Twisted Intelligence to Lie US to War and Warrantless Wire-Taps on Citizens – they just ‘go together’ – when Ideology Without Honor Subverts the Rule of Law to Advance it’s Agenda.

What Bush did was a Trust-breaker: In the name of ‘defending’ US, he pursued his Neo-Conservative-Subscribed goals – while Treating US, the Citizens of Our Country, as Worthy of Wire-Tapping based on the Suspicion of Ideological Differences – all on the signature of a Lackey AG – done in Secret from the Courts and Congress.

Iow, from a logic point of view – In ‘defending’ US against an ‘Ideological Monster’, Bush became an ‘Ideological Monster’ to US: To ‘defend’ the Rule of Law, he ‘broke’ the Rule of Law by Warrantlessly Surveilling US as Potential Enemies First and Citizens Second. In the name of Protecting US from a Tyrant, he acted like a Tyrant to US.

Turning the Apparatus of Ideology on US once before distinguished the Tories, the Loyalists to the Tyrant King, from the Freedom-seekers who sought protection from Civil Invasion and fought taxation without representation.

Our forebears fought over that Principle of Inalienable Human Rights for US. To protect Ourselves from this Disease of Human Ambition going forward, We said We needed to keep an Executive ‘honest’ with co-equal Courts and Legislators – so We don’t end up Ruled by a Despotic Man instead of Laws Applied Equally to All.

So, Bush, who says his ‘inherent power’ derives from the Constitution – the document embodying Our understanding of the Public Trust as the balance of three co-equal branches of government – Secretly Operates Above the Law and Without Regard for the Courts or Oversight.

That’s a Banana Republic. And, that’s a Trust-breaker.

We’ve had this argument before – We’d rather Die Free than Live with a Prisoner’s Security.

One for which the Founders gave US a Remedy, based on hard-won Truths about Tyrants using Ideology to Subvert the Rule of Law…

You know what I’m talking about.

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004017

The actors involved in these dealings have repeatedly “lost” documents and evidence relating to their dealings. For instance, a department ethics attorney who was fired for improper reasons sued the department and documents relating to her case mysteriously disappeared after they had been accessed by a person who went on to head the Criminal Division. In litigation in the Eastern District of Virginia, evidence related to two counterterrorism prosecutions similarly “disappeared.” In other counterterrorism cases, evidence connected with the treatment of detainees, including videotapes, regularly and completely improbably “disappeared.” And now, as the transition date draws near, the department refuses on the most preposterous grounds to share a full set of its secret torture opinions with the new president’s Justice transition team.

I’m still thinking that after the FISA court chief judge said the program(s) was so dirty, they would not allow any trickle of it into even FISA court (which doesn’t require criminal probable cause) it must be “interesting” to see how anyone continued to claim good faith re: the program(s).

He’s inside the office that orders physical wire-taps of US Citizens, which has US ‘Rule-of-Law’-based Standard Operating Procedures for handling and vetting Wire-Tap Applications before turning them ‘on’ – things like: Item A – Court-Ordered Warrant Number?

Tamm witnesses, firsthand, Wire-Tap Applications by-passing the Entire SOP; coming-in from Outside the Court (Warrant) System, getting fed into the que, and turned ‘on’.

Then, he finds out that this by-passing of the ‘Rule-of-Law’-based SOP – this Warrantless Wire-Tapping – Keeping it Secret from the Courts – is all happening on the Signature of the Chief Law Enforcement Agent for the Nation – the Director of the Department of Justice – Mr. Rule of Law himself – the Attorney General of the United States of America.

So, AG Secretly by-passing the Courts and the Rule of Law to Wire-Tap Citizens.

In that situation, imvho, blowing the whistle to the Press is the correct action.

Either the DOJ fibbed to her in those closed hearings, or Stellar Wind was NOT “teh program” that Gonzales presumably testified about (and which Hayden vehemently claimed was not a dragnet or data mining program) And Stellar Wind was the program against which she dismissed claims but only bc of the invocation of state secrets

Well, now you probably remember my theory that they were all playing a fraudulent and dishonest shell game with “the program”, “the program the President discussed”, and “other programs” etc. This is BS, it is all one concerted plan to violate atatute and Constitution to spy on Americans. The Bushies’ semantical gymnastics aside, it was all of a whole cloth.

The Stellar Wind assertions notwithstanding, she certainly seemed to indicate that the “TSP” (teh program) involved direct surveillance of calls by US citizens on US soil without any warrant and that’s what she shut down, while she dismissed the datamining element of the claim

For all of the reasons outlined above, this court is constrained to grant to Plaintiffs the Partial Summary Judgment requested, and holds that the TSP violates the APA; the Separation of Powers doctrine; the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution; and the statutory law.

Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss the final claim of data-mining is granted, because litigation of that claim would require violation of Defendants’ state secrets privilege.

Either the DOJ fibbed to her in those closed hearings, or Stellar Wind was NOT “teh program” that Gonzales presumably testified about (and which Hayden vehemently claimed was not a dragnet or data mining program) And Stellar Wind was the program against which she dismissed claims but only bc of the invocation of state secrets.

His internal process would have been to go to the IG. In a national security/intell community setting, the IG would have been required to then go to the agency head with details (under the assumption that the agency head isn’t knee deep in the fiasco) and if the IG felt there were criminal issues, he would go to the AG (also under the assumption that they were not knee deep in the fiasco) From the get go, though, the little Tamm knew about indicated that both the agency head(s) and AG were likely involved. Not only did this leave the IG with no one much to go to, but there were carveouts of IG powers in “national security” settings, so that the IG had to notify the agency head of what the IG wanted to investigate, but the agency head could, at that time, tell the IG to piss off bc the matter involved national security – they could shut the IG down. And that action by the agency head was set up to be not reviewable by any court.

So you go through channels if you have rogue underlings, but in a nat sec setting, we have no appropriate mechanism if the criminals are at the top of the food chain and in particular, if they are thick as thieves with the AG. fwiw

OT – Horton has a piece up on the torture presidency,
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004012
where he makes an interesting observation about the torture report released.

The report has some more bombshells in it waiting to emerge on declassification. … deep in its classified hold, the report looks into the use of psychotropic drugs which were, with Donald Rumsfeld’s approval, routinely administered to prisoners in order to facilitate their interrogation—in violation of international agreements and American criminal law.

IIRC, this was a specific issue that Padilla’s lawyers claimed and they wanted discovery on it and to go into it at trial, but the judge shut them down. So it looks pretty likely that once they figured out they were torturing people with no information, they deliberately set out to destroy them mentally to the point where they could never be competent witnesses as to what had happened to them. And then they collected their medals of honor and pensions.