I do find it interesting that that seems to be the ONLY evidence of rights lost, due to the campaign formerly known as The War on Terror .

Unless, you know, one end of that communication was in the US.

And, as numerous reports, including the ones SQ cites, make clear, what was admitted by the administration in 2005 is like the little pool of chocolate sauce on top of the lava cake.

Which has nothing to do with tapping personal communications in the U.S.

But, whatever you say

Har! Frank, you funny.

“Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps,” John Yoo, WSJ, JULY 16, 2009

NSA Wiretapping: The Legal Debate, Maria Godoy, NPR, October 4 2009:
“President Bush authorized the taps on domestic phone calls and e-mails shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the program remained secret until last December.”

At issue is the extent to which the NSA has the legal authority to eavesdrop inside the country. The NSA conducts wiretapping outside the United States all the time, but after Sept. 11, the Bush administration directed the agency to include phone calls that started or ended in the United States, if one person was believed to be linked to al-Qaida.

Ordinarily, the agency would have to get a warrant from a special surveillance court to conduct any eavesdropping in the United States, but this new program dispensed with those warrants because, according to the administration, time is of the essence in detecting terrorist plots.

The New York Times disclosed the existence of this program in December 2005, and the administration quickly acknowledged that those reports were largely correct. But the president and others in the administration insist he has the legal authority to do this.

And from The Huffington Post, July 10 2009

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they’re still too secret to reveal.
The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to “unprecedented collection activities” by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

And, SQ is wrong — there were no warrantless wiretaps in the Bush administration.

What’s your point? SQ said:

If the government has the power to listen in on my personal phone conversations or intercept my private email without a warrant, it has infringed on my liberties whether or not I am aware of the eavesdropping.

Teensy bit different.

or incoporation of the fourteenth?

Like legalizing gay marriage? Oh wait…

Remember Emanual’s famous quote about crisis and opportunity, once established, government workers need to justify their existence on occasion. Somewhere some federal employee is earning his keep watchdogging pacifists.

Pacifism comes with a price tag.

The War Resisters’ League lobbies to pass the Religious Freedom Peace Tax bill that would allow people to refuse to pay war taxes. It also advises people who refuse to pay such taxes on how to best deal with the IRS (politely explain your reasons and pay your fine). There is absolutely nothing illegal about their activities.

Perhaps you can explain to me what gives the government the right to infiltrate and spy on a group of people exercising their right to petition the government, gather peacefully, and non-violently express their political and religious beliefs?

Now that’s a load of hooey. My entire family on my father’s side is Republican, as is my husband’s family. My paternal relations are all born-again Christians (evangelical, not necessarily fundamentalist) and died-in-the-wool followers of St. Ronnie. My husbands family is slightly more progressive socially, but are firm fiscal conservatives.

My dad (the black sheep in that he is not an evangelical) voted for Bush – twice – in spite of the fact that he couldn’t stand the guy. Obama is the first Democrat he has ever voted for in his entire life.

My dad and my husband’s family are what I would call moderate Republicans. The rest of dad’s family are the so-called “values” voters* who buy the Rush & Co. bullshit hook, line and sinker. And yeah, I love ‘em, but some of their ideas are batshit crazy.

The most left-leaning Democrat is Dennis Kucinich, who never had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the nomination.

(*btw, who the hell decided that the rest of us don’t vote according to our values?)

regulate
c.1630, from L.L. regulatus, pp. of regulare “to control by rule, direct” (5c.), from L. regula “rule” (see regular). Regulation is first recorded 1672, “act of regulating;” sense of “rule for management” is first attested 1715. Regulator is first recorded 1655; in Eng. history, with a capital R-, “member of a commission appointed in 1687 to manage county elections.” In U.S. history, applied to local posses that kept order (or disturbed it) in rural regions c.1767-71. Meaning “clock by which other timepieces are set” is attested from 1758.

Let us substitute the first definition of regulate, “to control by rule” for regulated in the 2nd Amendment.

A Militia controlled by rule, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The meaning of the amendment is quite clear. You may not have a problem with infringement upon the right to bear arms but the Constitution does not back you up. I am heartened by your stance that Affirmative Action is not constitutional when applied towards corporations but do not see a basis for the government or any other entity to deny a citizen equal protection under the law. You are correct that this is not a constitutional thread but you brought up the topic as a means to castigate the Bush administration. It is difficult to take liberal complaints about constitutional rights very seriously when their support of the Constitution is so inconsistant.

I share your concerns on the other issues you have brought up regarding free speech and government intelligence gathering etc. A much smaller federal government strictly bound by the 10th Amendment and States constrained by the 14th seem a pretty good place to start. The current administration has so far shown anything but a willingness to abide by the Constitution.

So again I ask you, if Obama does not fit your definition of the most left leaning president who does? Your position that the current Democrats represent moderate Republican values indicates you don’t really know many actual Republican’s views on very many topics.

The givernment monitors phone traffic , and is not intested when I call my Aunt Sophia in Lebanon.

As for the Quakers, aren’t they also supporters of sanctuary, and weren’t once a component of the War Resisters’ League?

Pacifism comes with a price tag.

And I’d like to hear more about these people who were “arrested” for wearing T-Shirts in opposition to the President. These people weren’t disruptive or destructive? Just standing around with t-shirts?

During the last two decades or so there has been ample evidence of the government spying on and keeping records of Quaker meetings and Quaker organizations. Why? Because we’re such violent radicals that we have to be carefully watched less we decide to spray paint “War is Not the Answer” on the side of the Pentagon? What about citizens of this country who have been detained and arrested for wearing T-shirts critical of the President to public events?? What about the so-called “free speech zones,” which are a much more insidious abridgement of free speech than any campaign finance law.

Of course we still have homeless (and I’m not sure how that’s a consitutional issue, anyway), who has argued differently? Honestly, I don’t remember the homeless being that big an issue during Bush’s term. And there are still voices on the left calling for withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, they’ve just been overshadowed by the economic crisis. As much as I loathe some of Obama’s decisions regarding the “War on Terror,” as least there has been some movement on Guantanamo, toruture and Iraq. Not as much as I would have liked to have seen, but more than we got from his predecessor, or would have likely gotten from McCain.

As for the fourteenth, I’m on recorded as believing that it should not apply to corporations.

We could pick apart the Constitution amendment by amendment to see where we disagree, but this isn’t our blog. I usually try to keep my comments relevant to Oliver’s posts.

But, of course, now that we have a Democratic liberal President, the homeless problem has disappeared, we are not falling all over ourselves to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan (I haven’t heard “There’s no exit strategy” since Election Dy 2008), no complaing about gasoline prices, and we’re about to turn over America’s healthcare system to those wonderful folks who gave you the Post Office, and the DMV.

If Obama is to be charactorized as a moderate Republican who might you nominate for most left leaning prez?

It’s not so much the “He did it, too!” tactic, it’s more the sheer hypocrisy and/or cognitive dissonance – take your pick – of those who were stone cold silent about the erosion of our civil liberties over the last 8 years. Or worse, those who whole-heartedly supported such things when there was a Republican in the White House.

I don’t believe Obama is becoming our most left-leaning President ever. (Nor did I think he would be when I voted for him, much to my dismay.) The fact that you do says a lot about the state of political discourse in this country. We don’t have a politically viable left wing. The Democrats are the new moderate Republicans. The Republicans have just gone batshit crazy.

Think about it for a moment, Frank. Obama has proposed that we return tax brackets back to the Clinton years. There’s also some movement (although not enough IMO) towards toughening the regulation of the financial industry, again back to what it was 20 years ago. Are you seriously arguing that that constitutes the “most left-leaning President ever”??

That indicates some serious incompetence. Are you bragging or complaining?

No one has to tell a conservative about freedom from interference by authority figures.

Just what the Army needs, people who can’t follow orders.

How did you fail to advance beyond the lowest pay grade in the Army during a time when promotions to E-2 and E-3 were virtually automatic, and if you were still breathing after two years you were SP4? Was it because of some characteristic related to your “conservative” values, or is there another explanation?

How is:

“And how has your life been interfered with since Obama took office? Do you have any specific charges or complaints to make in this area of concern?

What “master(s)” have sought to limit it for you lately, was it yesterday, last week, last month?”

an insult?

That was not a joke. The new President has and will continue to press for programs that interfere in our lives. It is that I was referring to.

Again, how? This is just like Dennis whining about Obama owning “the means of production”, and has yet to answer my question about that.