Since when has logic had anything whatever to do with Bush's utterances?  He says whatever his handlers think will play the best on the evening news.  There is no necessary relation to fact, logic or reality.  So why would we even credit him with TRYING to be truthful?  Though I wouldnt say he lies every time he opens his mouth, I would say that he has complete and total disregard for the truth every time he opens his mouth - If he even knows what the truth is.

"While troubling in terms of civil liberties, this would gain no traction with a more popular President. I predict this will fizzle."

And this will likely aid Bush in becoming more popular.  The electoral politics of the issue do not cut our way.

But in terms of fizzling or not, it's important to remember that it's all up to Spector.  If he wants to make something of this, he can.  If he wants to let it drop, he can.

Re: Checks and balances are important for a number of reasons, but one is that institutions with complex and competing responsibilities act imperfectly in the real world.----------
I think that 10 years of 'in your crack' tabloid journalism  has created a naturally honed pathway for violations of civil iiberties, leading to a thriving tabloid market and lawsuits. This is a more pervasive kind of warrantless surveillance. I raise this to highlight the point that this is as much culture and agency. 

It is Howard Dean's job to be clearly framing this issue:

Why could you not get a warrant, even afterwards?

And he is not framing the issue.  There is not much we can do without leadership. 

The just department needs to issue arrest warrents for the people doing the crime.

Wow. I mean bloody freakin wow. We've been calling W a moron for so long, it's just breathtaking when we pulls something like this. In a certain, cynical, dangerous, immoral way, the man is a genius. His use of strawmen arguments whenever he's challenged is really pretty amazing (and I'm actually being serious here). His brain seems to just work that way: When confronted, respond angrily to an accusation that's easy to rebut. We all do it from time to time, but the man's facility and imagination in going to that well over and over and over is, well, ingenious. It's also catastrophic that the so-called MSM never calls him on it, of course ...

It is Howard Dean's job to be clearly framing this issue:

No, that is not Howard Dean's job. His job is nuts and bolts organizing and fund raising. It is our congressional delegation who need to get together and "frame" this issue. That isn't likely to happen for some time - what would be the benefit, unless the Republicans finally decide that the constitution means something? Until the Republicans in the House decide to hold judiciary committee hearings into this, it is a non-starter as in issue. Far too many of our citizens don't believe the constitution applies to the government, especially not to a Republican government and not when that government says we are at war. We are paying the price for neglecting high school civics classes for many generations.

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Because we have neither judicial nor congressional oversight, we do not know in the first place wether Bush is telling the truth. We do not know what the scope of the program is now or has been, and there have been reports suggesting that NSA intercepts morphed to a much broader scope.

Bush will try to put the matter in the safe hands of Sen Roberts and his Intel Committee. So without leaks, we won't know the truth until such time as the Democrats can retake at least one house of Congress.

Until then, the spin will be as it was today....Don't fret - only evidoers need worry.

The Democrats must avoid debate on these terms.   Bush violated the law; he usurped constitutional powers of congress and the courts; he violated the constitutional rights of US citizens and hs is not telling the truth about what he did or why.



 "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, a wiretap requires a court order."

The problem is that people of Islamic faith have ties to relatives etc in middle eastern or Muslim countries. They communicate, I think, like anyone else, in routine ways. Communications to those states is targeted for surveilance. The question becomes how to sift the communications effectively without violation of laws. The fact is there probably isn't a way to do that and serve both the purpose of security and liberty. And how do you determine that a seemingly innocuous communication might actually be a coded conversation? And lastly, if I am a real terrorist, I would find a way to conduct necessary communications without compromising security. Doing so indirectly via links in South America, Latin America, Canada or Asia wouldn't be unreasonable and might be subject to less scrutiny.

And if I can think of these things so can the NSA. Which means they'd have to do a lot more than we might think to have a chance of intercepting critical communications. How broadly might they be searching is anybody's guess. The scope of possibilities is very broad and so too then are the possible infractions that have been untertaken by the administration.

thepeoplechoose

Bush has justified warrantless searches as an "important program in a time of war" and has made repeated references to his powers as a wartime president. Are we technically "at war" in Iraq? Is he referring to the war on terror, a nebulous concept analagous to the cold war, which could maintain a state of war - and suspension of constitutionally protected civil liberties - indefinitely.

Is he referring to the war on terror, a nebulous concept analagous to the cold war, which could maintain a state of war - and suspension of constitutionally protected civil liberties - indefinitely.

By Golly! I'll bet that never did occur to Bush - his dream come true - how fortuitous!

All you liberal Democrats need to get a grip.  Bush is not going to get impeached over this.  He is going to serve out his term.  Focus on getting your people elected if you want to change the tone in Washington.  Trying to get back at the Republicans for impeaching Clinton is not smart politics.  There is enough unease with the American people over the machinations of the Republican Party in domestic politics.  FISA is a non-issue that your average, voting American does not understand.  Bush will be able to spin this to make you look like you would rather have America attacked than to let the Feds listen in on phone calls from Al Quada.  No win.  Move on to something of real importance that will sell with the American people.

The Bush comment that they'll attack us again cannot be proved one way or another.

I suspect that the multiple goals of disrupting the U.S. political system, inducing Constitutional violations of individual liberties and the global perception of democracy have been achieved. OBL has exposed the flaws in our system, only because Bush allowed himself to be suckered. Bush has failed to grasp this is an ideological war and not one that can be fought in a conventional sense. The idea behind violence such as 9/11 or any other is to bring about a modification of behavior. The compromise of our Constitutional freedoms is exactly what OBL wanted to achieve. Bush & Co have been unwitting accomplices in that endeavor. If Bush had strength of conviction in our Constitution and the underlying principles that make it work his abject fear of an enemy could not have made him violate those principles.

thepeoplechoose

This is why I quit calling 1-800-AlQaeda…Bush can say whatever he wants because any lies he puts forth are protecting our secret WOT programs. I doubt that these intercepts were just tracing of al Qaeda communiqués back to the U.S. It may have been a fishing program of data mining, keyword searching, bugging of American Muslims where no terrorist connection could be made or worse.

The MSM seem determined to spin this as a non-issue. Perhaps the media is acting out of a general guilt for supporting this fear mongering all along. We hear over and over that most Americans will give up civil liberties for protection. I think most people are appalled at the trashing of the Constitution. And, really, it doesn’t matter anyway.

If there were al Qaeda connections, FISA would have approved the spying. If there was some technical hang-up, Congress could have tweaked FISA (secretly even, as with black ops). Obviously, the intent of the program was to circumvent oversight. The bottom line is that the NSA, at the President’s command, has broken the law.

Yeah, but the core problem is that we are incapable of doing basic intelligence grunt work.  We have a governnment so incompetent that it is busy infiltrating decades old and decades harmless Catholic peace groups in Des Moines but it can't infiltrate a terrorist cell anywhere.   It isn't going to stop a terrorist act by reading all the mail and listening to all the phone calls of everyone everywhere.  Ask them how many fluent Arabic intelligence agents they've put in the field since 9/11. 

Hmm, Logical does rhyme with Popsicle.

Re: the question is how to follow the US Constitution's prohibition of unreasonable searches, and the FISA law which prohibits wire taps without warrants, while gaining as much information as possible without those restrictions.-----------
You can't be serious with this question.  Through history, people have managed to this with such ease. Friends and family members who may have a hankering to bend over for any attention or are prone to toolmongering have be used for such purposes. No?  You should read some accounts of those European dynasties, with family members conniving against their own or rival clans. As I said status anxiety can be utilized constitionally.