Infuriating!

Comments

1. tim says:

   January 17, 2009 at 2:54 am

   Ha, too bad Barack is closing Gitmo, and wiretapping stopped in 2007 and was declared ILLEGAL by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008. And nice groos generalization at the end, that almost cracked me up as the ad that accused Obama of “teaching sex-ed to babies”. Nice try.
2. Laura says:

   January 17, 2009 at 11:52 am

   Suuure he’s closing Gitmo. But when?

   Considering this week alone we’ve gone from Club Gitmo closing in 100 days to Obama announcing it on Day One to now maybe making sure it gets closed by 2013. Nothing like taking a firm stand, Barry.

   And warrentless wiretapping? Totally legal, baby.

   As to that gross generalization – just calling it like I see it. Please provide a link to that “teaching sex-ed to babies” ad – it sounds hilarious.
3. Drew says:

   January 17, 2009 at 3:15 pm

   Also, WorldNetDaily has recently pointed out that Pepsi is pro-gay. I’m like you; I’d boycott, but Coke already tastes better anyway.

   Btw, Obama did support a bill to teach “age-appropriate” sex ed to kindergartners, although the bill failed.

   The sad thing, though, is that most of the federal Republicans do seem willing to give Obama a chance.
4. tim says:

   January 17, 2009 at 4:00 pm

   Here’s the link: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3386492

   As far as Gitmo is concerned: Obama said it could take up to the first 100 days in office but,

   But I don’t want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution. That is not only the right thing to do but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy, because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.

   And about the wiretapping:

   “Ultimately, though, the entire legal debate in the NSA scandal comes down to these few, very clear and straightforward facts: Congress passed a law in 1978 making it a criminal offense to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial oversight. Nobody of any significance ever claimed that that law was unconstitutional. The Administration not only never claimed it was unconstitutional, but Bush expressly asked for changes to the law in the aftermath of 9/11, thereafter praised the law, and misled Congress and the American people into believing that they were complying with the law. In reality, the Administration was secretly breaking the law, and then pleaded with The New York Times not to reveal this. Once caught, the Administration claimed it has the right to break the law and will continue to do so.”
5. tim says:

   January 17, 2009 at 4:16 pm

   The full story about the sex-ed accusation.
6. Laura says:

   January 17, 2009 at 4:35 pm

   As far as Gitmo is concerned, as in my link above, which links to further documentation – Obama’s already backpedaled on the first 100 days and now says he’ll try to do it by the end of his first term. Well, we’ll see, but those campaign promises he was so free and easy with would come back and bite him right on the butt, if his acolytes and the media held him accountable for it. Which they won’t.

   About the wiretapping – it was a crock right from the off, defining it “domestic” for example, when it was overseas. Nobody calls a flight from New York to Paris “domestic” for example. It was all a political ploy to hammer Bush. Pelosi and the rest knew darned well what was going on and approved it, until they wanted to smack the GOP around. However, according the link I provided and this one:

   Ever since the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was exposed in 2005, critics have denounced it as illegal and unconstitutional. Those allegations rested solely on the fact that the Administration did not first get permission from the special court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Well, as it happens, the same FISA court would beg to differ.

   In a major August 2008 decision released yesterday in redacted form, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the FISA appellate panel, affirmed the government’s Constitutional authority to collect national-security intelligence without judicial approval. The case was not made public before yesterday, and its details remain classified. An unnamed telecom company refused to comply with the National Security Agency’s monitoring requests and claimed the program violated the Fourth Amendment’s restrictions on search and seizure.
7. tim says:

   January 17, 2009 at 4:50 pm

   To note, the court also declared that its review addressed only how the law was applied in 2007, not its underlying constitutionality. Therefore, this case will most likely be brought to the Supreme Court. The American Bar Association, the Congressional Research Service, former Congressional representative of New York Elizabeth Holtzman, former White House Counsel John Dean, and lawyer/author Jennifer van Bergen have also criticized the administration’s justification for conducting electronic surveillance within the US without first obtaining warrants as contrary to current U.S. law. President Bush’s former Assistant Deputy Attorney General for national security issues, David Kris, and five former FISC judges, one of whom resigned in protest, have also voiced their doubts as to the legality of a program bypassing FISA:

   FISA explicitly covers “electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence information” performed within the United States, and there is no court decision supporting the theory that the President’s constitutional authority allows him to override statutory law. This was emphasized by fourteen constitutional law scholars, including the dean of Yale Law School and the former deans of Stanford Law School and the University of Chicago Law School:

   The argument that conduct undertaken by the Commander in Chief that has some relevance to ‘engaging the enemy’ is immune from congressional regulation finds no support in, and is directly contradicted by, both case law and historical precedent. Every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute. No precedent holds that the President, when acting as Commander in Chief, is free to disregard an Act of Congress, much less a criminal statute enacted by Congress, that was designed specifically to restrain the President as such.
8. Laura says:

   January 19, 2009 at 12:35 pm

   So let it go to SCOTUS then. I look forward to it.

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