Bush challenges hundreds of laws

This is the sort of thing that people get very angry at President Bush about: that he and his administration seem to believe that the law doesn't apply to them, or that he can violate the law as written by Congress whenever he wishes because he disagrees with it.

The NSA warrantless wiretap controversy is a good example of this. Briefly, FISA allows top-secret wiretap warrants to be issued ex parte, even up to 72 hours after the wiretapping begins. However, the executive branch saw fit to ignore the provisions of FISA and the associated secret court (which has nearly always granted the requested warrant anyway), as it apparently "gets in the way of the war on terror" too much.

Mind you, I'm not particularly opposed to the concept that times of war warrant some extraordinary measures that wouldn't be permissible in peacetime. However, to me this implies that the necessary reductions to civil liberties will be reversed once the danger has passed. But the War on Terror is apparently an "unending" one; does this mean that those liberties, respect for the law, and respect for the Constitution are lost forever?

Yep, breaking rules and bending laws is only a Republican strategy. Nobody in power ever does that if they're liberal - it's inconceivable to think that American politics is anything but strictly by-the-book, open, honest work.

:rolleyes:

I have been away for awhile but it seems the hypocricy of a liberal remains the same. The Dems are giving bush such a hard time and throwing out the word impeachment every chance they get. More recently they have been down Bush's throat about his pardoning of scooter libby when Clinton, on his last day in office, pardoned 141 people.

I will say once again, Bush has not been the best president but would you rather have Kerry in office? Thanks to bush's "illegal" activities we have thwarted several terrorist attacks Including the Fort Dix incident and an attempt to bring down the brooklyn bridge.

Well, pardoning lots of people is traditional - many presidents do it near the end of their term, and doing for lots of people is not out of the ordinary. The thing that made Clinton's pardons so unbelievable was stuff like pardoning Marc Rich after his wife and kids made large donations to the Democratic Party and Clinton library.

I don't think a comparison to worse alternatives justifies bad policy, but I'll grant you that Kerry doesn't inspire much confidence.

According to Wikipedia, the Fort Dix plot was uncovered by plain old boots-on-the-ground police work; they were reported to the FBI by a Circuit City employee after they brought in some video tapes of their activities to convert to DVD. At no point did detaining people out of reach of the courts, torturing them, or placing warrantless wiretaps contribute to taking down the plot.

The Wikipedia information on the Brooklyn Bridge plot is less clear; it points to a New York times article that claims that the NSA wiretapping programs had a role in uncovering it, but the article itself requires money to view.

Regardless, I am not against wiretapping per se, only the "trust us to carry it out and don't try to put any oversight over us" attitude of today's executive branch. There are already programs, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, that allow the executive an almost completely free hand in executing its intelligence duties. Thus, when the executive ignores even those light restrictions and refuses to give any specific reason why they should change, it makes me very suspicious. At best, it signals to me that the President and Pentagon are too incompetent to do their job to any reasonable democratic standard, and so wish to lower the bar.

Wow, i didn't realize how bad some of his pardon's were.

Our school has an online account to The New York Times, so I looked up the articles on the NSA wiretapping involving the Brooklyn Bridge plot, and the final decision, made by a fed. judge in Virginia, is that there were no illegal wiretappings involved.

However the article did also mention that there is suspicion of illegal wiretapping regardless.

According to Wikipedia... I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia isn't a very reliable source.

Wikipedia is, on average, pretty decent as encyclopedias go. Also, you will note that the link you pointed out is to a particular version of the article using the Permalink button, so you can't change the version I've linked to. Finally, the linked article is literally slathered in references to mainstream news sites.

Wikipedia, like the Internet at large, is only a tool. You must use it wisely, which is a standard that I believe I've met.

Yes I agree with you, yet I still think that even though it's a tool, your still using it as a source and your source must credible with not much of a hint of incredibility. Especially since that in wikipedia you can and could change the articles. I don't use wikipedia for political reasons and sources, but I will use it for things such as regarding as being a commentary on certain subjects like computer games, science maybe, and probably on books and authors.

Why would you use Wikipedia for concrete, scientific data if it's not "credible?" The big Wikipedia "debate" lies in manipulation of evidence, true, but you are being hypocritical.

I agree with you 100% Essyne. ;) Wikipedia sucks. It shouldn't be used for anything that you want to take seriously.

I don't know about you, but I would like to know that my country is looking out for me regardless of war/peace/whatever!
Quite frankly, if wire-tapping is where we are going to catch the "bad guys" -so to speak- then I have nothing against it. The government doesn't care about who you hooked up with last night. They care about national security. It's the people who HAVE something to be paranoid ABOUT that are paranoid. The president could care less about some Texans' killer green been cassarole.