{"id":9161,"date":"2006-02-06T11:21:14","date_gmt":"2006-02-06T18:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/02\/06\/because-we-say-so.html"},"modified":"2006-02-06T11:21:14","modified_gmt":"2006-02-06T18:21:14","slug":"because_we_say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/06\/because_we_say.html","title":{"rendered":"Because we say so"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m amazed\/appalled by this particularly stupid response<\/a> by Attorney General Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the NSA spying program.<\/p>\n

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked if the authorization Bush claims to have would also enable the government to open mail – in addition to monitoring voice and electronic communications.<\/p>\n

“There is all kinds of wild speculation out there about what the president has authorized and what we’re actually doing,” Gonzales said.<\/p>\n

“You’re not answering my question,” Leahy retorted. “Does this law authorize the opening of first class mail of U.S. citizens? Yes or no.”<\/p>\n

“That’s not what’s going on,” Gonzales said. “We are only focusing on international communications, where one part of the conversation is al-Qaida.”<\/p>\n

Oh, well, as long as that’s all you’re focusing on, we’ll all be okay.<\/p>\n

I guess I can understand the stance in these sorts of hearings of, “Well, we believe we have the authority, and it’s okay, just trust us” — the alternative being “we’re not sure we have the authority” or “we’re worried about it ourselves” or “we cannot be trusted.” Administrations regularly assert the authority to do things by executive authority or based on broad extrapolations of congressional legislation (in this case, at least that the “war on terror” means “we can do whatever we want as long as we give the war on terror as a rationale, and that includes not telling you what we’re doing”).<\/p>\n

But even without assuming that the Administration is full of evil tyrant-wannabes out to crush the nation under their thumbs, it remains both a dangerous precedent (wonder how the GOP would think about this sort of blank check in the hands of, say, Hillary<\/a>) and an obvious place for push-back.<\/p>\n

How much the Senate will push will be interesting to see. Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter certainly seems miffed<\/a> by the whole thing, but how much of a possible election-tipping stink will the GOP leadership want to allow this to turn into?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/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-9161","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":31439,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/11\/20\/leahy-flip-flops-in-a-good-direction-on-privacy.html","url_meta":{"origin":9161,"position":0},"title":"Leahy flip-flops (in a good direction) on privacy","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 20-Nov-12 2:20pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, that's good news. \u00a0'Leahy's proposal would have allowed over 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would have given the FBI\u2026","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":13303,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/01\/26\/gonzales_shifts_from_a_co.html","url_meta":{"origin":9161,"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":8831,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/04\/10\/blank_check.html","url_meta":{"origin":9161,"position":2},"title":"Blank check","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 10-Apr-06 7:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"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...","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":9161,"position":3},"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":13017,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/15\/seeking_justice_from_just.html","url_meta":{"origin":9161,"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":9230,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/08\/05\/for_the_duratio.html","url_meta":{"origin":9161,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161","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=9161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}