Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Next Excuse a Lie As Well

Looks like each lie the Administration has come up with to try and justify breaking the law with respect to spying on Americans without due process has been caught out.

Go read Glenn Greenwald's latest post, which summarily shoots down the latest lie about "probable cause". Glenn points out that in 2002 Senator DeWine proposed legislation which would've amended the FISA law to lower the burden of proof from probable cause to reasonable suspicion (one caveat, for non-US persons only), precisely what the constitution-challenged former NSA head was claiming was why they "had to" break the law. He also claimed they sought such changes but Congress wouldn't give it to them.

Guess What? The one and only James Baker speaking for the Bush Justice Department opposed the law on constitutional concerns.

Here is a Maxwell Smart review of the administration lies.

Would you believe the program was a super secret technology thing? No?

Then would you believe the program was necessary because the FISA court doesn't allow them to act fast enough. No?

How about the program was necessary because Congress wouldn't let us lower the necessary burden of proof. Oh! I forgot we oppposed that ourselves.

Well...how about

We wanted to spy on whoever we wanted to without any oversight or accountability.

Yeah that's the ticket.

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