Robin Hood of Sherwood Forrest, was a wonderful series of how thw crooked police state screwed over the peeps. Quite often Maid Marion along with the ‘good ” friar Tuck would jump the sheriff and give them a sound thumping. Usually the sheriff had encarcerated some poor soul.

Then there is thr French Revolution…”Bastille Day” for which demonstration I landed in the Alameda County jail for 30 days of solitary confinement I was latter rearrested for 30 more days.

“But mass demonstrations continued. In one mass arrest, 482, including innocent bystanders and journalists from the establishment press, were arrested. Prisoners from that arrest reported extensive beatings at Santa Rita jail.
At a rally on Sproul plaza, troops surrounded the gathering, admitting people but preventing them from leaving. Then the troops put on gas masks and a helicopter flew over spraying CS tear gas, a gas outlawed for wartime use by the Geneva Convention. They mistakenly teargassed Cowell hospital as well as several local public schools.”
Street sweeps occurred in North Beach and a black arresttee was beaten in my presense.
These people are the criminals. The National Lawyers Guild approved a resolution last year to impeach Bush/Cheney. We have to put this bad genie back in the bottle.

Telco’s found it easier to go along to get along. They were afraid of the administration and the punishment they might have suffered by lack of cooperation. Quest is a company that did not play ball. Are they still in business?

This reminds me of Putin and the serial jailing of oil oligarch’s that challenged him during the last couple years.

The CEOs of the telecoms and their lawyers knew too how such requests should be handled in non-emergency situations and I have to wonder why they made no attempt to regularize and legitimize their efforts. What I come up with is not a reference to Article II powers but a more informal understanding that the telecoms would be taken care of. This means not only being paid well for these specific spying programs but a promotion of their corporate agendas across the board.

Yep, and of course these Telcom/Comcoms (ISP providers) have general counsel types who have spent 20 or more years immersed in the caselaw and litigation of just the types of situations you’re mentioning. They knew absolutely what they were doing was illegal, before and after 911, and remember the roster of lobbying law firms these big Telcoms employ. They are lists of some of the largest multi-city “blue stocking” armies of litigators in the country. Every one of them has a small army of lawyers in their Telcom/Communications division that has been knee-deep in this legislation and litigation for years.

They knew exactly what they were doing. What I want to know was besides the obvious lucrative contracts for setting up the wiretapping hardware and software, what else did Cheney, Addington, NSA, DOJ and many other alphabet agencies’ counsel give these companies as quid pro quo for violating so many code sections.

[W]henever any motion or request is made by an aggrieved person pursuant to any other statute or rule of the United States or any State before any court or other authority of the United States or any State to discover or obtain applications or orders or other materials relating to electronic surveillance or to discover, obtain, or suppress evidence or information obtained or derived from electronic surveillance under this chapter, the United States district court or, where the motion is made before another authority, the United States district court in the same district as the authority, shall, notwithstanding any other law, if the Attorney General files an affidavit under oath that disclosure or an adversary hearing would harm the national security of the United States, review in camera and ex parte the application, order, and such other materials relating to the surveillance as may be necessary to determine whether the surveillance of the aggrieved person was lawfully authorized and conducted.

The illegal spying began BEFORE 9/11 and failed (obviously) to stop 9/11. The spying was NOT for security, it was for criminal purposes. Of course, even if it was for security reasons, it would STILL be criminal because it violates FISA, federal law, and the 4th and 5th Amendments.

I hate to be so banal, but much of this outrageous lawbreaking comes down to a greed for pure power.

Be sure to follow some of EW’s current threads on the timing of this FISA push which is all about covering Cheney/Addington’s ass, rather than any genuine concern by any Republicans for this country’s “security.”

Threads like this one at EW and perfectly consistent with Christy’s comment@94:a>

Bush Would Forgo New FISA Programs to Make Sure Dick Gets Immunity

And then, you probably begin to get into the literature in the psychiatric journals.

If only the posts from Christy, Jane, and Marcy could make it into the mainstream media.

This morning I did an informal poll at the small grocery in my neighborhood where people stream in to buy the Sunday NYT.

Most of them knew something was up with FISA vaguely, but had no idea of the wiretapping implications, let alone the several components that needed to be addressed in a FISA revision bill, or the relationship of Bush and Cheney and their counsel with Telco/Comcos.