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Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment

Don't miss Law Professor Laurence Tribe in the Boston Globe today, Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment, pertaining to the NSA warrantless surveillance.

Privacy apart, this president's defiance of statutes by the dozens is constitutionally alarming. But the matter goes deeper still. Even if Congress were to repeal the laws securing telephone privacy, or if phone companies found loopholes to slip through when pressured by government, the Constitution's Fourth Amendment shield for ''the right of the people to be secure" from ''unreasonable searches" is a shield for all seasons, one that a lawless president, a spineless Congress, and a complacent majority of citizens -- who are conditioned to a government operating under a shroud of secrecy while individuals live out their lives in fishbowls -- cannot be permitted to destroy, for the rest of us and our children

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    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue May 16, 2006 at 10:02:11 AM EST
    I believe that the NSA has gotten so out of control that it can never regain any level of trust. They clearly believe they are not just above, but beyond investigation and oversight. I believe the only solution at this point is for Congress to halt all funding of the NSA (period). If we still need an agency to do what they do, we have to start over from scratch.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#2)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue May 16, 2006 at 10:17:51 AM EST
    http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1117011910589 This article on Law.com from last May provides interesting perspective on Mr. Tribe's arguments~~ ----------------------- Laurence Tribe's Big Surprise Tony Mauro Legal Times May 27, 2005 Printer-friendly Email this Article Reprints & Permissions Ordinarily, the announcement by a law professor that he is not completing the second volume of the third edition of his book would not even merit a yawn. But when that professor is Harvard Law School's liberal lion Laurence Tribe, the book is his famed treatise "American Constitutional Law" and he announces his decision in a letter to a Supreme Court justice, legal academics are left gasping in surprise and reaching deep for the appropriate metaphor. "It's like Michael Jordan leaving basketball at the top of his game," says Ross Davies of George Mason University School of Law. "This is like George Lucas announcing that he would not finish Episode III," adds Florida International University law professor Thomas Baker. More esoterically, Yale Law School Professor Jack Balkin compares Tribe's announcement to Harvard Professor Henry Hart sitting down and refusing to deliver his third Holmes Lecture at Harvard Law School in 1963. "I can't think of a scholarly decision of similar symbolic importance," Balkin wrote on his Balkinization blog. use link above for the whole article~~

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#3)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Tue May 16, 2006 at 10:50:18 AM EST
    When will someone ask exactly how we know a call is from "al-Qaida"? Everything I read about this group shows much disagreement among intel agencies and foreign governments as to who is a member. Whether a suspected adherent is alive or dead, belongs to some sub-group, possibly belongs to an organization actually opposed to al-Qaida or ever even existed to begin with is often debated. It would seem in this atmosphere every foreign person remotely opposed to the U.S. government is eavesdropped upon. And all their family members. And the journalists that write about them. And their doctors, lawyers, grocers and auto mechanics. For Bush to say it's al-Qaida we're monitoring is ludicrous. We're eavesdropping on the entire planet. Just say it and be done with it.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#4)
    by kdog on Tue May 16, 2006 at 01:26:29 PM EST
    You ain't seen nothin' yet. What till the unmanned spy drones start flying overhead taking your picture...it's gonna get real ugly.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#5)
    by desertswine on Tue May 16, 2006 at 01:42:20 PM EST
    New York: Saddam Hussein has a brutal range of weapons at his disposal including specially developed "drones of death" which could unleash devastating chemical and biological attacks, military analysts have said.
    Iraq's military has tested at least three types of the robot aircraft designed to spray poisonous toxins over civilian areas, according to UN documents.
    Each is fitted with special nozzles and containers mounted on its wings that can carrying over 300 litres of liquid anthrax.
    Of course, these must be the same drones that we captured from Saddam Hussein.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#6)
    by Dadler on Tue May 16, 2006 at 02:16:17 PM EST
    Kdog, Wait until they start giving AWAY the drones to little kids as remote control planes. See, we care about poor kids, look at all the toys we're giving them. Maybe some G.I. Joes with listening devices in their Kung Fu grips. Or Barbies with GPS boobs. I'm joking, of course. I hope.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#7)
    by kdog on Tue May 16, 2006 at 03:15:37 PM EST
    Half-joking indeed Dadler. Unfortunately for freedom, this is one instance where the govt. does use imagination. Call me old fashioned, but I want manned black helicopters doing the illegal domestic surveillance! Machines don't have a conscience, databases don't have a sense of decency...at least with a human being at the helm there's a chance for their conscience to give pause.

    Re: Tribe: Bush Stomps on Fourth Amendment (none / 0) (#8)
    by squeaky on Tue May 16, 2006 at 03:39:52 PM EST
    What till the unmanned spy drones start flying overhead taking your picture...it's gonna get real ugly.
    My understanding was that the satellites are already doing a A One job. Drones are for sissies. TIA rocks. They can read your fingerprints from outer space