Quote :

"but you don't see me bitchin and whinin about it and actin like a bitch trying to get people suspended"

Sounds to me like you're hysterical.

1/20/2006 3:26:04 PM

riiiiiight

you think I'm some kind of idiot?

Quote :

"Woodfoot: "getting salisburyboy suspended transcends partisan politics""

http://www.thewolfweb.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=381090

1/20/2006 3:28:49 PM

yes.

1/20/2006 3:29:22 PM

Do you try to make it this easy cheesy?

[Edited on January 20, 2006 at 3:29 PM. Reason : mmmm...cheese]

1/20/2006 3:29:28 PM

sals is the of the limburger order.

1/20/2006 3:31:54 PM

Quote :

"I don't even feel safe posting topics on here any more."

OMF call the whambulance! Grumpy feels harrassed.



What a bunch of pussies.

1/20/2006 3:49:21 PM

OMFG

HE JUST CALLED SOMEBODY A PUSSY

LOOKS LIKE MATHFREAK'S VAGINA IS FULL OF CHEESE

[Edited on January 20, 2006 at 4:02 PM. Reason : *]

1/20/2006 3:52:27 PM

Wow

I didn't think in a million years anybody would take that comment seriously

1/20/2006 4:42:58 PM

What a fucking shame...

And these are college students, some of them graduates, in the best country in the world.

What a shame...

1/20/2006 7:18:59 PM

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, ed. L.W. Labaree, 1759

1/21/2006 12:03:37 PM

It's not domestic wiretapping! It's the Terrorist Surveillance Program(tm)!!!

1/24/2006 2:00:18 PM

He reiterated today that the congressional approval of using force to fight terrorism is what gives him the legal authority for domestic wiretapping.

He also mentioned what I find to be a charming legal doctrine, the fact that FISA is, like, TOTALLY old, and who wants to use a gay secret court anyway? Seriously. When asked why he circumvented FISA he was like "Circumvent is a bad word, but anyways I did it because FISA was made in 1978 and it's not useful anymore."

That's great, buddy. I didn't realize there was a statute of limitations on goddamn federal laws.

1/26/2006 11:14:48 AM

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11079547/site/newsweek/

Quote :

"Palace Revolt They were loyal conservatives, and Bush appointees. They fought a quiet battle to rein in the president's power in the war on terror. And they paid a price for it. A NEWSWEEK investigation. By Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor Jr. and Evan Thomas Newsweek Feb. 6, 2006 issue - James Comey, a lanky, 6-foot-8 former prosecutor who looks a little like Jimmy Stewart, resigned as deputy attorney general in the summer of 2005. The press and public hardly noticed. Comey's farewell speech, delivered in the Great Hall of the Justice Department, contained all the predictable, if heartfelt, appreciations. But mixed in among the platitudes was an unusual passage. Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way." One of those people—a former assistant attorney general named Jack Goldsmith—was absent from the festivities and did not, for many months, hear Comey's grateful praise. In the summer of 2004, Goldsmith, 43, had left his post in George W. Bush's Washington to become a professor at Harvard Law School. Stocky, rumpled, genial, though possessing an enormous intellect, Goldsmith is known for his lack of pretense; he rarely talks about his time in government. In liberal Cambridge, Mass., he was at first snubbed in the community and mocked as an atrocity-abetting war criminal by his more knee-jerk colleagues. ICY WELCOME FOR NEW LAW PROF, headlined The Harvard Crimson. They had no idea. Goldsmith was actually the opposite of what his detractors imagined. For nine months, from October 2003 to June 2004, he had been the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers. Their insurrection, described to NEWSWEEK by current and former administration officials who did not wish to be identified discussing confidential deliberations, is one of the most significant and intriguing untold stories of the war on terror. These Justice Department lawyers, backed by their intrepid boss Comey, had stood up to the hard-liners, centered in the office of the vice president, who wanted to give the president virtually unlimited powers in the war on terror. Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril; ostracized, some were denied promotions, while others left for more comfortable climes in private law firms and academia. Some went so far as to line up private lawyers in 2004, anticipating that the president's eavesdropping program would draw scrutiny from Congress, if not prosecutors. These government attorneys did not always succeed, but their efforts went a long way toward vindicating the principle of a nation of laws and not men. The rebels were not whistle-blowers in the traditional sense. They did not want—indeed avoided—publicity. (Goldsmith confirmed public facts about himself but otherwise declined to comment. Comey also declined to comment.) They were not downtrodden career civil servants. Rather, they were conservative political appointees who had been friends and close colleagues of some of the true believers they were fighting against. They did not see the struggle in terms of black and white but in shades of gray—as painfully close calls with unavoidable pitfalls. They worried deeply about whether their principles might put Americans at home and abroad at risk. Their story has been obscured behind legalisms and the veil of secrecy over the White House. But it is a quietly dramatic profile in courage. (For its part the White House denies any internal strife. "The proposition of internal division in our fight against terrorism isn't based in fact," says Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney. "This administration is united in its commitment to protect Americans, defeat terrorism and grow democracy.") The chief opponent of the rebels, though by no means the only one, was an equally obscure, but immensely powerful, lawyer-bureaucrat. Intense, workaholic (even by insane White House standards), David Addington, formerly counsel, now chief of staff to the vice president, is a righteous, ascetic public servant. According to those who know him, he does not care about fame, riches or the trappings of power. He takes the Metro to work, rather than use his White House parking pass, and refuses to even have his picture taken by the press. His habitual lunch is a bowl of gazpacho, eaten in the White House Mess. He is hardly anonymous inside the government, however. Presidential appointees quail before his volcanic temper, backed by assiduous preparation and acid sarcasm. Addington, 49, has worked as an adviser to Dick Cheney off and on since Cheney was a member and Addington a staffer on the House Intelligence Committee in the mid-'80s. When Cheney became secretary of Defense in the Bush 41 administration, Addington served at the Pentagon as general counsel. When Cheney became vice president to Bush 43, he brought Addington into the White House as his lawyer. Counsel to the vice president is, in most administrations, worth less than the proverbial bucket of warm spit, but under Prime Minister Cheney, it became a vital power center, especially after 9/11. Like his boss, Addington has long believed that the executive branch was pitifully weakened by the backlash from Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. Fearful of investigative reporters and congressional subpoenas, soldiers and spies had become timid—"risk averse" in bureaucratic jargon. To Addington and Cheney, the 9/11 attacks—and the threat of more and worse to come—were perfect justification for unleashing the CIA and other long-blunted weapons in the national-security arsenal. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who disdains lawyers, was ready to go. So, too, was CIA Director George Tenet—but only if his spooks had legal cover, so they wouldn't be left holding the bag if things went wrong. Addington and a small band of like-minded lawyers set about providing that cover—a legal argument that the power of the president in time of war was virtually untrammeled. One of Addington's first jobs had been to draft a presidential order establishing military commissions to try unlawful combatants—terrorists caught on the global battlefield. The normal "interagency process"—getting agreement from lawyers at Defense, State, the intelligence agencies and so forth—proved glacial, as usual. So Addington, working with fellow conservative Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan, came up with a solution: cut virtually everyone else out. Addington is a purist, not a cynic; he does not believe he is in any way ignoring or twisting the law. It is also important to note that Addington was not sailing off on some personal crusade; he had the full backing of the president and vice president, who shared his views. But, steeped in bureaucratic experience and clear in his purpose, Addington was a ferocious infighter for his cause. (Addington declined to comment. But McBride, the vice president's spokeswoman, said, "David Addington has a long, distinguished record of public service. He's committed to the president's agenda.") Inexperienced in national-security law, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was steered by more-expert lawyers like Addington and Flanigan. Others, like John Bellinger, the National Security Council's top lawyer, were simply not told what was going on. Addington and the hard-liners had particular disregard for Bellinger, who was considered a softie—mocked by Addington because he had lunch once a month or so with a pillar of the liberal-leaning legal establishment, the late Lloyd Cutler. When Addington and Flanigan produced a document—signed by Bush—that gave the president near-total authority over the prosecution of suspected terrorists, Bellinger burst into Gonzales's office, clearly upset, according to a source familiar with the episode. But it was too late. Addington was just getting started. Minimizing dissent by going behind the backs of bureaucratic rivals was how he played the game. A potentially formidable obstacle, however, was the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The OLC is the most important government office you've never heard of. Among its bosses—before they went on the Supreme Court—were William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia. Within the executive branch, including the Pentagon and CIA, the OLC acts as a kind of mini Supreme Court. Its carefully worded opinions are regarded as binding precedent—final say on what the president and all his agencies can and cannot legally do."

continued...

1/29/2006 10:53:40 PM

some woman on savage the other night called in and was scared that the EVIL LEFT will use this to spy on Christians and Homeschoolers now!

WE HAVE OPENED PANDORAS BOX!

1/29/2006 10:56:53 PM

Quote :

"Addington found an ally in an OLC lawyer whose name—John Yoo—would later become synonymous with the notion that power is for the president to use as he sees fit in a time of war. Shortly after 9/11, Yoo wrote, in a formal OLC opinion, that Congress may not "place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response." The brainy, pleasant and supremely self-confident Yoo became Addington's main man at Justice, a prolific author of legal opinions granting the president maximum power during wartime. In the winter of 2002, the CIA began catching top Qaeda terrorists—so-called High Value Targets—like Abu Zubaydah. These hard-case jihadists proved resistant to normal methods of interrogation. In the fevered atmosphere of the time, the Bush administration feared a "second wave" attack from Qaeda sleeper cells still inside the United States. The CIA wanted legal permission to use "coercive methods." An August 2002 OLC memo, signed by the then head of the OLC—Jay Bybee—but drafted by Yoo, gave the agency what it needed. The controversial document, which became famous as the "torture memo" when it leaked two years later, defined torture so narrowly that, short of maiming or killing a prisoner, interrogators had a free hand. What's more, the memo claimed license for the president to order methods that would be torture by anyone's definition—and to do it wholesale, and not just in specific cases. A very similar Yoo memo in March 2003 was even more expansive, authorizing military interrogators questioning terror suspects to ignore many criminal statutes—as well as the strict interrogation rules traditionally used by the military. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld put some limits on interrogation techniques, and they were intended to be used only on true terror suspects. Perhaps inevitably, however, "coercive interrogation methods" spread from Guantanamo Bay, which housed terror suspects, into prisons like Abu Ghraib, where detainees could be almost anyone. (Poor leadership in the chain of command and on the ground was partly to blame, as well as loose or fuzzy legal rules.) The result: those grotesque images of Iraqis being humiliated by poorly trained and sadistic American prison guards, not to mention prisoners who have been brutalized and in some cases killed by interrogators in Afghanistan and elsewhere. In the summer of 2003, Yoo, who stands by his body of work, left the Justice Department and returned to teaching law. His departure came in the midst of a critical power struggle. Addington and Gonzales had both wanted to make Yoo head of the OLC when Bybee went off to take a federal judgeship in March 2003, but Attorney General John Ashcroft balked. Ashcroft's reasons were apparently bureaucratic. (He declined to speak for this story.) According to colleagues, he resented Yoo's going behind his back to give the White House a private pipeline into the OLC. Yoo denied circumventing Ashcroft. "OLC kept the attorney general or his staff fully informed of all of its work in the war on terrorism," he said. Jack Goldsmith, a law professor who was working in the general counsel's office at the Pentagon, was the eventual compromise choice to head the OLC. Goldsmith seemed like a natural fit. He was brilliant, a graduate of Oxford and Yale Law School, and he was conservative. Like Yoo, he was tagged a "New Sovereigntist" for his scholarly argument that international laws including prohibitions on human-rights abuses should not be treated as binding law by the U.S. courts. But somehow, in the vetting of Goldsmith, one of his important views was overlooked. Goldsmith is no executive-power absolutist. What's more, his friends say, he did not intend to be a patsy for Addington and the hard-liners around Cheney. Goldsmith was not the first administration lawyer to push back against Addington & Co. At the CIA, general counsel Scott Muller had caused a stir by ruling that CIA agents could not join with the military in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. But Goldsmith became a rallying point for Justice Department lawyers who had legal qualms about the administration's stance. But somehow, in the vetting of Goldsmith, one of his important views was overlooked. Goldsmith is no executive-power absolutist. What's more, his friends say, he did not intend to be a patsy for Addington and the hard-liners around Cheney. Goldsmith was not the first administration lawyer to push back against Addington & Co. At the CIA, general counsel Scott Muller had caused a stir by ruling that CIA agents could not join with the military in the interrogation of Iraqi prisoners. But Goldsmith became a rallying point for Justice Department lawyers who had legal qualms about the administration's stance. Addington soon suffered pangs of buyer's remorse over Goldsmith. There was no way to simply ignore the new head of the OLC. Over time, Addington's heartburn grew much worse. In December, Goldsmith informed the Defense Department that Yoo's March 2003 torture memo was "under review" and could no longer be relied upon. It is almost unheard-of for an administration to overturn its own OLC opinions. Addington was beside himself. Later, in frequent face-to-face confrontations, he attacked Goldsmith for changing the rules in the middle of the game and putting brave men at risk, according to three former government officials, who declined to speak on the record given the sensitivity of the subject. Addington's problems with Goldsmith were just beginning. In the jittery aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration had pushed the top-secret National Security Agency to do a better and more expansive job of electronically eavesdropping on Al Qaeda's global communications. Under existing law—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, adopted in 1978 as a post-Watergate reform—the NSA needed (in the opinion of most legal experts) to get a warrant to eavesdrop on communications coming into or going out of the United States. Reasoning that there was no time to obtain warrants from a secret court set up under FISA (a sometimes cumbersome process), the Bush administration justified going around the law by invoking a post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing use of force against global terror. The eavesdropping program was very closely held, with cryptic briefings for only a few congressional leaders. Once again, Addington and his allies made sure that possible dissenters were cut out of the loop. There was one catch: the secret program had to be reapproved by the attorney general every 45 days. It was Goldsmith's job to advise the A.G. on the legality of the program. In March 2004, John Ashcroft was in the hospital with a serious pancreatic condition. At Justice, Comey, Ashcroft's No. 2, was acting as attorney general. The grandson of an Irish cop and a former U.S. attorney from Manhattan, Comey, 45, is a straight arrow. (It was Comey who appointed his friend—the equally straitlaced and dogged Patrick Fitzgerald—to be the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak-investigation case.) Goldsmith raised with Comey serious questions about the secret eavesdropping program, according to two sources familiar with the episode. He was joined by a former OLC lawyer, Patrick Philbin, who had become national-security aide to the deputy attorney general. Comey backed them up. The White House was told: no reauthorization. The angry reaction bubbled up all the way to the Oval Office. President Bush, with his penchant for put-down nicknames, had begun referring to Comey as "Cuomey" or "Cuomo," apparently after former New York governor Mario Cuomo, who was notorious for his Hamlet-like indecision over whether to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in the 1980s. A high-level delegation—White House Counsel Gonzales and chief of staff Andy Card—visited Ashcroft in the hospital to appeal Comey's refusal. In pain and on medication, Ashcroft stood by his No. 2. A compromise was finally worked out. The NSA was not compelled to go to the secret FISA court to get warrants, but Justice imposed tougher legal standards before permitting eavesdropping on communications into the United States. It was a victory for the Justice lawyers, and it drove Addington to new levels of vexation with Goldsmith. Addington is a hard man to cross. Flanigan, his former White House colleague, described his M.O.: "David could go from zero to 150 very quickly. I'm not sure how much is temper and how much is for effect. At a meeting with government bureaucrats he might start out very calm. Then he would start with the sarcasm. He could say, 'We could do that, but that would give away all of the president's power.' All of a sudden here comes David Addington out of his chair. I'd think to myself we're not just dancing a minuet, there's a little slam dancing going on here." But Addington "usually had the facts, the law and the precedents on his side," says Flanigan. He had another huge advantage. He never needed to invoke Cheney's name, but everyone knew that he spoke for the vice president. Addington was particularly biting with Goldsmith. During a long struggle over the legality of the August 2002 torture memo, Addington confronted Goldsmith, according to two sources who had heard accounts of the conversation: "Now that you've withdrawn legal opinions that the president of the United States has been relying on, I need you to go through all of OLC's opinions [relating to the war on terror] and let me know which ones you still stand by," Addington said."

[Edited on January 29, 2006 at 11:02 PM. Reason : see if i can get it all in here]

1/29/2006 11:01:06 PM

Quote :

"Addington was taking a clever dig at Goldsmith—in effect, accusing him of undermining the entire edifice of OLC opinions. But he was not making a rhetorical point. Addington began keeping track of opinions in which he believed Goldsmith was getting wobbly—carrying a list inside his suit pocket. Goldsmith was not unmoved by Addington's arguments, say his friends and colleagues. He told colleagues he openly worried that he might be putting soldiers and CIA officers in legal jeopardy. He did not want to weaken America's defenses against another terrorist attack. But he also wanted to uphold the law. Goldsmith, known for putting in long hours, went to new extremes as he reviewed the OLC opinions. Colleagues received e-mails from him at all hours of the night. His family—his wife, 3-year-old son and newborn baby boy—saw him less and less often. Sometimes he would take his older boy down to the Justice Department's Command Center on Saturdays, just to be near him. By June 2004, the crisis came to a head when the torture memo leaked to The Washington Post. Goldsmith was worn out but still resolute. He told Ashcroft that he was formally withdrawing the August 2002 torture memo. With some prodding from Comey, Ashcroft again backed his DOJ lawyers—though he was not happy to engage in another battle with the White House. Comey, with Goldsmith and Philbin at his side, held a not-for-attribution background briefing to announce that the Justice Department was disavowing the August 2002 torture memo. At the same time, White House officials held their own press conference, in part to counter what they saw as Comey's grandstanding. A fierce behind-the-scenes bureaucratic fight dragged on until December, when the OLC issued a new memo that was hardly to the taste of human-rights activists but contained a much more defensible (and broader) definition of torture and was far less expansive about the power of the president to authorize coercive interrogation methods. The author of the revised memo, senior Justice Department lawyer Daniel Levin, fought pitched battles with the White House over its timing and contents; yet again, Comey's intervention was crucial in helping Levin and his allies carry the day. By then, Goldsmith was gone from Justice. He and his wife (who is a poet) and two children had moved to Cambridge, where Goldsmith had taken a job on the Harvard Law faculty. Other dissenting lawyers had also moved on. Philbin, who had been the in-house favorite to become deputy solicitor general, saw his chances of securing any administration job derailed when Addington, who had come to see him as a turncoat on national-security issues, moved to block him from promotion, with Cheney's blessing; Philbin, who declined to comment, was planning a move into the private sector. Levin, whose battles with the White House took their toll on his political future as well, left for private practice. (Levin declined to comment.) Comey was working for a defense contractor. But the national security/civil liberties pendulum was swinging. Bellinger, who had become legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, began pushing, along with lawyers in the Pentagon, to roll back unduly harsh interrogation and detention policies. After the electronic eavesdropping program leaked in The New York Times in December 2005, Sen. Arlen Specter announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee would hold hearings that will start next week. The federal courts have increasingly begun resisting absolutist assertions of executive authority in the war on terror. After Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, pleaded not guilty to perjury charges in the Plame leak case, Addington took Libby's place. He is still a force to be reckoned with in the councils of power. And he still has the ear of the president and vice president; last week Bush was out vigorously defending warrantless eavesdropping. But, thanks to a few quietly determined lawyers, a healthy debate has at last begun."

1/29/2006 11:05:58 PM

OMG I BET THEY'RE JUST GOING PUBLIC TO PROMOTE A NEW BOOK

1/29/2006 11:29:23 PM

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/02/dying-scandal-that-keeps-growing.html

2/20/2006 8:50:20 PM

To the surprise of no one...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002818697_spying21.html

Quote :

"White House civil-liberties panel created in 2004, still hasn't met WASHINGTON — For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism. Someday, it might actually meet. Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004. More than a year later, it exists only on paper. On Thursday, after months of delays, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward setting up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running. Critics say the delay shows the administration is going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties. The administration counters that vetting and presenting the nominees takes time. "They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously." The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the commitment to the civil-liberties panel. "We felt it was absolutely vital," said Thomas Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. "We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago." The delay is especially noteworthy in light of recent events. Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil-liberties concerns. And the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain U.S. residents' international communications without a court warrant has caused bipartisan dismay in Congress. "Obviously, civil-liberties issues are critically important, and they have been to this president, especially after 9/11," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said, adding that the White House had moved expeditiously to establish the board. "We do not formally nominate until we are through the background investigation and the full vetting," Perino said. "It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing." The board chairwoman is Carol Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer for Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chairwoman of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election. Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits. Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary Committee members in response to their questions, was the two years she spent as deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration. There, she said, she had to weigh civil-liberties concerns while overseeing domestic surveillance and counterintelligence cases. The board vice chairman is Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer who first suggested the concept of a civil-liberties panel in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in December 2001. Raul, a former Agriculture Department general counsel currently in private practice, has published a book on privacy and the digital age. The panel's lone Democrat, Lanny Davis, has known Bush since the two were undergraduates at Yale. Civil-liberties groups regard the Washington lawyer, who worked in the Clinton White House, as likely to be a progressive voice on the panel. The board also includes a conservative Republican legal icon, Washington lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. The fifth member is Francis Taylor, a retired Air Force general and former State Department counterterrorism coordinator, who is currently chief security officer at General Electric The board members declined to comment for this article. The idea of such a watchdog agency was broached almost immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, as conservatives and liberals alike saw a need for the government to consider the implications of new anti-terrorism measures. The idea was to have professionals ask hard questions about whether the government was going too far in collecting and disseminating information about terrorism suspects, and to have those professionals make their views known in regular reports to the president. The board was given a broad mandate to review and report to the president on the civil-liberties effects of proposed regulations and executive-branch policies related to the war on terrorism. Civil-liberties groups said they saw it as a promising step. "The board has the potential to be an important force in protecting civil liberties if the White House gives the board a role in the policy-making process, as Congress intended," the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group, wrote at the time the overhaul was passed. The Bush administration waited nine months to send the nominations of Dinkins and Raul to the Senate for approval. The three other members of the board did not require Senate confirmation, but they could not function without a chairman. Doubts about funding also developed. The administration proposed an initial budget of $750,000, which lawmakers doubled. Critics consider that far from adequate. The fiscal 2007 budget that the administration released earlier this month includes no express mention of any funding for the panel. That triggered a letter of protest from Maloney and Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., to the Office of Management and Budget. An office spokesman, Scott Milburn, said money was being requested for the board, but he declined to say how much. Congress, which had championed the idea of the board, also dragged its heels. Dinkins and Raul were nominated in September, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was busy with a Supreme Court nomination. The panel held a confirmation hearing in November, but only two of the 18 members showed up. The committee finally approved Dinkins and Raul on Thursday without discussion. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said his panel moved as quickly as possible considering its other duties. The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, said in an interview: "They seem to be good people. They have done good things in their lives. But they certainly don't bring any special expertise to what I consider to be an extremely challenging position.""

2/22/2006 6:37:35 PM

Quote :

"Talking about the influence of Jews is NOT a valid reason to suspend anyone--regardless of the small minority of those who may find it "annoying" or strongly disagree with that view."

Dude, it's not a "small minority" of people who find your j00spiracy theores anoying, it's practically everyone.

For example, I beleive that the US government is nothing more than a secrative cabal of criminals, who plunder us for the benefit of their influence-peddling puppet-masters, and I still think you're a nut. That might be some kind of sign.

Props to the people who have salvaged this thread though.

[Edited on February 23, 2006 at 5:03 AM. Reason : credit where credit is due]

2/23/2006 5:02:39 AM

is this where he ruins a real story with prisonplanet bs?

2/27/2006 8:38:25 AM

Okay...so...Bush admitted to breaking the law, right? Why no impeachment attempts?

(I haven't been following along with this thread or this story, by the way.)

2/27/2006 2:43:48 PM

I WILL TAKE CARE OF [USER]SALISBURYBOY[/USER]. THE REST OF YOU SHOULD JUST IGNORE HIS THREADS IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO CONTRIBUTE TO THEM, AND THEY WILL FIND THEIR WAY TO THE BOTTOM.

IF YOU POST ANY CHEESE SHIT OR OTHER SPAMMING, I WILL EDIT IT OUT AND SUSPEND YOU.


i don't want a forum overflowing with his conspiracy theories, either, but as long as he is cooperative, which he has been, I am willing to work with him.


The argument against him was never that we needed this to be a salisburyboy-free zone, because that obviously is a pretty weak argument. everyone said that they didn't want two dozen of his threads on top and in the way, and they didn't want him invading their threads with his conspiracy theories. Those two issues are well under control. He's holding up his end of the bargain; the rest of you need to chill out.
[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 3:15 PM. Reason : asdf]

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 3:18 PM. Reason : asfd]

2/27/2006 3:13:54 PM

nevermind

it's funny. he screams about censorship and the people who own and/or run the joint act like it's some sort of democracy, yet completely ignore the populace.

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 3:22 PM. Reason : *]

2/27/2006 3:20:23 PM

look, there is a balance between what is ideologically right and what is practically sensible and desired, and the way things stand, we can more or less have both. he can't post in any threads besides his own, and he can only create/bttt one thread per week. he's been cooperative--if he breaks the terms or becomes a pain in the ass, i'll suspend him.

the rest of you cried (rightfully so, in my opinion) for action to be taken to prevent salisburyboy from having fortyeleven threads about j00s and the gov't chips in our brains on page 1, and to prevent him from blowing up other people's threads with the same. that's been taken care of.

the only other thing to do is to get rid of him entirely, which nobody really argued for in the beginning, b/c they knew that was kind of a bullshit dick move (i mean, people wanted him suspended, but when asked why, the answer was ^)

furthermore, plenty of people have called bullshit on restricting him at all.

all i can say is to not worry about salisburyboy. he's holding up his end of the deal, and if he fails to do that, it takes me every bit of 30 seconds suspend him. there is tons of dumbass stuff posted in the soapbox. if it's not worth arguing, don't post in it, and it goes away. if it's worth arguing, well, then the poster in question hasn't really committed any great crime.

2/27/2006 3:35:25 PM

THE ORIGINAL DEAL WAS ONE THREAD. ONE.

beyond that, here's what i think on the subject: i run a board that's very active. if i had a single user who created half as much hostility and dischord as this guy does, he'd be gone. i've had people come along that acted slightly like he does and they haven't lasted a week.

regardless of whether he breaks any "rules" (TWW rules, is an oxymoron to begin with), he creates a lot of trouble.

that's all i'm saying and that's all i'm going to say.

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 3:42 PM. Reason : *]

2/27/2006 3:40:30 PM

Quote :

"the rest of you cried (rightfully so, in my opinion) for action to be taken to prevent salisburyboy from having fortyeleven threads about j00s and the gov't chips in our brains on page 1, and to prevent him from blowing up other people's threads with the same. that's been taken care of."

I agree.

But I will note here that I will always disagree with the idea of backing down from one's initial sanctions. And its not like salisburyboy even proved any responsibility before the back-down took place.

2/27/2006 3:41:25 PM

Quote :

"Those two issues are well under control. He's holding up his end of the bargain"

THE FIRST THREAD HE MADE WAS ABOUT IF "JEWS" WERE REALLY JEWS OR EDOMITES OR WHATEVER

THIS IS NOT LIKE SOMETHING THAT HE OCCASIONALLY POSTS ABOUT

i'm glad i never made that photoshop for you duke

2/27/2006 3:59:11 PM

if he gets to make a weekly complete bullshit thread

then there gets to be a weekly cheese thread

i mean that's okay right? there's precedent for it.

2/27/2006 4:04:44 PM

if you're talking about the oklahoma city bombing

that was a complete inside job

that 100% fact

2/27/2006 4:06:36 PM

^^^^ well, my sanction was the first thing that came to mind that would yield the desired end that would be easy for me to enforce. salisburyboy proposed the current policy, which accomplishes pretty much the same thing i was going for.

yeah, of course i think his threads are dumb. i almost never read them. still, HE's not the one causing problems now.

^^^i don't really care what sort of crazy shit he posts about. we don't go locking up every person who makes a dumbass thread in here. if someone else made one dumbass thread per week, nobody would be up in arms...they might call the guy a dumbass, but there wouldn't be this kind of bullshit.

2/27/2006 5:05:10 PM

all this Jew shit is borderline racist.

You can't use nigger in the Garage or Chit Chat.... but you can say the Jews are responsible for nearly every despicable act in the world and its cool.

Besides that, for the 2 weeks that he actually was restricted to a thread, there was actual discussion and debate--at least as good as it has ever been in the Soap Box.

The guy has got to go.

Oh, and sharp cheddar is great on a sandwich. Hopefully it hasn't been in my refridgerator getting the ketchup and mustard to turn against me.

2/27/2006 5:09:09 PM

1. people say "nigger" all over this board, and unless it's REALLY egregious, nobody says anything.

2. i don't care if people post racist stuff in the soap box. they're wrong, but i'm not gonna go around editing out stuff that's incorrect. if it's REALLY, REALLY egregious, and i can't deal with it another way, the suspension option is on the table, but i generally don't have a very itchy trigger finger.

but that said, you would've been better off without the last two lines of your post.




i'm telling you, i can take care of salisburyboy. it's not that damned difficult when he's being cooperative, and you can shitcan him in 30 seconds if he decides not to play by the rules. he's not the one causing problems right now--if you don't like what he writes, don't read it and don't respond to it.

2/27/2006 5:18:54 PM

^Duke is the man!!! Keep up the good work. Don't let inane whining of so many children on this board dissuade you from your manifestly sensible actions.

2/27/2006 8:25:00 PM

^^ NO YOU CHANGING THE FUCKING RULES IS WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.

HE HAD 1 THREAD. THAT WAS THE DEAL. ALL OF A SUDDEN IT'S 1 THREAD A WEEK.

ON TOP OF THAT YOU RUN AROUND SUSPENDING PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING 1 BULLSHIT THREAD A WEEK, IE THE EXACT SAME GODDAMNED THING. SO I GUESS BEING A HYPOCRITE AND "GENERALLY" NOT HAVING A ITCHY TRIGGER FINGER ARE A REQUIREMENT FOR BEING A MOD.

FOR FOREVER AND A DAY I THOUGHT YOU WERE "GENERALLY" A GOOD GUY WHO WOULDN'T BE THE TYPICAL MOD, BUT WITH THIS SALISBURYBOY SHIT YOU'VE SHOWN YOU'RE AS A BIG A FAGGOT AS THE REST OF THE MODS AROUND HERE.

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 8:39 PM. Reason : *]

2/27/2006 8:34:11 PM

Quote :

"HE HAD 1 THREAD. THAT WAS THE DEAL"

that was "the deal" with him, and from the beginning, i said that at some point, it could be relaxed if he was cooperative.

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY "DEAL" WITH THE FORUM AS A WHOLE.


and if you can't see the obvious difference between deliberately dumbass, malicious spamming and a dumbass salisburyboy thread, then there's no way I can explain it to you.

You take care of DeltaBeta. I'll take care of salisburyboy.

2/27/2006 10:46:09 PM

Quote :

"fucking around with someone like salisburyboy is fucking stupid. you suspend/ban/terminate for good and be done with them. what's the point in letting somebody stick around that causes this much bullshit? it's more of a headache for you and the users stay pissed. i just can't understand it at all."

[Edited on February 27, 2006 at 10:49 PM. Reason : *]

2/27/2006 10:47:28 PM

do you REALLY want me to start suspending people for causing "headaches for me"?

2/27/2006 11:06:07 PM

i thought you had

2/27/2006 11:06:59 PM

btttopic

2/28/2006 12:16:51 AM

^^^ MOTHERFUCKER THAT'S WHAT YOU'VE BEEN DOING

SO FUCKING DO IT ACROSS THE BOARD

2/28/2006 8:04:00 AM

no, i've been suspending people for deliberate, malicious spamming of the soapbox.

2/28/2006 12:51:11 PM

you cats better watch it

theDuke866 might call up the NSA and have you bitches wiretapped w/o a court order for causing him headaches

just sayin'

2/28/2006 4:43:26 PM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801587_pf.html

Quote :

"Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying Extent of Eavesdropping May Go Beyond NSA Work Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December. In a letter yesterday to senators in which he asked to clarify his Feb. 6 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago. At that appearance, Gonzales confined his comments to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program, saying that President Bush had authorized it "and that is all that he has authorized." But in yesterday's letter, Gonzales, citing that quote, wrote: "I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Using the administration's term for the recently disclosed operation, he continued, "I was confining my remarks to the Terrorist Surveillance Program as described by the President, the legality of which was the subject" of the Feb. 6 hearing. At least one constitutional scholar who testified before the committee yesterday said in an interview that Gonzales appeared to be hinting that the operation disclosed by the New York Times in mid-December is not the full extent of eavesdropping on U.S. residents conducted without court warrants. "It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein, a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations. A Justice Department official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the program, said, however, that Gonzales's letter "should not be taken or construed to be talking about anything other than" the NSA program "as described by the president." In his letter, Gonzales revisited earlier testimony, during which he said the administration immediately viewed a congressional vote in September 2001 to authorize the use of military force against al-Qaeda as justification for the NSA surveillance program. Bush secretly began the program in October 2001, Gonzales's letter said. On Feb. 6, Gonzales testified that the Justice Department considered the use-of-force vote as a legal green light for the wiretapping "before the program actually commenced." But in yesterday's letter, he wrote, "these statements may give the misimpression that the Department's legal analysis has been static over time." Fein said the letter seems to suggest that the Justice Department actually embraced the use-of-force argument some time later, prompting Gonzales to write that the legal justification "has evolved over time." One government source who has been briefed on the issue confirmed yesterday that the administration believed from the beginning that the president had the constitutional authority to order the eavesdropping, and only more recently added the force resolution argument as a legal justification. Ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) said Gonzales's letter falls "far short of helping us focus this picture. Instead, they blur it further with vague responses about their shifting legal analysis for this illegal domestic spying and with unclear clarifications on the scope of the program over the last four years." Also yesterday, the Senate voted 69 to 30 to end a filibuster of the proposed four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law enacted in 2001. The Senate plans today to approve the measure, which contains hotly debated modifications. In a morning Judiciary Committee hearing, hours before Gonzales's letter was released, Fein was one of several constitutional experts who sharply challenged the constitutionality of the NSA program. Other scholars and former CIA director R. James Woolsey strongly defended it. Bush has acknowledged that he authorized the NSA to monitor phone calls and e-mails involving one party in the United States and one abroad, provided that federal agents suspect one party of terrorist ties. The administration contends that the program is not covered by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests to wiretap U.S. citizens and residents in terrorism and espionage cases. Numerous lawmakers, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), disagree. Specter says the NSA program violates the FISA law, and he is proposing legislation that would allow the FISA court to rule on the program's constitutionality and to oversee aspects of the surveillance operations. Woolsey, President Bill Clinton's first CIA director, defended the eavesdropping program. "The one-spy-at-a-time surveillance systems of the Cold War -- including FISA, through courts -- are not designed to deal with fast-moving battlefield electronic mapping" of today's terrorism fight, he said. "An al-Qaeda or a Hezbollah computer might be captured which contains a large number of e-mail addresses and phone numbers which would have to be checked out very promptly," he said, and the FISA warrant process is too cumbersome to allow it."

3/1/2006 2:45:26 PM

http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-rl022006.html

3/1/2006 4:53:37 PM

bttt

Quote :

"April 6, 2006, 8:07PM Gonzales says calls in U.S. could be tapped without warrant He tells panel such action would be ordered only if talks are found to be terror-related By DAN EGGEN Washington Post WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday left open the possibility that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States. Such action would dramatically expand the potential reach of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance program. In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said the government would have to determine if a conversation was related to al-Qaida and crucial to fighting terrorism before deciding whether to listen in without court supervision. "I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said of the possibility of monitoring purely domestic communications. The comments mark a dramatic departure from previous statements by Gonzales, President Bush and others within the Bush administration, who have repeatedly stressed that an NSA eavesdropping program ordered after the Sept. 11 attacks was focused only on international communications. Gonzales also reiterated earlier hints that there may be another program, or an expanded version of the NSA program, that has not been revealed. Administration officials have acknowledged that Bush issued an order in October 2001 authorizing the NSA to intercept phone calls and e-mail between the United States and foreign nations in which one of the parties was suspected of some link to al-Qaida. Gonzales and the Justice Department have argued that the program is constitutional and was effectively authorized by Congress when it approved the use of force against al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks. Many Democrats and some Republicans say that Congress intended no such authorization and that the program violates a 1978 intelligence law that set up a special court to oversee and approve all clandestine surveillance within the United States. Lawmakers are considering several proposals to legalize the program in some way, while potential presidential candidate Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has called for censure of Bush for ordering its use."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3777315.html

4/7/2006 7:43:50 AM

why can't we be friends?

5/9/2006 3:56:57 PM

STOP

you're as bad as he is.

5/9/2006 3:57:38 PM