Proof that Bush knew NSA spying was illegal...

[kentuck]

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0122-23.htm

<snip>
Here is the argument. The Justice Department says “FISA expressly contemplates that the Executive Branch may conduct electronic surveillance outside FISA’s express procedures if and when a subsequent statute authorizes such surveillance.”

That “subsequent statute,” the Justice Department says, is the Congressional Authorization of Force. But that authorization doesn’t mention amending FISA. And on top of that, the Administration tried to get language into that authorization that would have permitted such warrantless eavesdropping, but the Senate didn’t go along, as former Senator Tom Daschle has noted.

“Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the Administration sought to add the words ‘in the United States and’ after ‘appropriate force’ in the agreed-upon text,” Daschle wrote in The Washington Post on December 23. “I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.”

Yet this is the very authority that the Justice Department now claims for the spying!

....more

[Arkansas Granny]

1. It doesn't matter to Bush what he knew at the time.

He is convinced that if they send all their people out to say, over and over again, that Bush had the authority to do so, that it will act like some form of mass hypnosis and everyone will believe, in the end, that he had the authority all along.

[f-bush]

3. then we just need to say over and over again...

illegal/impeachment!

[plcdude]

2. very enlightening

Keith O needs this information.