Mickey

I for one am more than tired of the "smash mouth football" philosophy that is so worshipped hereabouts as a self evident truth when it comes to winning football games. Scoring points wins games. The Bills of the '90's weren't worried about how many times they ran or threw or what the time of possession stat was, they did whatever they had to do to score points. Fast forward to this team and with guys like Moulds and Evans and a young QB who can extend plays, pass plays anyway, we spend the entire year trying to inch the ball forward by running predictably often and despite the fact of having a crappy line. Shock of shocks, our offense accordingly sucks. Forget the smash mouth machismo crap. Rushing TDs: 6, Passing TDs: 16. I know it is absolute heresy around here but it looks to me like maybe the problem isn't that we didn't run enough but that we didn't throw enough. If you take a QB with the raw skills of a young Brett Favre and then demand that he play an offense designed for Trent Dilfer, don't be surprised when your stud ends up being Trent Dilfer.

I think they didn't approve because they simply didn't have the cash. You see, back then, they actually tried not to spend money they didn't have. In that sense, things certainly have changed. I doubt they had much credit either. From where would they have borrowed then money? Foreign banks? We would also do well to note that those members of congress had signed their names to documents that, if the revolution failed, would have ensured them a trip to the gallows.

Yeah, at the same time he was honking about the war on xmas, Fox was using/selling "Happy Holidays" and similar phrases.

I guess they should bug everyone on the planet then becuase, hey, who knows for sure if anyone is or is not a terrorist without bugging them? Among others, the 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement between the UN and the Unites States which states (Public Law 80-357): The headquarters district shall be inviolable.

They are funny to you and I but there are legions of people who take them seriously. That isn't so funny.

She wasn't at diplomat and believe it or not, not every CIA target is a diplomat. Are you on some sort of quest to find a good excuse for Scooter and Karl?

No, but we have treaties with them that forbid spying on their diplomats. The NSA and the CIA are bound by those treaties. I have no problem bugging suspected terrorists but bugging Jean De Villepin's, or whatever his name is, daughter's princess phone seems a little, well, gauche.

Do you dispute that there was an e-mail from the NSA disclosed by a British translator who was charged with violating England's Official Secrets Act and that when asked about it, Ari Fleischer did not deny it? The universal response to the article was essentially, "duh, of course we were spying on UN Diplomats...", thus the essential point of the story hasn't been challenged. If you don't dispute it, why mock the source or my use of it? Did you not read where I questioned their sources myself or did you have to ignore that part to weave your dimwitted comeback? Tell me, does the site of Coulter, Malkin, Ingram and the like so excite you that the blood rushes out of your brain to....someplace else so that your brain is no longer able to function at normal levels? I'm concerned.

Not really all that elaborate. Does the name "J. Edgar Hoover" ring a bell? Finding out people's secrets and using them against them is not unheard of. If you see bugging the UN Security Council on the eve of a crucial vote on invading Iraq as nothing out of the ordinary, how much of a stretch is it to consider blackmail as a potential fruit of the surveillance tree? Isn't that what bugging is for anyway? To find out what you don't know so you can use the information to achieve your own goals? If I am being pollyannish in my reaction to bugging diplomats, isn't it equally pollyannish to think that this administration wouldn't black mail if their taps of private homes turned up private yet useful information? Really, that is what bugs me about bugging. I don't care what or how they turn up evidence on a terrorist but if they start bugging anyone for any reason, the potential, the temptation for abuse is pretty obvious, and dangerous. You know, absolute power corrupts absolutely and...all....that....jazz.

Why stop there? Please serenade us with the enlightening vomitous of the rest of the crew: Coulter, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Robertson and O'Reilly. Afterall, they have the "IQ under 5" demographic sowed up so by all means, share with the rest of us the musings of your idols. Really, you finally have us nailed. Just last week here at Liberal Central Planning, hidden deep within the paranoid recesses of Mount Morons Will Believe Anything, I personally approved plans to distribute pills to be placed in municpal water supplies that will instantly turn unsuspecting, flag waving, red blooded, God talking, intellgently designed, doctor killing, clinic firebombing, fag hating Americans into homosexual, Jesus hating, atheist, evolutionist, muslim terrorists. And we would have gotten away with it too if hadn't been for you meddling Malkinized kids. Curses.

I was the source on that. I admit it. I was at a book fair and saw some suspicious dude buy a copy of "Terrorism for Dummies" using a credit card in the name of "Al Queda Inc." I sprang into action and called John Ashcroft on his Jesus-Phone and the rest is history. Not the first time I have saved the world due to my uncanny ability to read things upside down.

Sorry Tom, earlier there were some posts about "we spy on everyone and everyone spies on us.." I thought you were adding in the Cuban Missile Crisis along the same lines. The foreigners at the UN are diplomats, not spies, at least in theory. Same with Embassies, they are where the ambassadors live, not the spies, at least in theory. We certainly get pretty ticked when our diplomats are spied on and the perpetrators usually respond, at least back in the cold war days, with the complaint that we are hiding spies under the cover of diplomacy. I just think it is an interesting issue, where diplomacy and spying meet. When you get caught, it is a problem, nevermind that everyone else might be doing it. In this specific context it is even more interesting, at least for me. This is an administration afterall that is being accused of using ginned up intelligence to manufacture a justification for war. Spying on allied diplomats, bugging the phones in their homes on the eve of a crucial UN vote on the heels of Powell's now embarassing big speech, I don't think that , in context, is ho-hum news. As for who I would bug, I think I would start with terrorists and such as opposed to Ambassador Huff-n-Fuss's shoe-phone. That is assuming I am looking for information regarding national security as opposed to say, getting the Ambassador on tape setting up a date with his mistress to use to, oh, say blackmail him in to voting for a certain UN Resolution I was interested in. Certainly though, this administration wouldn't do something like that now would it?

I think you are complaing about a problem that doesn't exist. Everyone in congress wants to re-up the Patriot Act. They do want to fiddle with a few provisions that went too far but that is all. It is a bi-partisan majority that wants to trim back some of the more useless and needlessly invasive provisions. Any thought that the administration was really concerned about security evaporated pretty clearly during the wrangling in congress. Congress was willing to pass a long extension, 6 months I think, of the whole Patriot Act with no changes at all so permit time to figure out the best way to iron out the legitimate concerns of people on both sides of the issue. The administration said no way were they going to go for that. They wanted to pressure congress into passing it all now with no changes, the threat being that they would be labeled as having endangered security by voting down the entire act. The administration was playing games with national security and legit concerns over civil liberties. It was shameful. It didn't work. A bi-partisan majority called their bluff and they backed down. Suddenly they were all for an extension. You are eating right out of their hand by believing this tripe about "voting against the Patriot Act". They are all for about 97% of the Act and just want to roll back the dumb stuff in it. You are free to disagree with them but don't repeat the administration's BS that these guys want to endanger the country by embolding terrorists blah, blah, blah.

I think it is a little different in that the Cuban Missile crisis presented a situation where we and our allies were fairly well united and the future of all humanity was at stake. The Iraq war was controversial with nothing approaching a consensus in our favor within the UN. If the Germans or French were ever caught bugging our UN Ambassador, I missed the story. Maybe it is one of those things that is fine unless you get caught and we got caught because you just look stupid. If the French are doing it and can avoid being detected, how goofy do we look when some translator is getting ahold of top secret info? Against the backdrop of all the other bugging problems going on, it looks all that much worse. I imagine we will simply mutter our way through an appropriate apology and move on.

My family had the entire 1976 New Zealand Olympic Rowing Team over our house for dinner several times just prior to the Olympics. Those guys were crazy. They used to say that life was "Booze and Broads, with rowing inbetween" God they were a lot of fun.

I am willing to back up your claim that your diatribes are indeed tiresome. I always have your back compadre.

Don't even bother. Too many football Einstein's just can't see anything past the QB position. You are wasting your time pointing out that a QB can't be judged properly when playing behind a lousy line and in front of a lousy OC.

Doesn't surprise me, hence the smiley face. Do we have proof the French or Hans Blix was spying on us back then? That would be fun if we did.

Maybe the UN is saying the same thing about... ahem... WMD's.....er...um... torture....cough, cough, er...ummmm.. us.

No, but I did buy an O'Reilly tree ornament that said "Happy Holidays".

Not only that but the excluded text became forbidden texts pretty quickly. Most have not survived, it is beleived, because to have them was heresy. They were destroyed and those who had kept them stoned, hung, burned or whatever they did with heretics back then.

Apparently nothing new but in the lead up to the UN vote on intervention in Iraq, we were spying on Security Council members, including tapping home phones and e-mails to get an idea how the vote was going. The story first broke in 2003 when a British translator leaked an NSA e-mail from Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. The translator, Katharine Tersea Gun, was later charged with violating Britian's Official Secrets Act so it seems as though the e-mail was authentic. Ari Fleischer was asked about it at the time and said " "As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence, so I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no." That was then. Fresh confirmation of the spying has now emerged which cites "NSA documents", "two former NSA officials", "one intelligence source" and "one former official". A story, along with a copy of the original leaked e-mail can be found at NSA Spying When contacted to comment, the WH refused and referred the writers to that two year old statement made by Ari F. Is this true? Dunno. What and who is a "former official", official of what? Are they qouting one guy and referring to him with different sobriquets to make it sound like they have more sources than they really do? Woodward's book makes a pretty good case that we were spying on Hans Blix so if this were true, it shouldn't shock anyone besides me . Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Maybe we should be spying on the Security Council but if so, what about treaties we have signed to the contrary? What does this do to our credibility if we are promising one thing in a treaty and doing another in secret? What is more maddening, that we are doing this or that we got caught? This raises some interesting questions on the nether regions where diplomacy and surveillance meet.

US Persons. FISA has one procedure for suspected agents of foreign governments and another for what it calls "US Persons". I may be wrong but my understanding is that the Constitution applies to people within the USA, not just citizens, so that might be what they mean by "US Persons". The FISA procedure for a warrant against a suspected agent of a foreign government who is not a US person is basically that you get a warrant simply for the asking and you get to start tapping them long before you ever have to bother even asking for one. The thing to remember here is A) the warrants are virtually always granted; B)you tap immediately and ask about a warrant later; C)you can tap without a warrant for up to a year with extensions available just by notifying the court (notify, not ask permission) under seal and some committemen in congress and D) the FISA court is classified. I don't have a recollection of the court ever having leaked a tap. FISA was enacted in 1978 and has been expanded on occasion, most dramatically by the Patriot Act after 911. It was developed to address the problem of clear abuses by security agencies on the one hand and the need for intel on the other. In its entire history, I think they have rejected something like 4 warrant applications, all of which were subsequently granted on appeal. Because it is classified, the information about the FISA courts are limited. In 2004, the government submitted 1,758 applications and 1,754 were granted. Of the remaining 4, the government withdrew 3 of them before the court ever ruled on them. One of those was resubmitted and then granted. The last one of the 4 was submitted late in 2004 and was approved, but not until 2005. Thus, not a single application in 2004 was denied in whole or in part. FISA Annual Report 2004 In 2003, the government made 1,727 applications, 1,724 of them were approved. One of the denials resulted in a motion for reconsideration by the Gov't which was granted in part leading to an application that was ultimately granted. Essentially, two were denied and the government did not even bother appealing them. FISA Annual Report 2003 In 2002, 1,228 applications were submitted and 1,226 were approved. The remaining 2 were approved as modified. The decision to modify them was appealed and was successful so that ultimately, all 1,228 applications were granted exactly as requested. FISA Annual Report 2002 In 2001, the court approved 932 applications out of 934. Two were submitted late in the year and not approved until 2002 so all applications were approved.FISA Annual Report 2001 In 2000, the court approved 1,003 of 1,005 applications. Two of the 1005 were submitted in late December 2000 and were approved in January of 2001 so actually, all applications were approved. FISA Annual Report 2000 That means that between 2000 and 2004, there were 6,652 applications. Of them, 6,639 were approved. Of the remaining 13, 5 were submitted late in December of that year and approved in January of the following year which leaves 8 applications. Of those, 3 were withdrawn before the court could decide on the applications and 1 of them was resubmitted and approved. That gets us down to 5 applications not approved. Of those, 3 were approved but modified and of those, 2 were successfully appealed so of those 3, you really only have 1 left and that was actually approved with modifications. The last applications "not approved" were never appealed by the government which tells you how weak those requests had to have been. The final score is 6,652 applications and 6,649 approved, 1 approved with modifications and 2 not approved but also not even appealed. I'm not sure if those numbers match the article linked to by VA Bills but I have linked the actual reports so I am confident of my numbers. That is an approval rate of 99.95%, higher if you include the one that was approved with modifications. If you throw out the ones the government themselves decided were either bogus or simply not needed, throw out the ones granted on appeal, throw out the ones the government never bothered to appeal apparently agreeing that they were no good and include the lone "approved as modified" application, you really get a 100% approval rate. Since 2005 is not over just yet, we will have to wait for the 2005 annual report.

The ones rejected were granted on appeal.

Okay, now I have to go back and see what in the world doves were doing in Genesis that was so prominent because I didn't know there were any doves, or even dove bars, in Genesis. See how freely we self proclaimed intellectuals profess our ignorance? When did all that self proclaiming go on anyway? Was that in the IBP period?