Guest blogged by David Edwards
London’s highly respected Channel 4 provides a balanced summary of the issues surrounding the Domestic Spying Hearing which were held in the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.
The report notes the similarities between hearings in 1975 about Nixon’s abuse of wiretapping.
Most most U.S. media outlets spin the Domestic Spying scandal as a winning issue for the Bush team. In contrast, the Channel 4 reporter explains that American people are very concerned with privacy abuses. This scandal has Bush and his Congressional supporters in a very difficult position.
Video in Streaming Flash format…
Video in Windows Media format…
The FISA law passed in 1978 was in response to wiretapping under Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy. Therefore they were operating under different restrictions altogether.
Bush violated FISA. There’s no doubt about that. Now, Gonzales says George Washington also used electronic surveillance, which if true does not mean Washington broke the law. But he must have blown a fuse or two, because there was no electronics in the 18th century.
What an eyeopener to get the news from non-US MSM sources for a year.
It is like being on another planet … where people are awake to trends that could endanger their very lives.
Check mediamatters.org about how the Corporate owned/"controlled" MSM in America is actually siding with Bush breaking laws.
The "controlled" Corporate American MSM is not coming back. Don’t even say it, when you see one story once in a while that makes you think that. It is GONE!!! And it’s not coming back.
Watch Democracy NOW! for your TV news.
Go to Capitalnews.org,c-span page. Survey on nsa wiretaps,Should warrantless surveillance of US citizens be allowed if it prevents terrorist attacks? Its up to 60% FOR wiretaps.Go take this poll!
The ending of the video is chilling: "…unless they are attacked again." That has to be an almost irresistable invitation for Bush, et al. After hearing that the Super Bowl has changed its security company after 29 years, I thought something was going to happen last Sunday.
Its the most wonderful thing to have you libs standing against every anti-terrorism program.
Its makes it sooooooooo easy to win.
THANK YOU!
We Don’t stand against it, we just want to make sure everyones rights, including yours, are not trampelled on. Perhaps you don’t care about your rights. Let me guess, your going to say were at war right, and our rights should be suspended in such times? Gee, what happens if those rights remain suspended permanately?
The Bush cabal was wiretapping before 9/11 and was aware of what was coming. They didn’t act because GWB needed a "Pearl Harbor" incident to put in place the neocon plan to replace democracy with a police state.
The next "incident" (and its coming) will so terrify Americans that they will surrender whatever remaining rights we still have.
That’s when martial law will called and the neocons will start filling up those concentration camps with Moslems, Arabs and "dissenters."
I, too, thought there would be an incident during the Super Bowl, but perhaps that would have been too obvious a move (remember Black Sunday?). But I think a dirty bomb will be going off somewhere in the U.S. and the "evidence" will point to Iran as the guilty party and the bombs will commence to fall all over Persia.
Laura [Post #4]:
That’s got to be suspicious. Perhaps Karl Rove got to it and flipped the results?
It is much more plausible that 60% oppose and 40% (or less) approve.
Hey Dredd, Their watching all right, I had a post ready to go and she got sucked up when I hit submit, it never posted
I used a few choice words just to see what would happen
Like words you wouldn’t use around an airport,and POOF!
Libs,
Please yell louder against the Patriot Act and other measures that improve our safety. I want America to know your position clearly and to the last man. Thanks.
Hwy medium, whats your opinion of the republicans who are against the PA act? Are you ignorant enough to think were any safer now than pre 9/11?
To date, not a single Senator that voted against the Patriot Act has lost re-election.
Lest any of you were duped into believing the Admin had fulfilled their civic duties by informing the much touted, Bi-Partisan, Gang of Eight about the NSA program, please see a Gang Member’s Letter to the President, which cites the relevant statutes.
The restricted congressional notification policy on the NSA surveillance program has produced an absurd result, said Sen. Jay Rockefeller at a February 2 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte, consider this fact," said Sen. Rockefeller. "The only NSA program the White House had authorized senior intelligence officials to discuss publicly is the only NSA program all members of the congressional Intelligence Committees are prohibited from knowing about."
"I hope you are struck by this paradox and troubled by its implication."
I’ve rated Channel 4 over the BBC for about 3 years now.
Ever since Greg Dyke (former chief of BBC) was ousted because he was trying to get the truth out about Dr David Kellys highly suspicious "suicide" and the lies of the Iraq war… I’ve never trusted the BBC, it’s practically being twisted into a government megaphone thanks to people like the UK’s "culture" minister, Tessa Jowell.
When the London bombs went off, BBC and ITV were throwing out speculation.. C4 waited and just stuck to the facts.
They’re also the most likely to run with hard-hitting political scandals these days out of the UK’s terrestrial channels. – So.. respect to ’em for that.
Just a shame their main presenter wears such garish socks and ties!!