President Trump: Making America Great Again...

**Moliere** · 03-06-2017, 07:10 PM

Originally posted by Dwight Schr-ute View Post

Maybe not as much as this level. Slaves came here as immigrants in pursuit of a dream!

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My MiL believes something very close to this. When she told me this I just blinked at her and then said "yeah, I doubt that." I mean, what else can you say?

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**Uncle Ted** · 03-06-2017, 07:12 PM

Where does Gingrich get this sh*t?

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**PaloAltoCougar** · 03-06-2017, 07:34 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Ted View Post

Oh, so the CIA/NSA/FBI are not consider U.S. intelligence agencies... Good to know. Maybe Drumpf will get rid of these Non-U.S. intelligence agencies when he drains the swamp. After the B.S. "intelligence" that we got for the Iraq war I am not sure why we keep giving these folks money anyway. We can get all bad intelligence we want for free from Drumpf tweeter feed.

Putting your sledgehammer riposte aside, I'm surprised you apparently think the two quotes of mine contradict each other. I believe both to be true and non-contradictory. The fact (assuming my belief is correct) that neither Obama nor any U.S. intelligence agency ordered a tap on Flynn's line doesn't mean that Flynn's voice (or that of any other Trump campaign aide) won't show up on tapped lines of the Russian Embassy. Or am I being obtuse?

Originally posted by Uncle Ted View Post

Where does Gingrich get this sh*t?

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Newt apparently thinks the way you do, which must be gratifying. Just because one calls into a tapped line, doesn't mean one's own phone is tapped. If I called John Gotti to solicit a Friends of Scouting contribution, the fact that the FBI was listening in doesn't mean they were tapping my line.

BTW, how's Gary Johnson doing as he continues to mull over whether challenging Hitler was a good idea? Will he need another 70 years to reach a conclusion? If only he were in command.

**Uncle Ted** · 03-06-2017, 07:57 PM

Originally posted by PaloAltoCougar View Post

Putting your sledgehammer riposte aside, I'm surprised you apparently think the two quotes of mine contradict each other. I believe both to be true and non-contradictory. The fact (assuming my belief is correct) that neither Obama nor any U.S. intelligence agency ordered a tap on Flynn's line doesn't mean that Flynn's voice (or that of any other Trump campaign aide) won't show up on tapped lines of the Russian Embassy. Or am I being obtuse?

The ACLU and EFF says that you are being somewhat obtuse. Warrantless wire tapping/spying is illegal and needs to stop.

According to the Times, Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to monitor without a warrant the international (and sometimes domestic) telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds or thousands of citizens and legal residents inside the United States. The program eventually came to include some purely internal controls - but no requirement that warrants be obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the foreign intelligence surveillance laws require.

In other words, no independent review or judicial oversight.

That kind of surveillance is illegal. Period.

NSA Spying on Americans Is Illegal | American Civil Liberties Union

https://www.aclu.org/other/nsa-spying-americans-illegal

Click here for more on NSA Surveillance What if it emerged that the President of the United States was flagrantly violating the Constitution and a law passed by the Congress to protect Americans against abuses by a super-secret spy agency? What if, instead of apologizing, he said, in essence, "I have the power to do that, because I say I can." That frightening scenario is exactly what we are now witnessing in the case of the warrantless NSA spying ordered by President Bush that was reported December 16, 2005 by the New York Times. According to the Times, Bush signed a presidential order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to monitor without a warrant the international (and sometimes domestic) telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds or thousands of citizens and legal residents inside the United States. The program eventually came to include some purely internal controls - but no requirement that warrants be obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as the 4th Amendment to the Constitution and the foreign intelligence surveillance laws require. In other words, no independent review or judicial oversight. That kind of surveillance is illegal. Period. The day after this shocking abuse of power became public, President Bush admitted that he had authorized it, but argued that he had the authority to do so. But the law governing government eavesdropping on American citizens is well-established and crystal clear. President Bush's claim that he is not bound by that law is simply astounding. It is a Presidential power grab that poses a challenge in the deepest sense to the integrity of the American system of government - the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, the concept of checks and balances on executive power, the notion that the president is subject to the law like everyone else, and the general respect for the "rule of law" on which our democratic system depends. The ACLU ran the following advertisement in the December 29, 2005 edition of The New York Times: Flouting a long history The tensions between the need for intelligence agencies to protect the nation and the danger that they would become a domestic spy agency have been explicitly and repeatedly fought out in American history. The National Security Act of 1947 contained a specific ban on intelligence operatives from operating domestically. In the 1970s, America learned about the extensive domestic political spying carried out by the FBI, the military, the CIA, and the NSA, and Congress passed new laws to prevent a repeat of those abuses. Surveillance laws were debated and modified under presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton. But, President Bush would sweep aside this entire body of democratically debated and painstakingly crafted restrictions on domestic surveillance by the executive branch with his extraordinary assertion that he can simply ignore this law because he is the Commander-in-Chief. In a December 17 radio address, for example, Bush asserted that the spying was "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities." But his constitutional duty is to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article II, Section 3); the law here clearly establishes well-defined procedures for eavesdropping on U.S. persons, and the fact is, Bush ordered that those procedures not be followed. Government eavesdropping on Americans is an extremely serious matter; the ability to intrude on the private realm is a tremendous power that can be used to monitor, embarass, control, disgrace, or ruin an individual. Because it is so invasive, the technology of wiretapping has been subject to carefully crafted statutory controls almost since it was invented. Ignoring those controls and wiretapping without a court order is a crime that carries a significant prison sentence (in fact, criminal violations of the wiretap statute were among the articles of impeachment that were drafted against President Nixon shortly before his resignation). Clearly Illegal Unfortunately, although the law in this matter is crystal clear, many Americans, faced with President Bush's bold assertions of "inherent" authority for these actions, will not know what to believe. There are only 5 points they need to understand: Point #1: Electronic surveillance by the Government is strictly limited by the Constitution and Federal Law The law on surveillance begins with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states clearly that Americans' privacy may not be invaded without a warrant based on probable cause. United States ConstitutionFourth AmendmentThe 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. (emphasis added) The US Supreme Court (US v. Katz 389 US 347) has made it clear that this core privacy protection does cover government eavesdropping. As a result, all electronic surveillance by the government in the United States is illegal, unless it falls under one of a small number of precise exceptions specifically carved out in the law. United States Code Title 50, Chapter 36, Subchapter 1Section 1809. Criminal sanctions (a) Prohibited activitiesA person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally- (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute In other words, the NSA can only spy where it is explicitly granted permission to do so by statute. Citizens concerned about surveillance do not have to answer the question, "what law restricts the NSA's spying?" Rather, the government is required to supply an answer to the question "what law permits the NSA to spy?" Point #2: There are only three laws that permit the government to spy There are only three laws that authorize any exceptions to the ban on electronic eavesdropping by the government. Congress has explicitly stated that these three laws are the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance can be carried out (18 USC, Section 2511(2)(f)). They are: Title III and ECPA. Title III and the Electronic Commnunications Privacy Act make up the statutes that govern criminal wiretaps in the United States. FISA. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the law that governs eavesdropping on agents of "foreign powers" within the United States, including suspected foreign terrorists. Point #3: The Bush-NSA spying was not authorized by any of these laws Title III and ECPA govern domestic criminal wiretaps and are not relevant to the NSA's spying. FISA is the law under which the NSA should have operated. It authorizes the government to conduct surveillance in certain situations without meeting all of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment that apply under criminal law, but requires that an independent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversee that surveillance to make sure that Americans who have no ties to foreign terrorist organizations or other "foreign powers" are not spied upon. FISA was significantly loosened by the Patriot Act (which, for example, allowed it to be used for some criminal investigations), and parts of it now stand in clear violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment in the view of the ACLU and many others. However, even the post-Patriot Act version of FISA does not authorize the president to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents in the U.S. without an order from the FISA Court. Yet it is that very court order requirement - imposed to protect innocent Americans - that the President has ignored. In fact, one member of the FISA Court, Judge James Roberston, has apparently resigned from the court in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of this program. And the New York Times reported that the court's chief judge complained about the program when she was (belatedly) notified of it, and refused to allow information gathered under the program to be used as the basis for FISA wiretap orders. Point #4: Congress's post-9/11 use-of-force resolution does not legitimize the Bush-NSA spying Congress after 9/11 approved an Authorization to Use Military Force against those responsible for the attacks in order to authorize the president to conduct foreign military operations such as the invasion of Afghanistan. But that resolution contains no language changing, overriding or repealing any laws passed by Congress. Congress does not repeal legislation through hints and innuendos, and the Authorization to Use Military Force does not authorize the president to violate the law against surveillance without a warrant any more than it authorizes him to carry out an armed robbery or seize control of Citibank in order to pay for operations against terrorists. In fact, when President Truman tried to seize control of steel mills that were gripped by strikes in 1952, the Supreme Court decisively rejected his authority to make such a seizure, even in the face of arguments that the strike would interfere with the supply of weapons and ammunition to American troops then under fire on the battlefields of the Korean War. U.S. Supreme CourtYOUNGSTOWN CO. v. SAWYER, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) "The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President's military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. . . . "Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. . . . The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. . . . "The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times." The Supreme Court also rejected similar assertions of inherent executive power by Richard Nixon. In fact, FISA contains explicit language describing the president's powers "during time of war" and provides that "the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this title to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen days following a declaration of war by the Congress." 50 U.S.C. § 1811 (emphasis added). So even if we accept the argument that the use-of-force resolution places us on a war footing, warrantless surveillance would have been legal for only 15 days after the resolution was passed on September 18, 2001. Point #5: The need for quick action does not justify an end-run around the courtsThe FISA law takes account of the need for emergency surveillance, and the need for quick action cannot be used as a rationale for going outside the law. FISA allows wiretapping without a court order in an emergency; the court must simply be notified within 72 hours. The government is aware of this emergency power and has used it repeatedly. In addition, the Foreign Intelligence court is physically located in the Justice Department building, and the FISA law requires that at least two of the FISA judges reside in the Washington, DC area, for precisely the reason that rapid action is sometimes needed. If President Bush still for some reason finds these provisions to be inadequate, he must take his case to Congress and ask for the law to be changed, not simply ignore it. The president is bound by the rule of law President Bush's claim that he has "inherent authority" as Commander-in-Chief to use our spy agencies to eavesdrop on Americans is astonishing, and such spying is clearly illegal. It must be halted immediately, and its origins must be thoroughly investigated by Congress and by a special counsel. (See letter from the ACLU to Attorney General Gonzales calling for a special counsel). Given the extensive (indeed, excessive) surveillance powers that the government already possesses, the Administration's blatantly illegal use of warrantless surveillance raises an important question: why? One possibility, raised by the New York Times in a Dec. 24, 2005 story ("Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report"), is that the NSA is relying on assistance from several unnamed telecommunications companies to "trace and analyze large volumes of communications" and is "much larger than the White House has acknowledged." This, as security expert Bruce Schneier has noted, suggests the Bush Administration has developed a "a whole new surveillance paradigm" - exploiting the NSA's well known capabilities to spy on individuals not one at a time, as FISA permits, but to run communications en masse through computers in the search for suspicious individuals or patterns. This "new paradigm" may well be connected to the NSA program sometimes known as "Echelon," which carries out just that kind of mass collection of communications (see www.nsawatch.org). This "wholesale" surveillance, as Schneier calls it, would constitute an illegal invasion of Americans' privacy on a scale that has never before been seen. (See Schneier, "NSA and Bush's Illegal Eavesdropping," Salon.com) According to the Times, several telecommunications companies provided the NSA with direct access to streams of communications over their networks. In other words, the NSA appears to have direct access to a large volume of Americans' communications - with not simply the assent, but the cooperation of the companies handling those communications. We do not know from the report which companies are involved or precisely how or what the NSA can access. But this revelation raises questions about both the legal authority of the NSA to request and receive this data, and whether these companies may have violated either the Federal laws protecting these communications or their own stated privacy polices (which may, for example, provide that they will only turn over their customers' data with their consent or in response to a proper order). Regardless of the scale of this spying, we are facing a historic moment: the President of the United States has claimed a sweeping wartime power to brush aside the clear limits on his power set by our Constitution and laws - a chilling assertion of presidential power that has not been seen since Richard Nixon.

Maybe some day that all electronic communication will be encrypted with strong enough encryption that the NSA/CIA won't be able to spy on anyone anymore. Maybe some day our currency won't depend a central bank as well and the government won't have any clue on how much any of us make or how we spend want we make.

**Dwight Schr-ute** · 03-06-2017, 08:13 PM

Originally posted by PaloAltoCougar View Post

Newt apparently thinks the way you do, which must be gratifying. Just because one calls into a tapped line, doesn't mean one's own phone is tapped. If I called John Gotti to solicit a Friends of Scouting contribution, the fact that the FBI was listening in doesn't mean they were tapping my line.

Thanks! That was the Friends of Scouting excuse I've been looking for.

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**Pelado** · 03-06-2017, 08:20 PM

Originally posted by Dwight Schr-ute View Post

Reminds me of my Jewish ancestors that immigrated to Germany in the 1040s. Big dreamers!

Taxes on your mind?

**falafel** · 03-06-2017, 08:25 PM

Originally posted by Uncle Ted View Post

So I guess the wire tapping of Michael Flynn was done by some non-U.S. intelligence agency and had nothing to do with the Obama Administration? I blame the Russian hackers!

I guess finding hyperlinks to include in each and every one of your posts has restricted your time, and you no longer have the time to read the actual links you are posting to see whether they support your argument or not. Spoiler:

Spoiler for what's in the article:

That’s the big problem here? Actually, recording Flynn is a pretty obvious result of American foreign intelligence practices.

First, he was talking to the Russian ambassador, who is an agent of a foreign power. Agents of foreign powers are acceptable foreign intelligence targets and the government could have a warrant to surveil Kislyak under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) since 1978.

Next, phone calls are wiretappable. Congress ensured that would be true with the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA).

Further, while wiretapping in the criminal context involves only recording when the targets talk about illegal activity, foreign intelligence wiretapping is comprehensive. All conversations are collected and important bits mined out after the fact.

So when Flynn talks on the telephone to Kislyak, it’s practically certain he’s going to get recorded since Kislyak is being recorded.

The intelligence jargon for this is “incidental collection,” which means, among other things, that Americans’ communications get collected when we talk to targets. It is amazing that Flynn, who once served as Assistant Director of National Intelligence, didn’t know that.

**Dwight Schr-ute** · 03-06-2017, 08:30 PM

Originally posted by Pelado View Post

Taxes on your mind?

EZ there.

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**Pelado** · 03-06-2017, 09:33 PM

Originally posted by Dwight Schr-ute View Post

EZ there.

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Yeah - should have given you more credit.

**Topper** · 03-06-2017, 10:47 PM

Originally posted by Dwight Schr-ute View Post

Thanks! That was the Friends of Scouting excuse I've been looking for.

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They're tapping the Friends of Scouting phone lines? I will never ever donate again.

**YOhio** · 03-07-2017, 05:40 AM

Trumpcare is unveiled. From my initial reading of the summaries, the replacement is just an odd repackaging of Obamacare with some really weird quirks (30% penalty charged by insurers instead of a mandate penalty enforced by the IRS). Justin Amash called it Obamacare 2.0. Cadillac tax is still in but tabled until 2025. Tort reform and state line restrictions aren't part of the package because it can't be included in a reconciliation bill (which GOP freaked out about back in 2010). Also no CBO scoring so this is kind of a 'have to pass it to see what's in it' approach.

To paraphrase Jason Whitlock, right about now Obama is cackling and rolling a blunt.

**Uncle Ted** · 03-07-2017, 06:03 AM

Originally posted by YOhio View Post

Trumpcare is unveiled. From my initial reading of the summaries, the replacement is just an odd repackaging of Obamacare with some really weird quirks (30% penalty charged by insurers instead of a mandate penalty enforced by the IRS). Justin Amash called it Obamacare 2.0. Cadillac tax is still in but tabled until 2025. Tort reform and state line restrictions aren't part of the package because it can't be included in a reconciliation bill (which GOP freaked out about back in 2010). Also no CBO scoring so this is kind of a 'have to pass it to see what's in it' approach.

To paraphrase Jason Whitlock, right about now Obama is cackling and rolling a blunt.

No wonder Drumpf set off his tweet storm over the weekend... He wanted folks to be talking about anything but this and his new immigration EO. But I withhold judgement on the bill until JL has had a chance to give his opinion.

**YOhio** · 03-07-2017, 07:11 AM

Originally posted by Uncle Ted View Post

No wonder Drumpf set off his tweet storm over the weekend... He wanted folks to be talking about anything but this and his new immigration EO. But I withhold judgement on the bill until JL has had a chance to give his opinion.

**Walter Sobchak** · 03-07-2017, 03:59 PM

On Russia... using a conspiracy theory to battle a conspiracy theorist?

Russia: The Conspiracy Trap
<http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/03/06/trump-russia-conspiracy-trap/>

The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and the grounds to impeach him. If that happens, it will have resulted largely from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the intelligence community—setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted the public sphere and promoted paranoia. And that is the best-case outcome.

More likely, the Russia allegations will not bring down Trump. He may sacrifice more of his people, as he sacrificed Flynn, as further leaks discredit them. Various investigations may drag on for months, drowning out other, far more urgent issues. In the end, Congressional Republicans will likely conclude that their constituents don’t care enough about Trump’s Russian ties to warrant trying to impeach the Republican president. Meanwhile, while Russia continues to dominate the front pages, Trump will continue waging war on immigrants, cutting funding for everything that’s not the military, assembling his cabinet of deplorables—with six Democrats voting to confirm Ben Carson for Housing, for example, and ten to confirm Rick Perry for Energy. According to the Trump plan, each of these seems intent on destroying the agency he or she is chosen to run—to carry out what Steve Bannon calls the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” As for Sessions, in his first speech as attorney general he promised to cut back civil rights enforcement and he has already abandoned a Justice Department case against a discriminatory Texas voter ID law. But it was his Russia lie that grabbed the big headlines.

[...]

The fact that sanctions remain in place six weeks into Trump’s fast-moving presidency—contradict the “Putin’s puppet” narrative (as does the fact that Russian domestic propaganda has already turned against Trump). But such is the nature of conspiracy thinking that facts can do nothing to change it.

Imagine if the same kind of attention could be trained and sustained on other issues—like it has been on the Muslim travel ban. It would not get rid of Trump, but it might mitigate the damage he is causing. Trump is doing nothing less than destroying American democratic institutions and principles by turning the presidency into a profit-making machine for his family, by poisoning political culture with hateful, mendacious, and subliterate rhetoric, by undermining the public sphere with attacks on the press and protesters, and by beginning the real work of dismantling every part of the federal government that exists for any purpose other than waging war. Russiagate is helping him—both by distracting from real, documentable, and documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.

You can both be an opponent of President Trump and believe that this red-baiting is wildly irresponsible. I know it's probably hard for PAC and frank ryan to believe, but it's true.

But the far-left preoccupation with this conspiracy theory leads President Trump to just keep on doing what he has done best (beginning with his embrace of the birther movement)... deal out conspiracy theories of his own, perpetuating this profane cycle. Since conspiracy theories are impossible to prove, and likewise, seemingly impossible to disprove; it allows them to linger until they come to be accepted as fact and assumption, instead of belief and assertion. By doing so, it cheapens the entire public debate. And we may as well merge this thread and the Big Foot I Want to Believe thread. They are about as useful.

**PaloAltoCougar** · 03-07-2017, 04:15 PM

Originally posted by Walter Sobchak View Post

...

You can both be an opponent of President Trump and believe that this red-baiting is wildly irresponsible. I know it's probably hard for PAC and frank ryan to believe, but it's true....

FTR, it is not hard at all for me to believe that, although I probably wouldn't have used the "wildly" modifier.

President Trump: Making America Great Again...

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