Dafydd,

Remember when the Spec tried to intimidate Bush on SCOTUS nominations, faiing to realize that he had not yet been assigned as chairman of the Judicial Committee? He then had to spend all his huffin and puffin energy making promises that he would not do what he said he'd do. He can be fun to watch!

I don't know how you bloggers can do this day after day, several times day. I'm impressed. Today I spent almost all afternoon and evening preparing a post. I think you'll find it interesting - the subject is one of the most critical (I think) facing us.

JP Phish

JP Phish:

Good analysis of Maliki's amnesty plan, and a much better a:link color! This one I can easily read.

Dafydd

I posted an excerpt and link here.

Specter employed one of Leahy's staff members as his chief of staff on the Judiciary Committee. Is it any wonder he coming out with this rubbish.

MB. Do not be silly.

monkyboy, pathetic banned troll from CQ:

BZZT, wrong! Bush, like every President, has Art. 2 power to collect foreign intelligence especially during wartime. Calls that have one terminus outside of the US are foreign calls by definition. It would be dereliction of duty for this or any President to fail to have the NSA monitor any kind of foreign signals (email, wire tranfers, web browsing, FTP, radio, IR, microwave, etc.).

monkyboy, silly troll,

No warrants are required by statute or by the Constitution to collect foreign intelligence. Intelligence collection, especially wartime foreign intelligence collection is not a law enforcement function. It is a war fighting function!

Monkeyboy:

If the government is trying to spy on Americans, they sure do need a warrant, cd.

Remember the Fourth Amendment?

"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."

Hm... perhaps I'm skipping right over it, Monkeyboy -- but where does the Fourth Amendment, as you quoted it, say you need a warrant to engage in search or seizure?

Dafydd

Monkeyboy:

That's how I read it, Dafydd.

What words in the Fourth Amendment do you "read" to say that you cannot conduct a search or a seizure without a warrant? Police do it all the time, as do airport screeners and even high schools.

I want you to answer the question, Monkeyboy: which words in the Fourth Amendment do you believe make a warrant a flat requirement for all searches?

I want a real answer. Dig deep. Or else admit that what it requires is that the search be "reasonable"... and that a warrant is one way -- among others -- of demonstrating reasonableness.

Dafydd

Shhh - monkeyboy! The NSA is listening to your calls to that girl that wouldn't go to prom with you.

Please, monkyboy. I'm tired of sitting on top of that watchtower by the beach watching for al Qaeda. And I always mix up "one if by land, two if by sea". Please let the NSA monitor their phone calls so I can get some rest.

I think Specter is one of those Senators who think he should have been president and he is always trying to make himslef important.

I fail to understand how this program is any more invasive than the Echelon program the Clinton people were involved in along with Britain and Canada and New Zealand. In fact the best way to catch terrorists [such as those in Canada] is by monitoring communications and any president, other than Russ Feingold if he ever got the job, would want to employ means such as this to protect the public.

The only reason people like monkyboy are raising hell is their reflexive antiBush natures. They can't help themselves and facts do not matter to them.

Monkeyboy posted the following comment, but for some reason it didn't show up. My host server was in the midst of moving Big Lizards from one server to another (we're too big for our britches!), and possibly the comment got dropped; or maybe it was just delayed and will show up in a little while.

But in the meantime, this is what Monkeyboy opined:

+++++++++++++++++++

Dafydd,

I thought you knew some history.

Even when America was under English rule, authorities needed a warrant to arrest anyone or search their house...

An Englishman's home is his castle, etc.

I can't help you if you can't see in the Fourth Amendment the requirement for a warrant...maybe you should take off your rose-colored glasses :)

Heh, one of my own comments also didn't post. This one actually precedes the Monkeyboy comment above:

++++++++++++++++++++

Monkeyboy:

A warrant obtained based on an oath that there is probable cause of crime is the only way the government is allowed to search persons, houses, papers, and effects...

I'm sorry, Monkeyboy, but I cannot seem to find those words in my copy of the Fourth Amendment, either in the version printed in the Encyclopaedia Britannica or online. Can you provide a link?

The version I have is as you quoted earlier: it says that we have a protected right to be secure from "unreasonable searches and seizures"... not that we have a right to be secure from warrantless searches and seizures.

So I ask again: where in the Fourth Amendment does it say that the government needs a warrant in order to search? You still have not answered that question.

If you cannot find any words in the amendment itself that say a warrant is required, then please be a mensch and admit that you were mistaken.

Note that police search without warrants all the time -- for example, if you're arrested, they will turn out your pockets and search the car or room in which you were seized -- as do many others, such as airport TSA screeners and security guards in public buildings with metal detectors.

So where are the words in the amendment that literally forbid these types of searches? I just don't see them there.

Dafydd

+++++++++++++++

Since Monkeyboy responded to my comment, both comments must have been there -- then they were gone.

Maybe my host server did a backup and restore of the SQL database... but my comment and Monkeyboy's were posted after the backup but before my host restored to the new server site and reset the URL pointers to the new location. If that happened, I think the comments would be lost, even though I would receive the e-mail notifications for both of them.

I hope nobody else's comment was caught in that whipsaw!

Dafydd

(This is a new comment, not a reposting of an old one.)

Monkeyboy:

According to Cornell University, the Fourth Amendment reads thus:

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.

Given that:

1. The Framers knew what a warrant was, as they use it later in the same sentence;
2. They were perfectly capable of writing "secure... against warrantless searches and seizures," but chose to write "unreasonable" instead; and that
3. Laws and constitutional articles are presumed to be typo-free, hence we go by the actual words written, not what we imagine they should have written in place of those actual words...

...I think we have to go with the actual words that were actually written by the actual Framers of the actual amendment.

So again, Monkeyboy; parse the sentence that composes the Fourth Amendment: what actual words say that a search is "unreasonable" if and only if it is "warrantless?"

Can you force yourself to come up with an answer?

Can you force yourself to admit that there are no such words?

Can you admit that there are many kinds of searches that are warrantless but nevertheless accepted as reasonable -- such as a search incidental to an arrest, for instance?

We are all very interested to see whether you are a man, who can admit his mistakes, or a junior-high schoolboy who simply cannot make himself do it.

I have left you but two options: pick one.

Dafydd

Monkeyboy:

But they didn't mean to connect the two parts in any way?

Of course they did: a judicially issued warrant is a very common method of proving "reasonableness."

But if they meant it to be the only way, they would have said so. They would have written:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against warrantless searches and seizures, shall not be violated.

But they didn't write "warrantless." They wrote "unreasonable." What do you think -- that they thought using the same word twice in a sentence would be boring? Bad style? That it would draw a disapproving review by John Simon?

I -- and every law professor I've ever seen writing on the subject -- believes, rather, that they used "unreasonable" (a different word from warrantless) because, indeed, they meant that a warrant was one method of showing reasonableness... but not the only one.

But that is window dressing.

• You have yet to answer my original question, Monkeyboy: you cannot show any words in the Fourth Amendment that explicitly say a warrant is required for a search.
• You have yet to admit you cannot find any such words.
• You have yet to address the point I raised three times with you: that there are thousands of warrentless searches conducted every day in the United States that are held to be perfectly reasonable and legal. It's a devastating blow to your argument, and you know it as well as the rest of us do.

It was a test, Monkeyboy; I didn't tell you that's what it was... the test was whether you would recognize when you had crawled too far out on a limb so you could cut your losses, return to the main branch, and look for a more tenable limb.

You and I both realize you failed miserably.

By you inability either to defend yourself or admit that you overreached, you have made yourself a laughingstock on this board. You will not recover from this; you have proven yourself a fool and a knave.

You will not be taken seriously again. When you comment, people will simply laugh at you.

I won't throw you off; you're not important enough to go through the bother. Feel free to keep posting comments, so long as you continue to abide by the rules.

But you may as well drift away all on your own... whatever mission you thought you had has failed.

It's too bad; I would love to have a liberal on here -- but only one who can actually argue his position like an adult.

There are such; I've met them (and debated them). But most are pretty much like you, Monkeyboy.

Adios; I doubt we'll be speaking again.

Dafydd

LOL, monkyboy, pathetic banned troll from CQ:

Yes, I remember the 4th amendment, which does not apply to foreign intelligence, even if 'Americans' are included. Foreign intelligence falls under Art. 2, which the 4th amendment cannot trump. During wartime, silly troll, signals intelligence is a reasonable thing to do, especially where enemy spies and/or saboteurs are operating (whether said persons are American citizens or not).

Warrants, silly troll, are needed only for criminal investigations and trials.

An administration that has no problem funneling hundreds of billions of dollars to their cronies doesn't want to hire a few law clerks to protect Americans...why?

Is it simple incompetence...or something much worse?

Where did you get this silliness from? This crap is so patently false that I suspect even you don't believe it.

Thanks for hissing in, . Now you can slither in with a comment, o wise. (sign out)

(If you haven't hissed a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Hang loose; don't shed your skin!)

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