"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A leaked top-secret order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon Business customers. Last night The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon’s Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on a, quote, "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the content of the communications. The order expressly compels Verizon to turn over records for both international and domestic records. It also forbids Verizon from disclosing the existence of the court order. It is unclear if other phone companies were ordered to hand over similar information.

AMY GOODMAN: According to legal analysts, the Obama administration relied on a controversial provision in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215, that authorizes the government to seek secret court orders for the production of, quote, "any tangible thing relevant to a foreign intelligence or terrorism investigation." The disclosure comes just weeks after news broke that the Obama administration had been spying on journalists from the Associated Press and James Rosen, a reporter from Fox News.

We’re now joined by two former employees of the National Security Agency, Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating the Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. William Binney worked for almost 40 years at the NSA. He resigned shortly after the September 11th attacks over his concern over the increasing surveillance of Americans. We’re also joined in studio here by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights.

First, for your legal opinion, Shayana, can you talk about the significance of what has just been revealed?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Sure. So I think, you know, we have had stories, including one in USA Today in May 2006, that have said that the government is collecting basically all the phone records from a number of large telephone companies. What’s significant about yesterday’s disclosure is that it’s the first time that we’ve seen the order, to really appreciate the sort of staggeringly broad scope of what one of the judges on this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved of, and the first time that we can now confirm that this was under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which, you know, has been dubbed the libraries provision, because people were mostly worried about the idea that the government would use it to get library records. Now we know that they’re using it to get phone records. And just to see the immense scope of this warrant order, you know, when most warrants are very narrow, is really shocking as a lawyer.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, some might argue that the Obama administration at least went to the FISA court to get approval for this, unlike the Bush administration in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. Well, we don’t know if the Bush administration was, you know, getting these same orders and if this is just a continuation, a renewal order. It lasted for only—it’s supposed to last for only three months, but they may have been getting one every three months since 2006 or even earlier. You know, when Congress reapproved this authority in 2011, you know, one of the things Congress thought was, well, at least they’ll have to present these things to a judge and get some judicial review, and Congress will get some reporting of the total number of orders. But when one order covers every single phone record for a massive phone company like Verizon, the reporting that gets to Congress is going to be very hollow. And then, similarly, you know, when the judges on the FISA court are handpicked by the chief justice, and the government can go to a judge, as they did here, in North Florida, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, who’s 73 years old and is known as a draconian kind of hanging judge in his sentencing, and get some order that’s this broad, I think both the judicial review and the congressional oversight checks are very weak.

AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, this is just Verizon, because that’s what Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian got a hold of. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other orders for the other telephone companies, right?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Like BellSouth, like AT&T, etc.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: As there have been in the past.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Yeah, those were—those were companies mentioned in that USA Today story in 2006. Nothing about the breadth of this order indicates that it’s tied to any particular national security investigation, as the statute says it has to be. So, some commentators yesterday said, "Well, this order came out on—you know, it’s dated 10 days after the Boston attacks." But it’s forward-looking. It goes forward for three months. Why would anyone need to get every record from Verizon Business in order to investigate the Boston bombings after they happened?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, William Binney, a decades-long veteran of the NSA, your reaction when you heard about this news?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, this was just the FBI going after data. That was their request. And they’re doing that because they—if they want to try to get it—they have to have it approved by a court in order to get it as evidence into a courtroom. But NSA has been doing all this stuff all along, and it’s been all the companies, not just one. And I basically looked at that and said, well, if Verizon got one, so did everybody else, which means that, you know, they’re just continuing the collection of this kind of information on all U.S. citizens. That’s one of the main reasons they couldn’t tell Senator Wyden, with his request of how many U.S. citizens are in the NSA databases. There’s just—in my estimate, it was—if you collapse it down to all uniques, it’s a little over 280 million U.S. citizens are in there, each in there several hundred to several thousand times.

AMY GOODMAN: In fact, let’s go to Senator Wyden. A secret court order to obtain the Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going asked senators, "Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?" The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Ron Wyden. He and Senator Udall have been raising concerns because they sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee but cannot speak out openly exactly about what they know. William Binney, you left the agency after September 2001, deeply concerned—this is after you’d been there for 40 years—about the amount of surveillance of U.S. citizens. In the end, your house was raided. You were in the shower. You’re a diabetic amputee. The authorities had a gun at your head. Which agency had the gun at your head, by the way?

WILLIAM BINNEY: That was the FBI.

AMY GOODMAN: You were not charged, though you were terrorized. Can you link that to what we’re seeing today?

WILLIAM BINNEY: Well, it’s directly linked, because it has to do with all of the surveillance of the U.S. citizens that’s been going on since 9/11. I mean, that’s—they were getting—from just one company alone, that I knew of, they were getting over 300 million call records a day on U.S. citizens. So, I mean, and when you add the rest of the companies in, my estimate was that there were probably three billion phone records collected every day on U.S. citizens. So, over time, that’s a little over 12 trillion in their databases since 9/11. And that’s just phones; that doesn’t count the emails. And they’re avoiding talking about emails there, because that’s also collecting content of what people are saying. And that’s in the databases that NSA has and that the FBI taps into. It also tells you how closely they’re related. When the FBI asks for data and the court approves it, the data is sent to NSA, because they’ve got all the algorithms to do the diagnostics and community reconstructions and things like that, so that the FBI can—makes it easier for the FBI to interpret what’s in there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined by Thomas Drake, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration after he blew the whistle on mismanagement and waste and constitutional violations at the NSA. Thomas Drake, your reaction to this latest revelation?

THOMAS DRAKE: My reaction? Where has the mainstream media been? This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records of—from any company that exists in the United States.

I think what people are now realizing is that this isn’t just a terrorist issue. This is simply the ability of the government in secret, on a vast scale, to collect any and all phone call records, including domestic to domestic, local, as well as location information. We might—there’s no need now to call this the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Let’s just call it the surveillance court. It’s no longer about foreign intelligence. It’s simply about harvesting millions and millions and millions of phone call records and beyond. And this is only just Verizon. As large as Verizon is, with upwards of 100 million subscribers, what about all the other telecoms? What about all the other Internet service providers? It’s become institutionalized in this country, in the greatest of secrecy, for the government to classify, conceal not only the facts of the surveillance, but also the secret laws that are supporting surveillance.

AMY GOODMAN: Thomas Drake, what can they do with this information, what’s called metadata? I mean, they don’t have the content of the conversation, supposedly—or maybe we just don’t see that, that’s under another request, because, remember, we are just seeing this one, for people who are listening and watching right now, this one request that is specifically to—and I also want to ask you: It’s Verizon Business Services; does that have any significance? But what does it mean to have the length of time and not the names of, but where the call originates and where it is going, the phone numbers back and forth?

THOMAS DRAKE: You get incredible amounts of information about subscribers. It’s basically the ability to forward-profile, as well as look backwards, all activities associated with those phone numbers, and not only just the phone numbers and who you called and who called you, but also the community of interests beyond that, who they were calling. I mean, we’re talking about a phenomenal set of records that is continually being added to, aggregated, year after year and year, on what have now become routine orders. Now, you add the location information, that’s a tracking mechanism, monitoring tracking of all phone calls that are being made by individuals. I mean, this is an extraordinary breach. I’ve said this for years. Our representing attorney, Jesselyn Radack from the Government Accountability Project, we’ve been saying this for years and no—from the wilderness. We’ve had—you’ve been on—you know, you’ve had us on your show in the past, but it’s like, hey, everybody kind of went to sleep, you know, while the government is harvesting all these records on a routine basis.

You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, "You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data." And so, the secret surveillance regime really has a hoarding complex, and they can’t get enough of it. And so, here we’re faced with the reality that a government in secret, in abject violation of the Fourth Amendment, under the cover of enabling act legislation for the past 12 years, is routinely analyzing what is supposed to be private information. But, hey, it doesn’t matter anymore, right? Because we can get to it. We have secret agreements with the telecoms and Internet service providers and beyond. And we can do with the data anything we want.

So, you know, I sit here—I sit here as an American, as I did shortly after 9/11, and it’s all déjà vu for me. And then I was targeted—it’s important to note, I—not just for massive fraud, waste and abuse; I was specifically targeted as the source for The New York Times article that came out in December of 2005. They actually thought that I was the secret source regarding the secret surveillance program. Ultimately, I was charged under the Espionage Act. So that should tell you something. Sends an extraordinarily chilling message. It is probably the deepest, darkest secret of both administrations, greatly expanded under the Obama administration. It’s now routine practice.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Shayana, I’d like to ask you, specifically that issue of the FISA court also authorizing domestic surveillance. I mean, is there—even with the little laws that we have left, is there any chance for that to be challenged, that the FISA court is now also authorizing domestic records being surveiled?

AMY GOODMAN: FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I mean, you know, two things about that. First, the statute says that there have to be reasonable grounds to think that this information is relevant to an investigation of either foreign terrorist activity or something to do with a foreign power. So, you know, obviously, this perhaps very compliant judge approved this order, but it doesn’t seem like this is what Congress intended these orders would look like. Seems like, on the statute, that Congress intended they would be somewhat narrower than this, right?

But there’s a larger question, which is that, for years, the Supreme Court, since 1979, has said, "We don’t have the same level of protection over, you know, the calling records—the numbers that we dial and how long those calls are and when they happen—as we do over the contents of a phone call, where the government needs a warrant." So everyone assumes the government needs a warrant to get at your phone records and maybe at your emails, but it’s not true. They just basically need a subpoena under existing doctrine. And so, the government uses these kind of subpoenas to get your email records, your web surfing records, you know, cloud—documents in cloud storage, banking records, credit records. For all these things, they can get these extraordinarily broad subpoenas that don’t even need to go through a court.

AMY GOODMAN: Shayana, talk about the significance of President Obama nominating James Comey to be the head of the FBI—

SHAYANA KADIDAL: One of the—

AMY GOODMAN: —and who he was.

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. One of the grand ironies is that Obama has nominated a Republican who served in the Bush administration for a long time, a guy with a reputation as being kind of personally incorruptable. I think, in part, he nominated him to be the head of the FBI, the person who would, you know, be responsible for seeking and renewing these kind of orders in the future, for the next 10 years—he named Comey, a Republican, because he wanted to, I think, distract from the phone record scandal, the fact that Holder’s Justice Department has gone after the phone records of the Associated Press and of Fox News reporter James Rosen, right?

And you asked, what can you tell from these numbers? Well, if you see the reporter called, you know, five or six of his favorite sources and then wrote a particular report that divulged some embarrassing government secret, that’s—you know, that’s just as good as hearing what the reporter was saying over the phone line. And so, we had this huge, you know, scandal over the fact that the government went after the phone records of AP, when now we know they’re going after everyone’s phone records, you know. And I think one of the grand ironies is that, you know, he named Comey because he had this reputation as being kind of a stand-up guy, who stood up to Bush in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004 and famously said, "We have to cut back on what the NSA is doing." But what the NSA was doing was probably much broader than what The New York Times finally divulged in that story in December ’05.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, will Glenn Greenwald now be investigated, of The Guardian, who got the copy of this, so that they can find his leak, not to mention possibly prosecute him?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Oh, I think absolutely there will be some sort of effort to go after him punitively. The government rarely tries to prosecute people who are recognized as journalists. And so, Julian Assange maybe is someone they try to portray as not a journalist. Glenn Greenwald, I think, would be harder to do. But there are ways of going after them punitively that don’t involve prosecution, like going after their phone records so their sources dry up.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw an astounding comment by Pete Williams, who used to be the Pentagon spokesperson, who’s now with NBC, this morning, talking—he had talked with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had said, when he goes after the reporters—you know, the AP reporters, the Fox reporter—they’re not so much going after them; not to worry, they’re going after the whistleblowers. They’re trying to get, through them, the people. What about that, that separation of these two?

SHAYANA KADIDAL: Right. I’ll give you an example from the AP. They had a reporter named, I believe, John Solomon. In 2000, he reported a story about the botched investigation into Robert Torricelli. The FBI didn’t like the fact that they had written this—he had written this story about how they dropped the ball on that, so they went after his phone records. And three years later, he talked to some of his sources who had not talked to him since then, and they said, "We’re not going to talk to you, because we know they’re getting your phone records."

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you all for being with us. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights. William Binney and Thomas Drake both worked for the National Security Agency for years, and both ultimately resigned. Thomas Drake was prosecuted. They were trying to get him under the Espionage Act. All of those charges were dropped. William Binney held at gunpoint by the FBI in his shower, never prosecuted. Both had expressed deep concern about the surveillance of American citizens by the U.S. government. You can go to our website at democracynow.org for our hours of interviews with them, as well." - Democracy Now!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'ron paul, patriot act' to 'ron paul, patriot act, 4th amendment, fisa, liberty' - edited by blankfist

Corporations and 'market forces' are how we got here. I know that by admitting that, you'd have to tear down your entire belief system and start over from scratch, and that's a lot to ask of anyone. I've got no problems attempting to treat the numerous symptoms, but this kind of shit is going to continue as long as big business is in the drivers seat.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Who said anything about them being the "brainchild" of Obama? You're stuck in that fallacious bipartisan thinking. Just because I've got a beef with Obama doesn't mean I an absolving Bush of his atrocities. But he's not "in charge" anymore, so to insinuate that these porno-scanners are in place now because of Bush's Administration is a fallacious and disingenuous argument. Let's go over the finer points:

First, the TSA today is under the purview of the Obama Administration, so anything it does is the fault of that administration. Period. The chain of command works like this: TSA > Department of Homeland Security (DHS) > Janet Napolitano > Obama. When Obama is no longer the president, then the TSA will be the responsibility of the new Administration... and so on.

Second, more porno-scanners are being added under Obama.

Third, the "enhanced security procedures" are being added under Obama. This includes touching of groins and the added frequency of the porno-scanners.

Fourth, Obama even admits the buck stops with him.

Lastly, Obama ran on a platform of "change". That change was meant to "correct" the ills of the previous administration, including the Bush Doctrine, FISA, the Patriot Act, and domestically the DHS. It hasn't been corrected. It's gotten worse.

Who said anything about them being the "brainchild" of Obama? You're stuck in that fallacious bipartisan thinking. Just because I've got a beef with Obama doesn't mean I an absolving Bush of his atrocities. But he's not "in charge" anymore, so to insinuate that these porno-scanners are in place now because of Bush's Administration is a fallacious and disingenuous argument. Let's go over the finer points:

First, the TSA today is under the purview of the Obama Administration, so anything it does is the fault of that administration. Period. The chain of command works like this: TSA > Department of Homeland Security (DHS) > Janet Napolitano > Obama. When Obama is no longer the president, then the TSA will be the responsibility of the new Administration... and so on.

Second, more porno-scanners are being added under Obama.

Third, the "enhanced security procedures" are being added under Obama. This includes touching of groins and the added frequency of the porno-scanners.

Fourth, Obama even admits the buck stops with him.

Lastly, Obama ran on a platform of "change". That change was meant to "correct" the ills of the previous administration, including the Bush Doctrine, FISA, the Patriot Act, and domestically the DHS. It hasn't been corrected. It's gotten worse.

^Lame. First, I'm sure he was speaking about the recent election. Either way, it's not like Democrats have been particularly courteous in the realm of civil liberties recently. They, too, seem to enjoy this war, torture, FISA, wiretapping, etc. Exhibit A.

Had 100% of the people who voted Democrat but wanted to vote Green Party instead did so, and 100% of the people who voted Republican but actually wanted to vote Libertarian or Constitution Party also voted that way, the world would be a better place.

>> ^garmachi:
Oh, and I'm willing to bet (but not to actually go find it myself) that there's equal use of this "tactic" by both sides, as well as footage.

I'd take that bet.

To be equivalent, you would have to find a clip from the floor of the House, during the debate preceding the vote on one of the major Republican initiatives from 1994-2006 (e.g. Impeachment, Bush tax cuts, AUMF for Iraq, Patriot, FISA, No child left behind, privatizing social security, etc.), where Democrats repeatedly yelled objection during the comments of several members of the opposition, just to slow down the proceedings.

I'm not going to try to prove the negative, but there's 5 free promotes/qualities to anyone who can prove me wrong.

I urge you the liberal socialists to put forth a candidate that can and will make change. Not false change. All that they do is move around the pawns, and never actually put the real pieces in play.

Not further perpetrate illegal activities under the guise of FISA, Patriot Act, and the fake closing of secret prisons.

You are both socialists? That is the enemy of freedom.

But then again, while we argue the virtues of Socialism, and Capitalism, and whatever the fuck isms the rest of us get fucked over by the revenue man, and the Central Bank.

Only fools argue about small things when the money to run anything is right there, in the central bank and the military industrial complex.

Continue to argue about getting something from nothing. You people want free health care? With the current system who is going to pay for that? Who? That's right, the fucking tax payer. With all due respect, fuck that.

Health-care and many other things should not have a price in the first place. That's what is wrong with the system.

Specter is about as moderate a Republican as John Boehner is.


Here's a brief rundown:

In the 110th Congress, Specter voted with his party 70.6 percent of the time

• Rated 12% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record.
• Rated 81% by the Christian Coalition.
• Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record.
• Rated 0% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record.


• Voted YES on Bush Administration Energy Policy.
• Voted YES on defunding renewable and solar energy.
• Voted YES on drilling ANWR on national security grounds
• Voted YES on allowing some lobbyist gifts to Congress.
• Voted NO on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore.
• Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives.
• Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage
• Voted YES on Amendment to prohibit flag burning.
• Voted NO on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• Voted NO on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations.
• Voted NO on background checks at gun shows.
• Voted NO on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drug.
• Voted NO on including prescription drugs under Medicare.
• Voted YES on Strengthening of the trade embargo against Cuba.
• Voted NO on requiring FISA court warrant to monitor US-to-foreign calls.
• Voted YES on telecomm deregulation.
• Voted YES on authorizing use of military force against Iraq


On March 9, 2006, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 was signed into law. It amended the process for interim appointments of U.S. Attorneys, written into the bill by Arlen Specter during his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.[18] The change allowed the Bush Administration to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without term limits, and without confirmation by the Senate. The Bush administration used the law to place at least eight interim attorneys into office in 2006.



There's ungodly amount more of really piss-poor judgment.

>> ^imstellar28:As far as I can see nothing has changed.
1. We still torture
2. We are still in Iraq
3. Drugs are still illegal
4. We still don't have habeus corpus
5. The RIAA still controls the courts
6. Our economy still sucks
7. Nobody has been prosecuted for any crimes of the last administration
8. 95% of the people in this administration worked for the last administration
9. I still lose 50% of my income to taxation
10. Our federal budget is still greater than $3 trillion
Its naive to assume they are different because they have different names or party affiliations. You say they are different tell me why the budgets they propose are almost identical.



Ugggh

1. No we don't
2. We are leaving soon. If Obama were prez in 2003, we wouldn't be in Iraq in the first fucking place.
3. Oh I forgot, Obama was elected to legalize all drugs immediately
4. We do have habeus
5. The RIAA and FISA are shitty matters that make me angry.
6. Our economy sucks, which wasn't Obamas fault. I guess to you, we should've already been rich again in three months. Stupid Obama!
7. Yeah, what a dick that Obama hasn't prosecuted Bush&Cheney himself within three months!
8. %95 statement is ridiculous and completely inaccurate.
9. You lose 50% of your income? WTF? Where the fuck do you live and how much money do you make to lose that much? Fuck man, I make 120+ and only lose 34%
10. Yeah, shame on Obama for not zero-ing out our debts



Man, what world do you have to live in to think that Obama would have everyone out of Iraq, fix our economy, legalize all drugs, and prosecute the Bush admin within 100 days of being in office?

Jesus fucking christ man!

I think if Democrats used the filibuster the way Republicans do, they never would have gotten immunity. Democrats were the majority at the time after all.

As far as Obama's own personal role, there's a lot to look at with the immunity question, and goodness knows I've poured through a lot of reporting on it, and my take on it is that Obama knew that there were enough lobbyist-loving, Constitution-ignoring, Republican-fearing Democratic Senators who were gonna vote for immunity that it would pass no matter how Obama voted.

He also was doing this whole run for the Presidency thing, and knew that if he voted against FISA's renewal, the right-wing noise machine would use this as an excuse to call him Weak on Terror^TM. Never mind that even at that time they were already toying with the whole "paling around with terrorists" shtick, but this was pre-Palin, so it hadn't been put out by any McCain people directly yet.

So Obama said "I'll try to get immunity out of the bill, but I'm going to vote for the final bill, regardless of whether immunity is in there", knowing that the likelihood of the immunity-stripping amendments passing the inevitable Republican filibuster were slim, and then voted for the final bill, because he knew he wouldn't be able to stop it anyways.

Still, I think Klein is right, Obama has a serious uphill battle with special interests going forward, and progressives need to fight fire with fire on that count. I just disagree with her conclusion that Obama's already failed to stand up to corporate special interests since he voted for the final FISA bill that contained telecomm immunity.

I disagree with her that retroactive immunity was given because it was a revenue stream for telecom firms, it was given because Bush pushed for it, issuing an executive order post 9/11 that mandated that the NSA, bypass FISC approval under FISA to start wire tapping. If you are a US based telecom firm, how exactly do you say no to the NSA when it comes with orders from Bush, at the time of large terrorism fears and general public support to do pretty much anything?

The blame is thus with the abuse of executive powers as envisioned by Cheney and the rest of the Nixon gang that believed that the President has the ultimate authority to do anything he likes. Also as I recall there was one single telecom firm that refused to abide by this and thus was mired in legal issues. I do however concede that there is alot of American technology helping China impose a surveillance society everyone from Microsoft to Yahoo to Google is involved there.

America needs civics education programs in schools from Elementary level. If you don't know your rights as a citizen, being free is a moot point.

QM never complained about Bush giving us the biggest government of all time.

QM never complained about Bush during FISA/NSA.

QM never complained about Bush stealing from the Social Security cookie jar.

QM never complained about Bush raping our treasury.

Actually, wrong on all counts. But your first language is French so WTF, foo, you can't be everywhere!

QM complains about California, which is run BY A FUCKING REPUBLICAN who was never fairly elected, and only got 20% of the vote after running a Dem out of office for wanting to raise DMV taxes. All backed by Enron and Cheney's energy task force.

Yes, yes, it's only a conspiracy/voter fraud when people elect Republicans. Gray Davis wasn't a corrupt piece of crap, it was all lies. And since Schwarzy acts like a FUCKING DEMOCRAT who cares what his voter card reads? Democrats should proudly stand for what they've done to California! California government schools are some of the worst in the nation, and Democrats get reelected there again and again. Coincidence?

QM should sincerely shut the fuck up and get his pussy ass over to Iraq. But he never will, because he's a chicken-hawk who loves the smell of dead Iraqi kids in the morning.

QM will always call a Republican he doesn't like, a "Democrat emulator" yet every fucking Repub in this country is responsible for the FUBAR mess we're in.

Rs get some of the blame, but no Republican ever woke up and said, "Let's force banks to give the poor houses they can't afford. It's the fair thing to do" (looking at all the taxocrat tax cheats and bribe-takers STILL in office, I guess that spirit of spreading the wealth doesn't apply to them).

You and your goofball Saul Alinksy-wannabe anarcho-whatever radicalist rascals...you're not interesting when you act this way, the ad hominem attacks cut-n-pasted from Daily Komatose's baboonery are tiresome; instead of dealing with the FACTS of the matter you're...just making a fool of yourself. Everyone deserves to go on a wild rant now and again--I don't fault you for it--but wear your seatbelt, airbags won't always save you.

And you know what QM? Fuck you and your "335 million dollar condom scheme." Either you're a fucking idiot and believe that shit, or you're evil and you're lying and obfuscating. Any thinking person knows that that 200mil was for FAMILY PLANNING, of which, a measly less than one percent is for free condoms.

No matter, this generational looting of the Treasury--the second time Congressional majority taxocrats will be voting for one--won't make it through in its present odious form.

I'm simply offering my opinion of what's going on with the scum in DC and the mechanics of their powergrab to rottenseed, who posted the question.

I knew this would happen to liberals when Bush left office. All that titanic machine-against-the-RAGE has to go SOMEwhere. Fox Derangement Syndrome won't absorb it all.

May I suggest picking up a copy of Ann Coulter's new bestseller?

QM never complained about Bush giving us the biggest government of all time.

QM never complained about Bush during FISA/NSA.

QM never complained about Bush stealing from the Social Security cookie jar.

QM never complained about Bush raping our treasury.


QM complains about California, which is run BY A FUCKING REPUBLICAN who was never fairly elected, and only got 20% of the vote after running a Dem out of office for wanting to raise DMV taxes. All backed by Enron and Cheney's energy task force.


QM should sincerely shut the fuck up and get his pussy ass over to Iraq. But he never will, because he's a chicken-hawk who loves the smell of dead Iraqi kids in the morning.


QM will always call a Republican he doesn't like, a "Democrat emulator" yet every fucking Repub in this country is responsible for the FUBAR mess we're in.



And you know what QM? Fuck you and your "335 million dollar condom scheme." Either you're a fucking idiot and believe that shit, or you're evil and you're lying and obfuscating. Any thinking person knows that that 200mil was for FAMILY PLANNING, of which, a measly less than one percent is for free condoms.

But QM never has to worry about condoms, since no woman in her right mind would let his slimy little pecker anywhere near her.

The Shirley Temple version:

Drink everytime anyone mentions:
* Ending and abolishing torture
* Ending violence in Gaza / Iraq / Afghanistan
* Ending illegal spying on citizens
* Holdings banks and corporations accountable with bailout money
* Taxing all the corporation money being hidden in offshore accounts
* Canceling tax deductions and govt money for companies outsourcing jobs
* Penalize CEOs and corporations who move jobs overseas
* Investigating crimes of Bush Adminstration
* Warcrimes
* Prosecuting the financial crimes like 9/11 shorts, Madoff ponzi, Freddie & Fannie toxic derivatives
* Ever rebuilding NOLA and letting people move back home
* Restoring the pension funds stolen by Cheney's energy buddies in Enron scam
* Enforcing FISA, PRA, or any type of Congressional oversight
* undoing the damage done by lax or revoked EPA rules
* Returning the FCC control back to citizens and no the highest bidder
* Cracking down on monopolies (especially with media outlets)

Unlike Bush and Cheney who introduced the dissolution of Heabus Corpus, Military Tribunals, Guantanamo, Wired tapping, Patriot Act, FISA overhaul and many other programs.

Those were real Republican patriots who cared for the freedoms of the American people.