Matt Ortega

What night law school did Attorney General Alberto Gonzales get his law degree?

Daniel J. Solove writes at Concurring Opinions:

Attorney General Gonzales brought out some new arguments in defense of the warrantless NSA surveillance program. He should have kept these arguments in the bag, as they are flatly wrong. For example, according to the AP:

Gonzales told his audience: “You may have heard about the provision of FISA that allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance for 15 days following a declaration of war. That provision shows that Congress knew that warrantless surveillance would be essential in wartime.”

Indeed, FISA authorizes electronic surveillance more generally “for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.” 50 U.S.C. § 1811. But how does this justify warrantless surveillance that continued far beyond 15 days and that continues to this day? Notwithstanding whether the Authorization to Use Military Force is the equivalent to a declaration of war, this FISA provision indicates that FISA explicitly contemplated the situation the President faced and established a rule — he could engage in warrantless surveillance for 15 days. I have yet to understand how a provision that allows the President to engage in warrantless surveillance for 15 days can be used to justify indefinite warrantless surveillance. Give ‘em a nickel, and they take a dime dollar unlimited amount.

Bring on the independent investigation.

The White House is refusing to release documents related to Hurricane Katrina, reports the New York Times, citing “the confidentiality of executive branch communications” as the reason.

The White House’s stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.

Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) actually spoke against Bush:

“There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do,” Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply.

Some Republicans are not happy with Bush’s stonewalling either:

Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president’s staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House.”I completely disagree with that practice,” Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.

Former Vice President Al Gore gave an incredibly scathing speech this afternoon, accusing President Bush of criminal activity by authorizing the NSA domestic spying program. He called for a bipartisan-supported investigation into the matter, praising the work of federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

Highlights of the speech from John Aravosis:

[...] The President and I agree on one thing. The threat from terrorism is all too real. There is simply no question that we continue to face new challenges in the wake of the attack on September 11th and that we must be ever-vigilant in protecting our citizens from harm.Where we disagree is that we have to break the law or sacrifice our system of government to protect Americans from terrorism. In fact, doing so makes us weaker and more vulnerable.

Once violated, the rule of law is in danger. Unless stopped, lawlessness grows. The greater the power of the executive grows, the more difficult it becomes for the other branches to perform their constitutional roles. As the executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws…

AMERICAblog has links to video (excerpts and the full speech) while Crooks & Liars has video highlights.

In the speech, the former vice president spoke about the similarities between today’s domestic eavesdropping program and the wiretapping of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s. Think Progress saw the historical connection to the contemporary period, citing a November 1967 speech.

From Judd Legum at Think Progress:

Now what are some of the domestic consequences of the war in Vietnam? It has made the Great Society a myth and replaced it with a troubled and confused society…It has given the extreme right, the anti-labor, anti-Negro, and anti-humanistic forces a weapon of spurious patriotism to galvanize its supporters into reaching for power, right up to the White House. It hopes to use national frustration to take control and restore the America of social insecurity and power for the privileged. […]

It is disgraceful that a Congress that can vote upwards of $35 billion a year for a senseless immoral war in Vietnam cannot vote a weak $2 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wound of our nations 35 million poor. This is nothing short of a Congress engaging in political guerilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation. [...]

When I first decided to take a firm stand against the war in Vietnam, I was subjected to the most bitter criticism, by the press, by individuals, and even by some fellow civil rights leaders. There were those who said that I should stay in my place, that these two issues did not mix and I should stick with civil rights. Well I had only one answer for that and it was simply the fact that I have struggled too long and too hard now to get rid of segregation in public accommodations to end up at this point in my life segregating my moral concerns. [emphasis from Think Progress]

(Hat tip: AMERICAblog, Think Progress and Raw Story)

Scary day if you’re Christiane Amanpour, her husband, family members, the cleaning lady or even the dog.

Some in the blogosphere are questioning if Christiane Amanpour was wiretapped by President Bush’s NSA domestic spying program after a very interesting line of questioning from NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell to New York Times reporter James Risen:

Well this is getting interesting. NBC just delete two paragraphs from its Andrea Mitchell interview, the paragraphs that talked about whether Bush was wiretapping ace CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour (kudos to Atrios for spotting this).

Here’s what the NBC “official” transcript used to say (I copied this text from NBC’s own page only 2 hours ago):

Andrea Mitchell: Do you have any information about reporters being swept up in this net?

James Risen: No, I don’t. It’s not clear to me. That’s one of the questions we’ll have to look into the future. Were there abuses of this program or not? I don’t know the answer to that.

Andrea Mitchell: You don’t have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?

James Risen: No, no I hadn’t heard that.

NBC later edited the transcript and removed any mention of Christiane Amanpour possibly being wiretapped. I guess Chris Matthews is the webmaster of MSNBC.com. Atrios calls it a “mystery.” I want to know why it was edited out of their official transcript. Whatever it is, Andrea Mitchell knows or heard something to make her believe the possibility of a wirtetap on Amanpour was plausible, so much that she would specifically say a journalist by name. She needs to start singing like Jack Abramoff, and right now.

Crooks & Liars has the video from NBC’s The Today Show where Risen spoke about the explosive article that disclosed the story, which he co-authored. He also talks about his new book, State of War, which sounds like something I will have to check out.

John of AMERICAblog has eight important questions to ponder (and hopefully get answers to) about this revelation:

1. Such a wiretap would likely include her home, office, and cell phones, and email correspondence, at the very least.2. That means anyone Christiane has conversed with in the past four years, at least by phone or email, could have had their conversation taped by the US government.

3. That also means that anyone who uses any of Christiane’s telephones or computers (work or home) could also have had their conversation bugged.

4. This includes Christiane’s husband, former Clinton administration senior official Jamie Rubin, who was spokesman for the State Department.

5. Jamie Rubin was also chief foreign policy adviser to General Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign, and then worked as a senior national security adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

6. Did Jamie Rubin ever use his home phone, his wife’s work phone, his wife’s cell phone, her home computer or her work computer to communicate with John Kerry or Wesley Clark? If so, those conversations would have been bugged if Bush was tapping Amanpour.

7. Did Jamie Rubin ever in the past four years communicate with any elected officials in Washington, D.C. - any Senators or members of the US House? Any senior members of the Democratic party?

8. Has Rubin spoken with Bill Clinton, his former boss, in the past 4 years?

Federal prosecutors have reached a plea deal with Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He will plead guilty to fraud, public corruption and tax evasion and faces ten years in prison.

Abramoff was well-connected with many political leaders, including Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land, Tex.) and Bob Ney (R-Bellaire, Ohio) to name a few.

Updated at 01/06/06 at 3:10pm: Crooks & Liars has CNN video of the plea deal agreement and reports there are over 10,000 damaging e-mails against Abramoff.