jim rozen wrote:

The current adminstration *tried* to ask congress for the ability
to do warrentless wiretapping on citizens in the US. They were
not allowed to this. The answer was "NO."

It also doesn't say "GW's house cannot be searched without a warrant."

So your house can now be entered and searched by the police, at any
time, without them having to obtain a warrant from a judge. Right?

You've just given up your rights under the fourth amendment, and you
didn't even know it.

Jim

Well, of course nobody wants the government "spying" on them but I'd
dare say that if we had another major Al Qaida attack and it was found
that the government was purposely Not monitoring communication of
overseas calls with Al Qaida suspects, there would be another round of
calls for impeachment.
Nobody is talking about breaking into anyone's house without a search
warrant. I could be wrong but I thought it was all about communications
to other countries with people suspected of having something to do with
terrorists. I also thought that the information found could not be used
in court, so if your French bookie called you there would be no worry.
GW


In the first place, we have a record that shows us to be pretty lousy in our
intelligence capabilities overseas, with our not knowing Al Aqeda was
planning to hit us, or that we were totally mistaken about WMDs in Iraq, for
example. So our ability to know what's going on in other countries is weak,
to say the least. When we say we just want to monitor Al Qaeda suspects how
much confidence do you have that is what is actually happening. Personally,
I don't think we can tell an Al Qaeda suspect from an Israeli most of the
time. It's just not believeable that the government is any good at
determining who is "bad" over there and who isn't.

The second thing is that why do you believe that the government isn't just
tapping every conversation and sorting out later who's a suspect and who
isn't? That's my guess. They tap everyone and of course they couldn't get
legal authority to do that. But they think they can do whatever they want
and worry about it later. It's Nixonian thinking. I've seen it before and
Bush looks like he's cut from the same jib as Nixon. Both of them thought
they had unlimited power. Bush sure acts like he thinks so.

Hawke