Mickey

Because she has a nice ass. Now if the Sheehan watch has as good a reason, I'd have no complaints.

Putting aside that the courts ruling was essentially enacted into law by the Omnibus Crime Control...Act of 1968 so that it is now federal statutory law as well as constitutional precedent, the vote was 7-1 in that case. Were all 7 judicial activists? As for Black's dissent, on that line of thought anything that is not verbal speech wouldn't be protected by the "free speech" clause. At most it would protect hand written and verbal speech only. A digital political cartoon at Slate for example, would not be protected. It never ceases to amaze me that those who argue the most against "big government" are the biggest supporters of defining the constitution so narrowly that the protections it provides to individuals as against the government are rendered useless thus allowing unlimited governmental power.

And therefore susceptible to police seizure. Testicle Seizure, the scourge of our times.

I also can't find legal precedent to state that your left nut is not a public testicle. It is certainly a pubic testicle and perhaps even a public spectacle but there is nothing to state that it is a private testicle nor even a private spectacle. It is so obvious that the question has never...., ahem..., come up.

Even further, you pay money to use that phone line, there is a contractual relationship between you and the owner of the booth, the phone company. Now, the phone company could put up a sign in the booth stating that it reserves the right to permit the government to listen in on your calls but very quickly, people would use booths owned by phone companies that don't permit the tap. That is one reason why they usually have to get a warrant to get into AOL files because the AOL user has a contract with AOL that includes privacy. It is much easier for the government to get access to an e-mail that is sent outside of some contractual service. The contract gives you a "reasonable expectation of privacy". Then again, I am just an activist wannabe judge who is willy nilly throwing around universally accepted precedents who lives to enhance big government intrusions even when I am arguing against them.

Certainly it is more complicated. Again, though, I just don't see why the FISA procedure was too cumbersome for them to bother with it. It might be all perfectly legal based on what was actually done but that doesn't seem to be the arguemtent they are making....yet. I think Rice did mention that what they tapped were communications between US Citizens and other persons outside of the US so maybe that is going to be part of the argument that it was legal. If it was, she could have just said, "..therefore, it was not a violation of law to tap those communications without a warrant..." She didn't though, instead she just said she wasn't a lawyer and Gonzalez would explain it all for us later. It still doesn't answer the question, why? Why was FISA such an obstacle to them that they had to find a way to side step it?

Do you have any idea whatsoever of the judicial and constitutional history of the phrase "...reasonable expectation of privacy..."? The constitution quite plainly states that "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." The question quite obviously is posed, what is an "unreasonable" search and seizure? The Supreme Court, tasked properly to interpret the Constitution, has held that it is "unreasonable" for the government to seize a communication in which a person has a "reasonble expectation of privacy." This interpreation was neither invented by liberals nor allowed to survive as the prevailing rule by liberals. It is an interpretation that has been supported and shared virtually universally by judges from across the political spectrum. In fact, the argument you make about land lines vs. the internet is not really based at all on who owns the devices carrying the communication. If so, there would be no reason to object to tapping a phone line owned by the phone company as opposed to tapping the internet owned by whoever. The argument you are making is that, all things considered, you see no reasonable expectation of privacy with the internet communication but you do as to the phone line. In short, you have very quickly moved on your own to using the same logic used in the law which you belittle as the product of activist judges.

I don't know the details but I doubt it. The info is just not useable in court if they tap and don't ultimately get a warrant. If nothing is turned up, there is no need to ever get the actual warrant. It would be a waste of time. No one is going to get all bent out of shape for them dropping an investigation before ever having been required to get a warrant. If that is the case, this is all going to get dropped pretty quickly but I highly doubt that is the issue. If it were, the administration talking heads could have just said that over the weekend when they were all dispatched to defend this on "Press the Meat" and the rest. Its not an argument, that I'm aware of, being made by the people on the inside who know exactly what happened so I see no reason to speculate that this is the case. Their defense is that they tapped US citizens without a warrant but it was within the President's constitutional authority and that the President's handpicked attorney general obligingly reached that conclusion.

So the argument you are making is that technically, it wasn't a wiretap and hence not illegal? Not even the administration is bothering to try and make a silk purse out of that sow's ear. Their argument is not that it wasn't wiretapping but that they had authority to wiretap. As far as the law is concerned, as long as you have a reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to a given communication, it is contitutionally protected. Technology has led the courts to tweak and refine that basic rule to incorporate changing technology but the rule is essentially the same. The fact that the phone company owns the phone line over which your communication is carried does not allow them to listen in to that signal so even if I were to accept your arguement about ownership of the internet, it does not follow that the "owner", whoever that is, has the right to a warrantless tap, signal capture or whatever you want to call that type of secretly listening in on a private conversation. "Public domain" is really a legal phrase of art relating to patents and copyrights. Jacki O, rest her soul, had no reasonable expectation of privacy in walking down the street so she could be photographed when in public. However, photographing her from a mile away with a telephoto lens peering through a bedroom window would certainly be illegal. She had a reasonable expectation of privacy sitting in her bedroom even if her window was open and she knew that with the right equipment, people could photograph her. Just because a communication is capable of being intercepted does not mean that the persons involved had no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the communication. That is really the inquiry, the reasonableness of that beleif, not just whether or not the communication was interceptable.

They can tap the crap out of them if they want, they just have to get a warrant from FISA within 72 hours after they start the taps. It isn't a question of whether or not they should be tapped, of course they should. The question is why didn't they get warrant, especially since the record on getting those warrants is 100%? Time is not an excuse because you can tap long before you get the warrant. The whole FISA thing was desinged to let us tap like crazy whenever national security is even remotely involved without having to worry about justifying it with anything more than an application sometime within the first 3 days of tapping. They have not offered any explanation as to why even this minimal procedure was too cumbersome for them. I am quite sure that any half-assed explanation, no matter how far fetched, will be enough for the Bush strokers but they haven't even offered that yet.

Yeah, I heard Rice say that certain people beleived he was acting within his constitutional authority but she gave no specifics and every one she cited was an administration official like Gonzalez and herself. No objective opinions were sought. Maybe his ultimate defense will be that he was under the good faith belief that he was acting legally based on what the Atty. General told him and can't be blamed if it was later determined by a court that the AG was wrong. In other words, he will use the same defense we heard Rice trot out: "I'm not a lawyer, how was I supposded to know it was illegal?" Very close to the way the WMD fiasco was handled. Once the President convinces a subordinate to go on the record with the opinon he wants, whether or not justified by the facts, he is off to the races because he can always blame the subordinate. "How was I to know the WMD intel was overblown when the DCI said it was a slam dunk?" Now it will be "How was I to know it was illegal to tap citizens without a warrant when the AG told me it wasn't?" Interesting defense isn't it? It depends on the President being able to credibly argue that he is too stupid to judge the debate on intel and the law for himself. It workded with WMD's and probably work here. It really is just another version of the "plausible deniability" trick. You just need subordinates willing to fall on their sword to provide cover for the President. I guess Gonzalez will just resign to spend more time with his family, get a medal and vanish into the private sector.

Why do Bob Barr and Arlen Specter disagree with you? Are they also part of the "Bush Bad" crew?

I just don't understand why. Under FISA, they can go ahead and tap without a warrant for 72 hours so the "ticking bomb" scenario doesn't apply, the law allows for that. So they don't have to wait to get a warrant before tapping. Once they do, they have 3 days to get one and the court has issued 1,226 warrants out of 1,226 applications so its not as if the courts have been giving them a hard time on this, absolutely the opposite. I think they only ever turned down 4 applications and on appeal, all 4 of those, if I am not mistaken, were all granted. Even if it was illegal, almost as bad though is the "why" of it. Why did they do an endrun around the FISA warrant procedures which were designed specifically to handle issuing warrants in emergency situations involving nationa security? I don't think this should be pre-judged so we should wait until they provide the specific basis for their claim that it was legal before reaching any conclusions. I have to wonder though that if they worked the legality issue out to their satisfaction long ago, why wasn't it trotted out immediately by Rice and the others over the weekend after the story broke? I assume that if its legality were worked out before they did it, they would have all the supporting info at their fingertips. No way we should use the "I" word at this point, no way. For all we know, there was some reason based on a given sitation where he felt he had no choice but to proceed as he did, outside of FISA. If a reasonable explanation can be offered along those lines, I think it would have to slide. Again, that is why I just don't get why they had to do it, I have to believe they had a good reason to avoid FISA but then again, the credibility of the administration at this point is like the weather outside my office, near zero. From Abu Ghraib to WMD's, from rendition to illegal wiretaps, from Plamegate to "last throes", the administration is starting to look like the Keystone cops with apologies to the Keystone cops. I heard Bob Barr, Bob Barr for crying out loud, go crazy over the illegality of these wiretaps. Ditto Arlen Specter. Even republicans and conservatives are starting to ask the same question the rest of us have about this administration, that being: What the eff!?!?!?!

If her 15 minutes are up, why does she still merit so much attention here where the Sheehan watch is still manned 24-7?

Call them "journeyman" all you want, they do a good job blocking. I would even offer for consideration the notion that the reason the Pats have been so good for so long is that their coaches are able to spot able lineman among what lesser judges of talent call "journeyman".

There has never been an offensive system so clever with skill players so skilled that it could succeed without blocking. I don't think we would be any better, at all. I have never seen Edge break a long one when there wasn't a hole made somewhere up front by his line. I haven't seen Peyton Manning complete many passes while laying on his back. All the Marvin Harrison's in the world will not help you if your QB is buried under 800 lbs of defensive linemen. It is this kind of thinking that has made this team the laughing stock of the NFL. Case in point that any Bills fan should know: OJ Simpson. When he arrived to the Bills they had lousy coaching and a lousy line. The result was that he sucked. Saban comes in as a half way decent coach and the first thing he does is build a solid line with guys like Joe D and Reggie. The next thing you know, OJ was "unstoppable". Thing is, before he got a line, he was very stoppable. Case closed. Get a freaking line already.

Yeah, I think we would be much better with Leinhart getting sacked every other play rather than JP. That is the kind of thinking that has taken this team to where it is, the depths of the league, for the last 5 years.

Its getting harder and harder to sort out the varying degrees of suckitude among the units on this team.

Gawd what I wouldn't give for a DE who has to be double teamed. If I see one more stunt on that line that takes the lineman out of the play without even being blocked I am going to scream.

Don't worry, these companies hold the nation's best interests paramount, even above their own. All is well.

Canada, the US and Mexico have large reserves of natural gas and they have an integrated pipeline system to move it around. That is why, strangely, we import from Canada and at the same time, export. Mexico hasn't developed much of its reserves because its cheaper to import from the US. Because the system is integrated, increased supplies anywhere in the system would lower prices but so too would increased pipeline capacities or the construction of additional terminals. Increasing supplies from ANWR wouldn't necessarily cause a siginificant price drop, that could be done just as well from increasing storage space so you have somewhere to put unused summer production that will be needed in the winter. I have a client, a large corporation, that makes its living doing just that, developing underground storage facilities for natural gas where it holds on to the stuff for as long as it takes prices to get where they want them and then they sell it. They buy cheap, stow it, and then sell high. The CEO of the company can hardly stop laughing when you bring up ANWR. It is a pretty complicated business.

The article also said: "There's still plenty of natural gas in the United States." And I said that the amount of gas, ie "still plenty" is not the problem. I don't think I was that far off. Katrina is a problem but you'll have to explain to me how drilling in ANWR would have prevented a hurricane or any other natural disaster from disrupting production of things like natural gas. Better yet, explain how it is that a Hurricane effects the amount of natural gas in the ground as opposed to simply posing a short term interruption to production and transport. Things like pipeline capacity from Canada to the US is a bigger problem than the amount of gas. The price of oil is a major issue because a lot of large consumers have the ability to switch from one fuel to another based on prices. If oil gets high enough, they switch to natural gas which challenges the storage and supply system. Terminals being located in areas prone to natural disasters is also an issue as it was with Katrina and the Gulf Coast. Drilling ANWR would resolve none of those problems. Much of Alaska's current production goes to Japan, not New York. As I have stated many, many times, I have no problem turning ANWR into swiss cheese, I just don't think it should be oversold as an answer to our energy problems. Apparenty, even supporting drilling in ANWR makes me a lemming.

I would say that this is ridiculous but that would be an insult to ridiculosity. I think Bill in NYC put it best when he said that when we have jailed the last terrorist, murderer and rapist, then maybe we can spare some resources to round up those who smoke in inappropriate places.

The Unites States consumed 22.3 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas in 2003 while it produced 24 Trillion and imported another 4 Trillion while it exported .5 Trillion. I don't care if they drill the crap out of ANWR but I don't think the amount of gas is the problem when it comes to high prices this winter.

I seem to draw a lot of your attention despite your having given up on me as a lost cause. Your "gov't=bad" refrain is devoid of "lemmingism"? It is the siren call of every crank and perpetual malcontent with a soapbox since they invented government. It must be rewarding to have a political philosophy so marginalized that you'll never have to worry about its merit ever being tested in real life. You can always imagine that it would be better than what we have.