{"id":9094,"date":"2006-02-20T12:40:47","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T19:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/02\/20\/the-more-things-change-6.html"},"modified":"2006-02-20T12:40:47","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T19:40:47","slug":"the_more_things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/20\/the_more_things.html","title":{"rendered":"The more things change …"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FreeRepublic<\/a> website is known as being, um, rabidly “conservative,” i.e., radibly supportive of the Bush Administration (which is the new definition of conservatism<\/a>, it seems). Which makes makes this article, posted at the FReep in 2000<\/a> kind of amusing, in a dark way:<\/p>\n

Seven judges on a secret court have authorized all but one of over 7,500 requests to spy in the name of National Security. They meet in secret, with no published orders, opinions, or public record. Those spied on May never know of the intrusion. Now, Clinton has expanded the powers to include not only electronic, but physical searches.<\/p>\n

The aftershock of the Oklahoma City bombing sent Congress scurrying to trade off civil liberties for an illusion of public safety. A good ten weeks before that terrible attack, however with a barely noticed pen stroke President Bill Clinton virtually killed off the Fourth Amendment when he approved a law to expand the already extraordinary powers of the strangest creation in the history of the federal judiciary.<\/p>\n

Since its founding in 1978, a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA rhymes with ice -a) has received 7,539 applications to authorize electronic surveillance within the U.S. In the name of national security, the court has approved all but one of these requests from the Justice Department on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. Each of these decisions was reached in secret, with no published orders, opinions, or public record. The people, organizations, or embassies spied on were not notified of either the hearing or the surveillance itself. The American Civil Liberties Union was not able to unearth a single instance in which the target of a FISA wiretap was allowed to review the initial application. Nor would the targets be offered any opportunity to see transcripts of the conversations taped by the government and explain their side of the story.<\/p>\n

Without access to such materials, said Kate Martin of the ACLU, targets of FISA searches are denied any meaningful opportunity to contest the basis for the execution of the FISA search. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s being so bitterly lambasted here, FISA, is what many of the Bush Adminstration supporters are now not only touting as being a guarantor of our civil liberties, but even being dismissed as a delaying irrelevancy in the War on Terror, hence the NSA surveillance program which bypasses FISA altogether.<\/p>\n

And the FReep? The party line<\/a> (so to speak) of articles being cited there seems to be that the NSA program isn’t all that big a deal, that it doesn’t really intersect FISA’s purview anyway<\/a>, and that Everything Changed on 9\/11<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FreeRepublic website is known as being, um, rabidly “conservative,” i.e., radibly supportive of the Bush Administration (which is the new definition of conservatism, it seems). Which makes makes this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_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":[17,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":18003,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/07\/31\/the-savage-gay-reich.html","url_meta":{"origin":9094,"position":0},"title":"The Savage Gay Reich!","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 31-Jul-10 11:13am","format":false,"excerpt":"I love the Daily Show.\u00a0 Really. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p \/ 10c Gay Reichs www.thedailyshow.com \"The Pinkshirts ... during their Glitzkrieg.\" Ha! Actually, I have no doubt that there were homosexuals in the SS, the Gestapo, the Reichstag. Heck, there are homosexuals in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "LGBTQ &c"","block_context":{"text":"LGBTQ &c","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/gay-stuff"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49014,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/18\/bobby-jindal-and-his-problematic-prayer-meeting.html","url_meta":{"origin":9094,"position":1},"title":"Bobby Jindal and His Problematic Prayer Meeting","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 18-Dec-14 1:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If Bobby Jindal wants to do a big Christian prayer rally, more power to him. 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Originally shared by +Les Jenkins: It's funny because it's true. View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15934,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/10\/05\/why-does-the-right-hate-america.html","url_meta":{"origin":9094,"position":3},"title":"Why does the Right hate America?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 5-Oct-09 10:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, so I'm not bought into the Olympics Kool-aid, where getting the Olympics is actually a net profit to any major city. And given the nature of Chicago politics, one might objectively wonder about what level of graft and corruption having the Olympics there would have caused. 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