“Black is white”; no, it’s black.

I love this:

The White House maintained Monday that the surveillance measure signed into law by President Bush over the weekend did not give the government any sweeping new powers to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.

[…]

The new measure, signed into law by the president on Sunday, allows intelligence officials to eavesdrop without a warrant…

I don’t know if it’s the Times or the White House, but somebody’s got a black sense of humor.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

11 replies on ““Black is white”; no, it’s black.”

  1. I’m really depressed that Jim Webb voted for this in the senate (S 1927 if memory serves). Though I’m not saying he’ll never get my vote back, he’s certainly lost it with that.

    I’m not in favor of giving the government appropriate surveillance powers, but this has no effective oversight, and I simply don’t trust the government to do the right thing in the long run without oversight.

  2. “I’m not in favor of giving the government appropriate surveillance powers” should of course be “I am in favor…”.

  3. We need a new political party.

    Let’s call it the Restoration Party: The party that will restore the United States Constitution to its rightful place as the basis upon which our laws are made and interpreted.

    And, once restored, the party that will see to it that we never again fall into the political quicksand that awaits us whenever we forget who we really are, where we came from, and what our ancestors died for in the American Revolution.

  4. Let’s be clear here though: the distinction is between foreign nationals in the US and US citizens. There is good reason to think that the President basically DOES have an unfettered right to listen in on the former without a warrant, and this latest agreement formalizes that more than before. The whole point of things like FISA is not to prevent that, but rather to make sure that this power isn’t being used on citizens. Now there is less oversight. But don’t get confused into arguing that the spying on foreign nationals without warrants is a new or radically bad thing. What’s bad is that we are now we have less oversight so as to make sure this power isn’t being used on citizens.

  5. I’ve come to the realization that the erosion of 4th Amendment protection is the “sacrifice” that Americans will be forced to endure. And that it doesn’t matter if Bush, or Al Gore were President – our defense establishment would require it as part of the cost of protecting the homeland. We are all in this mess together, soldiers and civilians abused by a needless war, badly prosecuted. And it is going to get worse – we are one terrorist act away from even more “sacrifices”.

  6. I agree we need a third party, badly, and I particularly like the “restoration” concept. Also agree with Plunge on all points, it’s the accountability and oversight concepts that both parties seem to not understand. Being a former resident of Dr. Paul’s 14th District in Texas (until my neighborhood got gerrymandered into slimey old Hot Tub Tom’s district), I think he might actually be the one most firmly committed to those two concepts, though I don’t always agree with everything he says. Otherwise I think we’re stuck with same-old banana republic antics no matter who’s elected. Having lived and worked in South America, I have a more than passing familiarity with those types of regimes. For some reason, the terms “Paraguay,” “kleptocracy,” “inept-ocracy” and “kakistocracy” keep popping into my mind, and there’s not even a Spelling Bee on right now to bring those words to mind.

  7. The White House maintains that the measure gives them no new power to eavesdrop on Americans, because according the White House, they’ve always had that power.

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