Sloppy Reporting and Right Wing Nuts Create Lie About Recent FISA Court Ruling
Mainstream media reports muddied rather than clarified the recent FISA court ruling.
And, of course, right wingers jumped to false conclusions and blathered about the FISA ruling upholding Dubya's warrantless wiretapping.
Both Media Matters and Glenn Greenwald weigh in with the facts leaving the erroneous reporting and right wing bloviators with egg on their faces which they will ignore while continuing to spout this falsehood.
First Media Matters:
"In fact, the court states that its decision is 'to uphold the PAA [Protect America Act] as applied in this case' and specifically 'caution[s] that our decision does not constitute an endorsement of broad-based, indiscriminate executive power.' "
And from Glenn Greenwald at Salon: "....the court's ruling had nothing whatsoever to do with whether Bush acted legally or properly when he ordered warrantless eavesdropping on Americans from 2001-2006, when warrantless eavesdropping was a felony under FISA.
"The ruling had nothing whatsoever to do with the central question at the heart of the NSA controversy: namely, whether Bush committed felonies by ordering warrantless eavesdropping in the face of a Congressional statute that explicitly made such eavesdropping a felony.
"It's certainly true that some people believe and have argued that warrantless eavesdropping (even when authorized by Congress) violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement (that's a question which the Supreme Court, in the 1972 Keith case, explicitly left unresolved when it ruled that Nixon's warrantless eavesdropping in the context of domestic terrorism investigations violated the Fourth Amendment, but said that this may or may not be true for international terrorism investigations). The ruling released today did resolve that question (at least until Supreme Court review) by ruling that the warrantless eavesdropping which Congress authorized in the 2007 Protect America Act did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
"The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen also documents: "Several far-right blogs insisted today that Bush has been 'vindicated' and was 'right all along.' That's simply not what happened." Perhaps this myth can be extinguished before taking root if enough people stomp on it quickly and forcefully."
Sloppy reporting and right wing knee jerk reaction grabbing at straws to protect Bush, the criminal president and his corrupt administration, add to the body of GOP lies fed to the American people during the last eight years.
And, of course, right wingers jumped to false conclusions and blathered about the FISA ruling upholding Dubya's warrantless wiretapping.
Both Media Matters and Glenn Greenwald weigh in with the facts leaving the erroneous reporting and right wing bloviators with egg on their faces which they will ignore while continuing to spout this falsehood.
First Media Matters:
"A Wall Street Journal editorial claimed that, in a recently released decision, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review affirmed the legality of the Bush administration's "warrantless wiretapping program" that "was exposed in 2005." In fact, the decision applies only to surveillance conducted pursuant to a 2007 congressional statute and does not say anything about the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program exposed in 2005.
"A January 16 Los Angeles Times article made a similar false suggestion, asserting that CIA Director Michael Hayden, "an architect of the warrantless wiretapping operation" when he was the director of the National Security Agency in 2001, "won a measure of vindication with the release of a court ruling Thursday that supported the administration's right to compel U.S. telecommunications companies to cooperate with the eavesdropping effort.""In fact, the court states that its decision is 'to uphold the PAA [Protect America Act] as applied in this case' and specifically 'caution[s] that our decision does not constitute an endorsement of broad-based, indiscriminate executive power.' "
And from Glenn Greenwald at Salon: "....the court's ruling had nothing whatsoever to do with whether Bush acted legally or properly when he ordered warrantless eavesdropping on Americans from 2001-2006, when warrantless eavesdropping was a felony under FISA.
"The ruling had nothing whatsoever to do with the central question at the heart of the NSA controversy: namely, whether Bush committed felonies by ordering warrantless eavesdropping in the face of a Congressional statute that explicitly made such eavesdropping a felony.
"It's certainly true that some people believe and have argued that warrantless eavesdropping (even when authorized by Congress) violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement (that's a question which the Supreme Court, in the 1972 Keith case, explicitly left unresolved when it ruled that Nixon's warrantless eavesdropping in the context of domestic terrorism investigations violated the Fourth Amendment, but said that this may or may not be true for international terrorism investigations). The ruling released today did resolve that question (at least until Supreme Court review) by ruling that the warrantless eavesdropping which Congress authorized in the 2007 Protect America Act did not violate the Fourth Amendment.
"But that has always been, at most, a totally ancillary issue to the NSA scandal. The uproar over what Bush did was based in the fact that the eavesdropping he ordered was illegal because it was prohibited by the Congressional statute called "FISA". Bush followers and the Bush DOJ, in response, claimed that (i) the President has the "inherent authority" under Article II to eavesdrop however he wants, regardless of what Congress says and (ii) the 2001 AUMF "implicitly authorized" eavesdropping in violation of FISA.
The FISA ruling had nothing remotely to do with those issues and nobody who is minimally honest and has a working brain will claim otherwise. The only two federal judges to address those questions in the past rejected Bush's theories and found the NSA eavesdropping program illegal."The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen also documents: "Several far-right blogs insisted today that Bush has been 'vindicated' and was 'right all along.' That's simply not what happened." Perhaps this myth can be extinguished before taking root if enough people stomp on it quickly and forcefully."
Sloppy reporting and right wing knee jerk reaction grabbing at straws to protect Bush, the criminal president and his corrupt administration, add to the body of GOP lies fed to the American people during the last eight years.
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