The Bush administration has repeatedly invoked the state secrets privilege, a doctrine that was adopted in the McCarthy era, that was originally meant to be used only in exceptional circumstances. Since 2001, however, the Bush Administration has repeatedly abused the privilege in attempts to cover up potentially embarrassing or illegal activities in cases involving warrantless wiretapping and other aspects of the NSA’s domestic spy program, kidnapping, aka ‘extraordinary rendition‘, and torture, just to name a few. They have relied on it not only to silence critics and whistleblowers, but also to use it as a shield to go after them like they have to James Risen, Sibel Edmonds and many others. Just this week it’s come out that they once again have invoked it in an attempt to keep the details hidden in the case against Thomas Kontogiannis, one of the convicted bribers of Republican congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, where the executive branch has asserted that once they deem something classified, the “courts are virtually powerless to review or disagree.”
It’s way past time Congress steps in to put a stop to it.
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
Now, Congress may finally be ready to act to rein in these abuses. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider S.2533, the State Secrets Protection Act, which would bring much needed judicial supervision that could help eliminate bogus state secrets claims, while carefully protecting legitimate interests in national security.
If one of your Senators is on the Judiciary Committee (see below), then you’re uniquely positioned to encourage the Committee to approve this legislation and make a real difference in fighting government secrecy! Contact them now and tell them to support the State Secrets Protection Act.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Delaware) Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Maryland) Sen. Tom A. Coburn (R-Oklahoma) Sen. John Cornyn III (R-Texas) Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Illinois) Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wisconsin) Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-South Carolina) Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin) Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) Sen. Jeff B. Sessions III (R-Alabama) Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island)
Please do contact your Senator and urge them to support S. 2533: The State Secrets Protection Act, either through the EFF website or you can go here to contact them directly.
Filed Under: Corruption, Duke Cunningham, FISA, Freedom of Information, George W. Bush, Government Policy, NSA Wiretapping, Torture
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I don’t know if I am “uniquely position” to impact my DINO Senator Feinstein. I’ve written her SO many times, and all I get is the same form letter.
She needs to be outsted as a Senator - she is a political skank that only cares about enabling bush to continue to help her war-profiteer hubby.
if bush keeps everything secret then, he doesn’t have to lie
again and again and again.
So what happens if Bush vetoes the bill?
Captain Bitter Elitist Hussein Kangaroo @ 3:
It’s all over. No way in the current Congress to get a majority enough to override the veto.
Have you seen this? CIA held WH communications on torture:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/....._0423.html
umm… where were you thirty years ago? people like to think Bush is exceptional, but he’s only exceptional in the degree he does things that this government has always done. why don’t we know about US complicity in crimes from Chile to Cypress to Southeast Asia that are “state secrets”? this crap has always been used to hide the criminal actions of our government. the only difference now is the ludicrous lengths the Bush Administration will go to to continue breaking the law. But if people didn’t stand up against the US government for killing people all over the globe, why would they start now?
It’s a done deal. Furgettaboutit. There are only two words that will change America and they are TERM LIMITS. I’ve given up writing to members of Congress. It’s pointless. It only invites the receipt of form letters and spam, and who needs more of that?
Where did you get that great photo of Bush as Uncle Sam?
I love that!
I want to use that on my blog.
And I probably will.
Bill W. Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 5:45 PM - PDT said,
“It’s way past time Congress steps in to put a stop to it.”
I say, oh me of little faith…
(I’ll believe it when I see it!) Im voting independent or libertarian!
cuz Hillary and Obama (apparently) are too busy campaining to “step in to put a stop to it.
or maybe they just want the same dictatorial power to be there when they take over…
milquetoast @ 9:
Bill W. Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 5:45 PM - PDT said,
“It’s way past time Congress steps in to put a stop to it.”
I say, oh me of little faith…
(I’ll believe it when I see it!) Im voting independent or libertarian!
cuz Hillary and Obama (apparently) are too busy campaining to “step in to put a stop to it.
or maybe they just want the same dictatorial power to be there when they take over…</blockquote
Libertarian = let the rich and power devour everyone else without any constraints from government. Had enough of that.
Planet B @ 6:
Exactly.
I think GW grew up in an environment (Daddy GWH & GrandDaddy Prescott & their CIA) where this behavior was so routine it’s automatic to him.
He knows all the bobbing & weaving cuz he’s been immersed in it all his life.
And he expects to get away with it - just like they have.
Of course Bush will NEVER sign the bill.
But that’s no reason not to initiate hearings and make our reps go on record. We can get it passed in the next Congress.
News Corpse, The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.
This link from today’s Blog Roundup is really relevant to this post.
As detailed in the collateral.blip.tv video, the first instance of the government invoking the State Secrets privilege back in 1953 was found, when the documents were finally unsealed, to be bogus. No information therein posed any threat to national security, but they DID reveal government incompetence and liability in a wrongful death case.
Another good link is John F. Kennedy’s secret society speech at YouTube: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces
Nice picture of Bush getting ready to pick his nose. He always thinks he’s at a baseball game.
Pretzels and Baseball
(from J F Kennedy’s speech:)
I am writing a book. It’s a kids book.
About a country called Backwards land. They have a cruel queen ant named Armadillo.
She wages war with the neighboring ant hills and drinks a lot of booze.
All the peon ants are afraid of her and her secret ant police.
The ants are sick of her. So they hatch this clever plan to get rid of him. It goes something like this.
The Amadillo is in charge of the ant hill; becuase, a bunch of evil ant corporations are making a lot of money from her illegal wars.
One day an ant named Joe Snuffy comes up with a clever idea.
Ant money is a funny thing.
Ant money works by circulating.
That ant dollar that you have in your pocket isn’t really an ant dollar. It’s a hundred ant dollars.
Why you might ask? Becuase, that one ant dollar will circulate a hundred times each year through the ant nest.
If each of the angry disgruntled ants takes $50 or $20 a paycheck and stuffs it in a mattress or in a mayonaise jar and leaves it there for a year.
Each of the disgruntled ants will actually be taking $20,000 or $50,000 out of the economy of the ant nest; becuase, those ant dollars aren’t circulating around the nest.
Now imagine a million disgruntled ants. About 1 in 300 ants do this. Every paycheck they will actually be taking $20,000,000,000 or $50,000,000,000 a year out of the economy of the ant nest; becuase, that ant money is no longer circulating.
For the ants plan to work that ant money could under no circumstances be left in an ant bank.
If ant money is left in an ant bank then the evil ant bankers will circualte that ant dollar through loans and the what-nots and fancy-transactions of financial mismanagement. The actual hard currency needed to be taken out of circulation from the ant nests economy.
This made the ant corporations very scared and they got rid of Armadillo faster than you could say lickity split.
They all lived happily ever after;
THE END!
L.A. Confidential @ 15:
Actually that was a football game. In my opinion the wierdest part of that story was that Bush was watching a football game on yv ALONE. He is President of the United States and he can’t scare up a single person on the planet to watch a football game with?
xoites (Bitter Before Country Was Cool) defends Constitution @ 18:
Bush doesn’t like being around people.
xoites (Bitter Before Country Was Cool) defends Constitution @ 18:
No he could not.
This is reason alone to GET RID of Both ineffective Houses and START OVER. As far as I’m concerned, they are as much to blame as Dubya/Cheney.
abarts @ 21:
We need to move to a Parlamentary system that would alow for more than two parties and votes of confidence or the party’s over for the Prime Minister.
NoGWBpolicyleftinplace @ 10:
If that were true…
Libertarians would be swamped in campaign funds, and fawned at every night on Faux news…
Learn to play the “follow the money” game…maybe you will wake up.
Looks to me like King George is giving the middle finger salute in that “Uncle Sam” illustration at the beginning of this thread.
xoites (Bitter Before Country Was Cool) defends Constitution @ 22:
We need to get rid of the media.
My Senator is Feinstein and she’s pretty much useless. I contacted her but I have no illusion. Her only concern is to get re-elected, and she knows she needs money for that, so she caters to powerful interests; she often sides with the right wingers.
We have a firm date when this Bush secrecy will end. Some time next January I believe.
It’s funny…I just posted a message on a different site regarding a topic which on the surface seems to concern a different issue but which deals with the same essential problem — that of Bush’s persistent tendency to essentially place himself above the law and do whatever he damn well feels like through the use of signing statements, executive orders, claims of “executive privilege”, and the like.
THIS is precisely one of the things that has always worried me the most about Bush and why I not only consider him a bad but a potentially dangerous leader — because it’s very much as if he has taken a leaf out of George Orwell’s book “Animal Farm”. This tendency of his to rationalize his refusal to honor the law reminds me very strongly of the way in which the pigs who rule Animal Farm succeed in changing each of the rules upon which Animal Farm is governed in order to justify their own corruption — as an example, “no animal shall kill any other animal” becomes “no animal shall kill any other animal without cause” in order to justify a mass slaughter of all the animals who have pointed out and protested the pigs’ corruption. Of course, by the end of the story, the pigs have effectively destroyed Animal Farm because they’ve become every bit as tyrannical and exploitative as the human beings from whom they originally freed the farm and from whom they have supposedly been protecting the other animals.
This is how you write an effective letter to your congresscritter, especially a Republican on a matter such as this…
You have to speak their language (thus the “Christians” part above to the pious simpleton Brownback) or your letter will never make it past their first gatekeeper (staffer) and all you will get is a form letter. you will have wasted your time.
While I have no illusion that this bill has much a chance of passing or that if it does that the President would ever sign it, but it’s important to work towards that end, and make our elected officials go on the record as either supporting, or not supporting, a bill such as this. At the very least it helps become fuel for their opponents in the future for voting against a bill like this, so we can help get these traitors out of office.
milquetoast @ 23:
Republicans are economic libertarians. Plug your brain into reality and wake up!
I will certainly write my Senator, Lindsey Graham (poor, poor, pitiful me), as I do regularly, and you can imagine the response I’ll get…national security, cheap rugs, fighting them there so we can hide shit over here, cheap rugs, I just ‘love’ that John McCain, blah, blah, blah, national security.
Which circle of Dante’s hell has the room and the intensity of pain to contain these mortal fools?
Captain Bitter Elitist Hussein Kangaroo @ 3:
That’s why I think the Senate should forget about this one, as vital to protecting our Constition as this legislation is. Bush is going to nothing but obstruct, obstruct, obstruct for the remainder of his term (Yeah, I know he’s been doing that for the last 8 years, but he’s not about to stop now is the point I’m trying to make). This Election Day, let’s get a Democrat back in the White House, let’s send REAL Democrats to the House and Senate (and replace DINO’s such as Feinstein and Shumer) so as to make the GOP a permanent minority. THEN we’ll be able to set about the task of repairing the damage done by the Bush regime.
Thank hell for Dick Durbin.
xoites (Bitter Before Country Was Cool) defends Constitution @ 22:
Thank You!
muckup @ 17:
I love it! We could just cut out the middle man and let corperations rule!
Interessting idea - I guess it is really just a strike on spending, if the many could afford to stop spending this would be a much different world.