Yeah, The fix is in. It goes down today, the vote on FISA. Just imagine, Senators Leahy and Feingold aside, there’s not an ounce of principle to be found. Senators are helping to conceal a crime – in plain view, states Jonathan Turley, Professor of Constitutional Law, MSNBC:
There was also a recent court ruling, on July 3, that senators choose to ignore. Our senators choose to ignore that this president committed a crime, not once but x 30. Not too long ago, a sexual act, a BJ between two adults, merited impeachment. Yet here we are – our civil liberties are being trampled and our legislators tells us, “Don’t worry, It’s a compromise.”
Read the following article and weep.
Salon.com – Suing George W. Bush: A bizarre and troubling tale
U.S. officials went to extremes to stifle our legal challenge to Bush’s warrantless surveillance — but a federal judge says the program is criminal, anyway.”
On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California made a ruling particularly worthy of the nation’s attention. In Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a key case in the epic battle over warrantless spying inside the United States, Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon.
Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which means Bush’s warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously — at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics — to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.
The story of how Al-Haramain’s lawyers negotiated the journey thus far to Judge Walker’s ruling — a team of seven lawyers that includes me — sheds light on how much is at stake for the Bush administration and the country. It is a surreal saga, involving a top-secret document accidentally released by the government, a showdown between Bush lawyers and a federal judge, the violent destruction of a laptop computer by government agents, and possibly even the top-secret shredding of a banana peel.
Call me Alice — because this is a tale directly from Government Secrecy Wonderland, the bizarre and unnerving adventures of suing President Bush for apparently violating a federal law. I’ll swear under penalty of perjury that what follows is true and correct. Otherwise, you might not even believe it.
The secret document
FISA requires a warrant for electronic surveillance inside the U.S. for intelligence gathering. President George W. Bush secretly violated FISA for nearly six years, starting shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. FISA makes those violations felonious and provides for civil liability to the victims. I am one of seven lawyers in Oregon and California representing three of those victims in Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a civil lawsuit against the president.
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Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain’s lawyers in August of 2004. We call it “the Document.” It appeared in a stack of unclassified materials that the lawyers had requested from OFAC. Six weeks later, after the government realized its blunder, FBI agents personally visited each of the lawyers and made them return their copies of the Document. But the agents made no effort to retrieve copies that the lawyers had given to two members of Al-Haramain’s board of directors, who lived outside the United States.
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The FBI vs. the judge
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The state secrets
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Laptop lunacy
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In fact, we’d only done what Judge King had said we could do. In a responding letter to the judge, we also pointed out that CIA directives don’t apply to us because we aren’t CIA employees. Nevertheless, in another moment of fear, we destroyed our drafts and notes for the secret filings. We no longer had copies of the secret documents we had filed.
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go read the whole article at Salon. com all three pages word by word
On FISA, where is Barack? Will he at least vote “present” !!!???