Washington Post
by E. J. Dionne Jr.

12/20/05

It's not too much to say that liberty and democracy were triumphant last week. Remarkably, the willingness of four senators to cross party lines was the key to this victory. The good news came when the Senate voted to stall the renewal of the USA Patriot Act, which granted extraordinary powers to law enforcement after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Forty-six senators, including those four Republicans, refused to shut off debate on the bill because they believe that some of its provisions go too far in impinging upon civil liberties. The rebels are not opposed to all of the Patriot Act's provisions; they acknowledge that the rise of terrorism requires new approaches to law enforcement. But they insist on preserving traditional American protections for individual rights. They think judges should be able to review the actions of the authorities, they want to avoid police fishing expeditions, and they want to protect privacy...

http://tinyurl.com/ay2b5


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The American Prospect
by Matthew Yglesias

12/20/05

Friday's three big news stories -- the elections in Iraq, the president's flip-flop on John McCain's anti-torture amendment, and the revelation that the administration ordered the National Security Agency to conduct domestic surveillance without warrants -- brought home in an unusually poignant manner one of the paradoxes at the heart of the past several years: The same group of people who've decided they're on a historic mission to spread democracy and liberal values around the world seem, based on their conduct at home, to have a very weak grasp of what those values entail. The surveillance matter is disturbing not only, or even especially, for the casual disregard for civil liberty and Anglo-American tradition it entails. Rather, the main point here is about the law. It was universally understood on September 10, 2001, that, wisely or unwisely, intelligence agencies could not conduct this sort of operation without first gaining approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Nothing happened the following day to change that reality...

http://www.prospect.org/web/view-web.ww?id=10767


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Cape Cod Times
by Sean Gonsalves

12/20/05

Because of the New York Times investigative report published last week, President Bush was forced to admit that he had 'reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks' -- something he intends 'to do as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida.' And this is why language is so important. People were calling Martin Luther King -- whose federalized birthday the nation will recognize next month -- a 'communist traitor' in a Cold War political context. The most celebrated dove in American history was spied on because he was considered a threat by his own government. That means none of us is safe. It also means anything can be justified under the banner of 'security,' which is why those willing to give up their liberty in exchange for security deserve neither. Remember when President Bush joked that things would be easier if he were a dictator. I guess he wasn't joking...

http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/edits/seang.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
by staff

12/20/05

The 'humbler' new version of President George W. Bush unveiled last week made yet another appearance Monday morning, this time asserting vast powers to do what he wanted, when he wanted, to protect the nation from its enemies. If this is humility, what would arrogance look like?

http://tinyurl.com/98mh5


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Christian Science Monitor
by Warren Richey

12/21/05

President Bush's decision to allow the super-secret National Security Agency to spy on Americans without court warrants has touched off stormy debate about his aggressive approach to the war on terror. This clash -- between civil libertarians and the administration's expansive view of presidential power -- is a recurring theme in the Bush White House. It lies at the center of ongoing debates over the government's use of coercive interrogation techniques and the open-ended detention of alleged enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in military prisons in the United States...

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1221/p02s02-uspo.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Los Angeles Times
by staff

12/20/05

One of the perks of being commander in chief is that you get to edit the Constitution, even the Bill of Rights, from time to time. That is in essence the legal justification offered by the Bush administration for its authorization of a secret program to wiretap, without any court order, international communications of individuals within the United States suspected of ties to terrorist groups. ... 'The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy,' Bush testily said at his Monday news conference. He then made much of the fact that the monitoring program, which bypasses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's requirement that investigators seek secret court warrants in national security cases, only applies to international communications, where one caller or e-mail correspondent is out of the country. 'So in other words,' Bush explained, 'this is not a -- if you're calling from Houston to L.A., that call is not monitored. And if there was ever any need to monitor, there would be a process to do that.' This distinction between international and domestic calls is perplexing. Americans in their own country do not waive their 4th Amendment right to privacy when they dial 011. Moreover, the distinction doesn't even make sense on the administration's own terms...

http://tinyurl.com/8g8p4


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Unknown News
by Don Nash

12/20/05

We know how many weapons you have and where you keep them and we know that you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with those aforementioned weapons, if the barn were directly in front of you. You see, you have all been acquired into our uniform database. It was a pressing necessity. This is the 'war on terror' after all. Good lord, what did you think that we do with all of the money that Congress throws in our direction. We use it and we use it to our advantage. We can't be caught with our pants down so to speak. Rest assured that we know what we are doing. You'll just have to trust us. You'll just have to trust President George W. Bush. You have no other choice. Resistance is futile. I love that line, I really do...

http://www.unknownnews.org/051221arr.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

National Review
by US Senator John Sununu (R-NH)

12/20/05

Letter to the editor: "I do not believe that it is unreasonable to require a standard for obtaining 215 orders or NSLs that discourages unwarranted access to business, medical, and financial information. I do not believe that a meaningful judicial review of gag orders threatens the ability of law enforcement to pursue terrorism investigations. Finally, I think it is unwise to single out the recipients of these orders who choose to consult an attorney. These are issues that could have been effectively addressed months ago. Unfortunately, the administration chose to believe that anything with the word 'Patriot' on it would fly through Congress. They were wrong...

http://www.nationalreview.com/letters/sununu200512201118.asp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Slate
by Daniel Benjamin

12/20/05

What is new is not that this kind of surveillance is done but that Bush has ordered signals-intelligence collection without obtaining the warrants that everyone, including virtually the entire United States Congress, thought were necessary in the case of surveillance of communications taking place at least partially in America. This is not about novel sources and methods -- the same collection would have occurred if the administration obtained warrants -- it is a matter of legality and legitimacy. There appears to be no way in which loose lips about these intercepts will sink ships. They may, however, put a large hole in the administration's hull...

http://www.slate.com/id/2132922


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Reason
by Jacob Sullum

12/20/05

If FISA somehow prevents timely monitoring of terrorists, the appropriate response is to fix the law. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told reporters, 'We have had discussions with ... certain members of Congress as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.' Since the president thought Congress was not willing to change the law, he simply ignored it, although he was polite enough to let some legislators know he was ignoring it. The details of these briefings are a matter of dispute, but secretly telling a few members of Congress about a policy that cannot be publicly discussed clearly is not the same as seeking congressional authorization...

http://www.reason.com/sullum/122105.shtml


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp