justice Department’s legal brief just out. It’s okay that President Bush had the N.S.A. spy on Americans. The Attorney General has cleared it all up for us all.

These people are absolutely nuts! We have a few pressing needs, like Bin Laden is back making noises, we’re in a rotten insoluable war, the Congress is riddled with corruption, we don’t have enough people in government to investigate all that needs investigating, and they’re playing legal word games to cover President Bush’s most recent abuse of power.

Absolutely nuts!

Kudus to the A.C.L.U. for their response!

“President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales can manufacture all of the legal justifications they want, but the facts and laws show that this warrantless surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

“Any opinion coming from the Justice Department has to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given Attorney General Gonzales’ involvement in the warrantless spying as White House counsel. The fox may now be guarding the henhouse, which is why we need an independent special counsel."

“Congress must hold open, substantive hearings to let the American public know how their privacy was invaded. The president must not use a claim of preserving the nation as justification to undermine the very principles that define our nation. Freedom, liberty and privacy must be protected and preserved.”