Update on ACORN Pimp O'Keefe

By GottaLaff

MSNBC's David Shuster is reporting the latest on ACORN Pimp James O'Keefe and his band of merry felons (earlier post here, original post here):

There was no phone tapping equipment ON the felonious lads.

The so-called "listening device" in the van was actually a walkie talkie.... or cell phone.

Their motive? They were trying to shame Mary Landrieu, but too late... She did that on her own during the health care "debate".

They still face felony charges.

UPDATE: It is not a wiretap case, it is a federal trespass case, per Shuster just now. Additional charges could be brought, and plea deals are possible.

The people upstairs were communicating with the guy in the truck, via walkie talkie or cell phone.

O'Keefe had an exclusive deal with Andrew Breitbart for writing. Breitbart claims he had no idea O'Keefe was up to this, hadn't spoken to him in weeks.

But the question is, did O'Keefe have any financial incentive? They won't just take the word of the 4 guys.

On Keith Olbermann's Countdown, John Dean:

He says it's no prank, pretty serious, more of O'Keefe's entrapment journalism. They went beyond what is legal.

Karl Rove was one of the "early tutors" of this kind of thing, says Dean. Plus, he says, O'Keefe has been enouraged by his elders in the party. "Stupidity.... You'd think we'd evolved in our political intelligence..."

This was a classic criminal conspiracy... but we don't know who all the co-conspirators are. This may be more than 4 people.

This kind of thing has been embraced by the Republican right, although they're distancing themselves now.

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches

By GottaLaff

Under whose watch again?

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

There's a whole lot more here.

The GOP is afraid of Dawn Johnsen. I bet she'd be all over this.

The real reason for their vehement opposition is that Johnsen is committed to overturning the Bush administration’s policies on torture and warrantless surveillance that would clip the wings of the imperial presidency.

As for today's DoJ, the ones who made it in:

A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

I'm all a-flutter.

Group challenges phone companies’ wiretapping immunity

By GottaLaff

The BushCo wiretaps are being challenged again. Good:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is appealing, on behalf of several plaintiffs, a June federal court decision that upheld legislation that protects the companies, who acted without court authorization, from being prosecuted. [...]

EFF argues that the legislation is "unconstitutional" because it grants "the attorney general the unconstrained power to decide whether to nullify existing federal and state law governing these actions." [...]

EFF, a privacy group that focuses on civil rights on the Internet, is working with the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 46 plaintiffs to challenge the legislation.

After 9/11, it was "anything goes". BushCo used fear tactics to advance their greedy little power grabs, secrecy, and otherwise criminal and unconstitutional agenda at every opportunity they had.

And that included eavesdropping on fellow Americans.

Alberto Gonzales Won't Be Charged Over Eavesdropping Testimony

By GottaLaff

Bush made me do it! It's his fault. I just followed orders:

Alberto Gonzales, pilloried for allegedly misleading Congress about the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program, has been exonerated — sort of. According to public records and interviews with federal law-enforcement officials, the Justice Department has concluded that there’s insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the former attorney general.

However....

Gonzales also remains under investigation by the Justice Department for matters connected to the wiretaps and the firings, thought to be politically motivated, of nine U.S. attorneys — scandal aplenty.

Better that it be prison time aplenty.

So why skating so easy for someone who consistently trips over his own tongue and falls on his face?

A major reason he escaped criminal charges [...] : that many of his most controversial decisions (first as White House counsel, and later, as attorney general) in authorizing, overseeing, and concealing the eavesdropping program were done at the specific direction of the former president. In other instances, Gonzales and his attorneys argued that his actions were done in furtherance of the Bush administration’s policies — meaning, for what it’s worth, that he did not act with personal intent to do wrong.

Well, as long as his intentions were good...

Isn't that a little like saying you were told to rob a bank to give to the poor? Robin Hood would be proud. And Boy Georgie is snickering. Heh-heh-heh.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Bush Years: Jon's Dubya Impression Mashup
www.thedailyshow.com
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(Jon Stewart's impression of Bush's laugh at 3:14)

Gonzales remains under investigation by the Justice Department he once led for two matters: the firings of those nine U. S. attorneys, and — this should sound familiar — whether Gonzales and other government attorneys acted properly in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program.

Our legal system needs a legal system.

More of Murray Waas' piece here.

H/t: Alan Colmes

Did Saddam Hussein Bug Dan Rather Before the Iraq War?

By GottaLaff

Saddam Hussein really bugged us for a long time, didn't he? What a pain he was. He was an especially irritating source of buggage for Dan Rather... but not the kind you might think:

It was probably the most important interview before the Iraq war: Dan Rather vs. Saddam Hussein. But we learn in the new book Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq by Charles Duelfer, longtime United Nations and CIA weapons inspector, that Saddam likely got a peek at Rather's questions. [...]

Rather told reporters that his preinvasion quiz was so important that he practiced his questions before a mirror in his Rasheed Hotel room. But Duelfer notes that Saddam had the city so heavily wired for surveillance that his posse probably heard every question. "It is simply surprising," Duelfer tells Whispers, "that someone as worldly as Dan Rather would not assume his room was bugged in one of the most security-conscious regimes on the planet."

Didn't Rather learn anything from all those James Bond movies?

Undoing BushCo: Intel edition

By GottaLaff

The past three days have been, how you say, orgasmic:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

More, more!

Dennis Blair, President Obama's nominee to become the Director of National Intelligence, took a swipe at the Bush administration's methods of gathering intelligence. [...]

Blair, a retired Navy admiral who headed the Pacific Command, pledged a new approach to counterterrorism requiring the intelligence community to carry out missions "in a manner consistent with our nation's values, consistent with our Constitution and consistent with the rule of law," he said in a statement at his confirmation hearing Thursday.

He made a point to stress that he would not support any surveillance activities that "circumvent established processes for their lawful authorization."

"I believe in the importance of review and regulation of the use of those surveillance authorities," he added.

Blair also stressed that there must be clear standards for humane treatment of detainees that should apply to all government agencies.

Blair, who will likely be confirmed, also invited independent monitoring of the agencies he will lead to prevent abuses and protect civil liberties.

Yes. Yes. Yes!

VIDEO-- Feingold Questions Attorney General Nominee Eric Holder on FISA

By GottaLaff

This is the video I've been looking for. Think Progress, thank you. However-- and this is a big "however":

The New York Times reports that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is expected to issue a major ruling validating “the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order,”even when U.S. residents’ personal communications are involved:

In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping.

Huh? Wha? No. Nonononono. No.

Telco immunity faces first court challenge

By GottaLaff

I'm likin' this:

Plaintiffs suing AT&T and other telecommunications companies filed a lengthy motion in court this week arguing the government could not retroactively invalidate their lawsuit because its immunity authority is unconstitutional and destroys the notion of coequal branches of government. [...]

A 61-page filing argues that Congress doesn't have the authority to issue a retroactive immunity statute, that immunity violates separation of powers by improperly inflating executive branch authority, that immunity violates individuals rights to due process, that the secrecy provisions of immunity violate the First Amendment by creating a "chilling effect" on free speech, and that the government has not justified dismissing the telecom lawsuits even if its ability to do so was constitutional. [...]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union are representing plaintiffs in the various telecom lawsuits the government is attempting to dismiss. [...]

Plaintiffs hope the courts will reach a similar decision to strike down the FISA Amendments Act.

Stay tuned.

MUST WATCH VIDEO-- ABC: NSA ‘Routinely’ Listened In On Americans’ Phone Calls, Shared Sexy "cuts"

By GottaLaff

The video finally loaded.

Back story here.

ABC: NSA ‘Routinely’ Listened In On Americans’ Phone Calls, Shared Sexy "cuts"

By GottaLaff

Remember the U.S. Constitution? Sure you do. It's chock full of laws and rights and stuff, ones that we actually used to respect and live by. Maybe someone could explain it to the despicable, very impeachable Liar in Chief:

Ever since President Bush confirmed the existence of a National Security Administration wiretapping program in late 2005, he has insisted it is aimed only at terrorists’ calls and protects Americans’ civil liberties. [...]

However, ABC News reports that the NSA frequently listened to and transcribed the private phone calls of Americans abroad, according to two former military intercept operators. These conversations included those of American soldiers stationed in Iraq and American aid workers abroad, such as Doctors Without Borders:

[Former Navy Arab linguist David Murfee] Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

“Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News. […]

“We knew they were working for these aid organizations,” [former Army Reserves Arab linguist Adrienne] Kinne told ABC News. “They were identified in our systems as ‘belongs to the International Red Cross’ and all these other organizations. And yet, instead of blocking these phone numbers we continued to collect on them,” she told ABC News.

Kinne called Bush’s assurances that the U.S. was only tracking phone calls of a “known al Qaeda suspect” “completely a lie.”

More here. And I'll post the video as soon as it allows me to load it.