{"id":9666,"date":"2006-05-16T12:35:10","date_gmt":"2006-05-16T19:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2006\/05\/16\/there-dont-you-feel-better.html"},"modified":"2006-05-16T12:35:10","modified_gmt":"2006-05-16T19:35:10","slug":"there_dont_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/05\/16\/there_dont_you.html","title":{"rendered":"There, don’t you feel better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Bush assures the nation<\/a> that the government isn’t doing things we don’t want them to do, though if they were, they wouldn’t have to tell us.<\/p>\n

President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, of course, we can now officially believe that. Until someone discovers differently.<\/p>\n

“We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval,” Bush said in an East Room news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unless, of course, we deem it necessary to national security. Or say we do.<\/em><\/p>\n

“What I’ve told the American people is we’ll protect them against an al-Qaida attack. And we’ll do that within the law,” Bush said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And you therefore need to be compiling phone call records because …?<\/p>\n

Bush said, “This government will continue to guard the privacy of the American people. But if al-Qaida is calling into the United States, we want to know, and we want to know why.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And we’ll find out, by hook or by crook.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, he did not respond directly when asked whether it was a violation of privacy for the National Security Agency to seek phone records from telephone companies. […] Bush did appear to acknowledge the NSA sweep of phone records indirectly, saying that the program referred to by a reporter in a question “is one that has been fully briefed to members of the United States Congress in both political parties.”<\/p>\n

“They’re very aware of what is taking place. The American people expect their government to protect them within the laws of this country and I’m going to continue to do just that,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Laws” being defined as that legislation which we declare, privately, does not endanger national security or adminisration policy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Except, of course, he wasn’t really talking about the most recent NSA revelations, just the ones prior to that.<\/p>\n

However, [Press Secretary Tony] Snow, in his first on-camera briefing as press secretary, later denied that Bush was confirming a story about collecting domestic phone records that was first reported last week in USA Today.<\/p>\n

“He was talking about foreign-to-domestic calls,” Snow said. “The allegations in the USA Today piece were of a different nature.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Except that they were secret, they involved the NSA and telephones, and Congress is torqued off about it.<\/p>\n

“There seems to be a notion that because the president has talked a little bit about one surveillance program, and one matter of intelligence gathering, that somehow we have to tell the entire world – we have to make intelligence-gathering transparent,” Snow said. “Let me remind you, it’s a war on terror. … Al Qaida does not believe in transparency. What al Qaida believes in is mayhem.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We think it’s legal, and we don’t dare ask anyone else if it’s legal, so we’ll just assert it’s legal and assure you we’re only doing legal stuff. Trust us — we’re from the Federal Government.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nobody is proposing, of course, complete “transparency” in intelligence gathering. What most folks want, though, is accountability <\/em>— something more than general assurances that, yes, this is all legal and on the up and up and like that, nothing to see here, move along.<\/p>\n

That’s what the administration refuses to provide, and why, frankly, nobody is willing to trust them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Bush assures the nation that the government isn’t doing things we don’t want them to do, though if they were, they wouldn’t have to tell us. President Bush insisted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_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-9666","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":9208,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/01\/24\/missing_the_poi.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":0},"title":"Missing the point","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 24-Jan-06 9:11am","format":false,"excerpt":"The biggest irony of the whole NSA surveillance brouhaha that President Bush is now struggling with is that, if framed and spun properly beforehand, the concept would likely get 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":13572,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/12\/let_the_witch_hunts_begin.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":1},"title":"Let the witch hunts begin!","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 12-Nov-08 11:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"Except, y'know ... witch hunts are sometimes necessary to uncover real witches. Since The New York Times first revealed in 2005 that the NSA was eavesdropping on citizens' overseas phone...","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":9945,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/08\/bush_asserts_right_to_ove.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":2},"title":"Bush asserts right to override oversight","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 8-Oct-06 1:12pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Even if Congress says it gets to have unexpurgated reports from the Administration, Bush asserts that he can purge them all he sees fit President Bush, again defying Congress, says...","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":11089,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/04\/13\/he_really_doesnt_have_to.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":3},"title":"He really doesn’t have to listen, I guess …","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 13-Apr-07 5:49am","format":false,"excerpt":"Law suits by a pair ejected from a Bush speech a couple of years ago have led\u00a0to a fascinating appeals argument asserted by lawyers for some of the people who...","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":13142,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/07\/10\/potpourri_for_a_hot_thurs.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":4},"title":"Potpourri for a hot Thursday afternoon","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 10-Jul-08 1:26pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Write In Bush\u00a0- Do we encourage this so that it sucks up McCain votes? Or discourage it so that Bush isn't tempted to simply ignore the 22nd Amendment (in...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51491,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/17\/and-yet-another-bush-plans-to-privatize-social-security.html","url_meta":{"origin":9666,"position":5},"title":"And yet another Bush plans to privatize Social Security","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Jun-15 12:25pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Because turning Social Security Insurance into a stock market-driven crap shoot is a fantastic idea ... if you're big into investment houses and not dependent on Social Security.Jeb Bush has been personally involved in enough financial meltdowns that he should know a lot better. Jeb Bush: Next president should privatize\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9666","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=9666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}