Talkhard

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20...0722-2189r.htm

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Dan

TH, please take these political conversations to this board.. You're starting to abuse what the OT forum is about, to the point where it's all about you trying to prove or disprove what others say.

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when will the loss of life end?

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I'd like to say I made this, but I didn't

hoojacks

While if this were a new thread intended to start a discussion about Carter, I'd comment in length, I don't think it is. I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with the other wiretapping thread. So:

FISA was signed into law in 1978, in part due to Carter's wiretapping and wiretapping that happened all through the 70's. So while he and Bush can be compared in these cases, the relevance is moot since Bush is breaking the law that didn't exist when Carter and others were doing it.

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Pioneer10

Whenever Bush's defenders and apologists know they are losing a substantive argument (and especially when they start to see defections from within their ranks) they instinctively lash out at familiar targets, usually prominent liberals and Democratic politicians. Their goal is to rile up the Republican base, to remind them how much they dislike the other side and, by doing so, to distract them from the actual substance of the debate.

On Sunday, Charles Hurt of the conservative Washington Times engaged in a particularly transparent example of this phenomenon. The paper reported breathlessly that "Carter Allowed Surveillance in 1977." The article quotes Jimmy Carter's recent criticism of Bush's secret NSA spying program, and then reports--as if it were some major scoop--that in 1977 Carter authorized the warrantless wiretapping of two Vietnamese spies.

But as the article notes in passing toward the bottom of the page, FISA wasn't enacted until 1978. So what Carter did was in no way analogous to what Bush has done. Moreover, this is a total non-story. Carter's surveillance of these men was later litigated under the caption United States v. Truong Dinh Hung, 629 F.2d 908 (4th Cir. 1980). If you've been following this issue over the last few months, you'll likely recognize that case name. The Truong case has been widely cited in newspapers, blogs posts, and even the government's legal papers and public statements. It's one of the handful of pre-FISA cases that held that the president had the power (absent a statute saying otherwise) to conduct warrantless wiretapping for national security purposes.

But the fact that this was not at all newsworthy (or even new) didn't stop the rightwing blogs from treating it as if it was a damning revelation. Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters immediately cranked out a post entitled "Carter Spied, And Then He Lied." His post ends with this bit of insight:

I wonder where all the Democrats who hailed
stare decisis during the Alito and Roberts
confirmation hearings have gone. My guess is
that we won't hear from them about this
precedent.

Yes, we've really been hoisted by our own petards.

And Gateway Pundit sums it up this way:

The Washington Times today reports more
on the hypocrisy of Jimmy Carter, America's
biggest failure as president in and out of office.
Here is the latest on his utterly shameful
attacks on a real American hero,
George W. Bush.

You can't make this stuff up, folks. It'll be interesting to see whether this talking point (Carter=hypocrite) gains any traction over the next week. It wouldn't surprise me if it did. The ability of Bush's defenders to make even the most ludicrous and easily refuted talking points gain traction never ceases to amaze me.

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/

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Talkhard

Maybe that's because you are missing the forest for the trees. Other American presidents besides Carter have used wiretapping (I.E., JFK wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr.) and Liberals haven't screamed about that. It's only when a Republican president uses wiretapping, in a war on terrorism that they don't approve of, that they try to make a huge issue out of it. The American people aren't stupid, and they realize that wiretapping has probably occured many times in many administrations (both Democrat and Republican) to keep tabs on our enemies.

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Minstrel

And when it's against a law on the books. But I guess that difference is beside the point.

Your case definitely is bolstered when you throw out inconvenient facts.

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Ice Nine

Then the American people should contact their representatives and get them to change the law.

PDB

Wiretapping MLK was Bobby Kennedy's call, and he has been universally criticized for it by Liberals and Conservatives alike.

DaBullz

Funny how Carter didn't mention JFK and RFK at Coretta King's funeral service.

I don't see how anonymousliberal is particularly newsworthy, just some "LIBERAL" opinion.

The thing about Carter, Clinton, and other presidents doing warrentless wiretapping is that there's a precedent - a legal one, ruled on by the courts.

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Pioneer10

No FISA before 1978: big difference

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