[IP] more on AP Story Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying Leak

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brock Meeks <Brock.Meeks@msnbc.com>
Date: December 30, 2005 2:37:08 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on AP Story Justice Dept. Probing Domestic  
Spying Leak


President Bush has surrounded himself with "yes" men and women.  Those
that don't tell him what he wants to hear, such as former Treasury Secy.
Paul O'Neil and former top White House economic advisor Larry "the Iraq
War will cost at least $200 billion" Lindsey, are unceremoniously dumped
from power positions.

In order to smooth his conscious about these spying operations (and the
use of torture for that matter) Bush has cobbled together a small group
of lawyers willing to scratch and sniff at the margins of accepted legal
doctrine in order to gin up legally defensible positions.

We've already heard Bush tell the American public several times that
these actions have been looked at by lawyers and even more, they are
"constantly reviewed by lawyers."

BAH.

No offense to the legal types reading this list but having covered more
than my share of court cases and talked to enough lawyers over the
years, I and others here know full well that just because "a lawyer says
it's 'ok'" doesn't make it so!  Otherwise, we wouldn't have to have a
supreme court and Microsoft would still believe it wasn't a monopoly and
that the Palm OS was a threat to Windows...ahem, sorry, I got carried
away...

The nut here is this:  the real danger in all this is that the full warp
and woof of the legal system isn't being allowed to come to bear on this
issue.  I don't give a rat's ass if the Justice Department 'approved'
this instance; that's like saying spying on Americans by the FBI was
"OK" because Hoover and his lawyers approved it.




-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave@farber.net]
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 2:25 PM
To: ip@v2.listbox.com
Subject: [IP] more on AP Story Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying
Leak

Good question djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jeff Nye <jpn@users.sourceforge.net>
Date: December 30, 2005 2:17:27 PM EST
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] more on AP Story Justice Dept. Probing Domestic
Spying Leak

I can appreciate Mr. Bray's comments in the context of a legal,
authorized "ongoing intelligence operation".  But it is far from
clear that that is what we have here.  Would it make any difference
if the "ongoing intelligence operation" was illegal in the first
place?  That is, if a crime is being committed in secret,  are people
not allowed to make it public?  Or is DOJ approval proof enough that
no crime is being committed?

Jeff Nye




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