Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested for the first time Thursday that a president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to rule it out,” Gonzales said when asked about that possibility at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The AG also declined to rule out labor camps, forced sterilization of suspected terorrists, and the strangling of baby kittens that look suspicious.<\/p>\n
Well, no, he didn’t address those items specifically, and I don’t think <\/em>they’re actually on the table. But based on the arguments put forward by the Administration — i.e., that Congress told them they could use whatever “force” they needed to in pursuit of the “war” — there’s nothing legally <\/em>barring pretty much any action they wish to take. Which leaves only the pressure of oversight (which the Administration rejects) and public political pressure (which, uninformed by any sort of oversight, is difficult to muster in a rational fashion).<\/p>\nAt the hearing, Gonzales inched closer toward acknowledging that intercepting purely domestic calls could be considered legally permissible in his view if the communications involved al Qaeda. “You would look at precedent,” he said. “What have previous commander in chiefs done?”<\/p>\n
Answering his own question, he cited President Woodrow Wilson’s authorizing the interception of all cables to and from Europe during World War I “based upon the Constitution and his inherent role as commander in chief.” Gonzales said he would use that legal framework to decide whether intercepting purely domestic communications without a warrant is legally permissible. He would not say whether such wiretapping has been conducted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, nothing has — officially — happened yet.<\/p>\n
“The attorney general’s comments today should not be interpreted to suggest the existence or nonexistence of a domestic program or whether any such program would be lawful under the existing legal analysis,” department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
We might be doing it — or we might not be — and we won’t even tell you, until we’re caught, whether we think we can legally get away with it.<\/em> A nice deal, if you can get.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bush Administration continues to assert it has a right — as part of the war authorization — to perform warrentless wiretaps of anyone calling into or out of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9161,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/06\/because_we_say.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":0},"title":"Because we say so","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 6-Feb-06 11:21am","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm amazed\/appalled by this particularly stupid response by Attorney General Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the NSA spying program. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked if the authorization...","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13303,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/26\/gonzales_shifts_from_a_co.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":1},"title":"Gonzales shifts from a confused voice to a whiney voice","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 26-Jan-09 1:17pm","format":false,"excerpt":"That's the only way I can summarize former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' recent interview with NPR. He said he failed to properly oversee his department's push to fire nine U.S....","rel":"","context":"In "Homeland Security"","block_context":{"text":"Homeland Security","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law\/homeland-security"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11028,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/21\/do_you_recall.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":2},"title":"Do you recall?","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 21-Apr-07 12:16pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Amazing recap of AG Alberto Gonzales' testimony before the Senate\u00a0about the US Attorney firings, with clips of the\u00a050-odd times he averred he didn't recall stuff.\u00a0 As Jon Stewart put it:...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9230,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/05\/for_the_duratio.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":3},"title":"For the Duration","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 5-Aug-06 5:13pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The Bush Administration seems confident that either they'll get their Supreme Court-invalidated military tribunal scheme revalidated by Congress, or that they can simply do whatever the heck they want about...","rel":"","context":"In "Home Improvement"","block_context":{"text":"Home Improvement","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/home-improvement"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13017,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/15\/seeking_justice_from_just.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":4},"title":"Seeking justice from Justice","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 15-Aug-08 7:10pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Given the failure of the Attorney General to follow up on the illegal politicization of attorney hiring at the Justice Dept (which included the odd statement for an Attorney General...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11445,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/08\/27\/irony_5.html","url_meta":{"origin":8831,"position":5},"title":"Irony","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 27-Aug-07 3:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Bush on the Gonzalez resignation: \"It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}