NSA snoops

Fourteen NSA documents were declassified on Tuesday in response to a May 2011 ACLU lawsuit. The documents were made public under the Freedom of Information Act and related to the government's interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which ambiguously grants the FBI permission to obtain "any tangible things" without evidence or probable cause for the sake of national security.

ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Alex Abdo: "These documents show that the NSA repeatedly violated court-imposed limits on its surveillance powers, and they confirm that the agency simply cannot be trusted with such sweeping authority."

Today’s House hearings on the NSA phone surveillance and PRISM

This morning I've been watching representatives of the NSA and FBI describe at Congressional hearings (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) the details of the NSA phone and Prism programs. It all sounds benign and necessary--claims of 50 attacks thwarted. Deputy Attorney General James Cole, Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce, Deputy Director NSA Chris Inglis, and Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (addressing misconceptions).

Two questions. Then why were the details so secret and our Congress so uninformed (it's been upgraded and approved twice once under Bush in 2005, once under Obama in 2011) and how can we trust the assurances of any agency after the IRS scandal? Cole says collecting and analyzing phone metadata does not violate the 4th amendment. NSA Director Keith Alexander will bring information on the thwarted attacks on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/18/live-blog-nsa-hearing/?hpt=hp_c2

Ask the NSA

Black Quill and Ink Blog looks at the NSA/Verizon scandal and how libs still blame Bush

“Looking at Morning Joe's panel today discussing the new revelation of the NSA's massive data collection of phone calls among Americans. They are complaining how Obama's actions are a major expansion of the Bush policies. Arianna Huffington said that she is disappointed in Obama because he said he was against G. Bush doing this stuff and how Obama promised to end these policies but instead how he has massively increased them. They talked about how Obama criticized Bush for water-boarding three terrorist that are alive today but now how Obama uses drones to kill maybe hundreds of innocent civilians who just happened to be near targeted terrorist. They said that they never would have expected Obama to do this sort of thing given his campaign rhetoric and promises.

Conservatives like me are in no way surprised. I remember warning my Obama loving cousin back in August of 2008 that Obama was a radical and could not be trusted. My cousin said that he liked the fact that Obama was against Bush and that he believed that he would do what he promised. I asked him what in Obama 's past would cause him to believe in Obama, OR anything that he said. Obama's past for liberals was completely devoid of any facts. His past for conservatives was rife with radical associations and people which for us portended bad news. If for no other reason, people like my cousin should have been concerned because they knew nothing about the guy except for the fact that he was black, spoke well and was a Harvard lawyer. It is so amusing (although I weep for my country) how these liberals, who told us in 2008 and even in 2012 how wrong we were about Obama, are now getting wind of his radicalism and far left mentality and corruption. Just imagine if Bush were doing half of the stuff Obama has done and is doing, Benghazi, AP, Fast and Furious, Solyndra, James Rosen and IRS. Amazing....simply amazing.

Now in unison we conservatives won't say....WE TOLD YOU SO.”

[Black Quill & Ink (BQI) is a Black conservative blog providing commentary on current events and news topics. We hope to elevate the discussion of conservative values, especially within the Black community.]

Gitmo, Illinois

"During his campaign, Obama maligned President George W. Bush for detaining our enemies, even though they were being held according to the laws of war. Now, Obama has adopted that policy (though for a new facility) and outraged the far Left. “Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantánamo system that the president promised to shut down,” said Shayana Kadidal, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Preoccupied with building the new detention center, the president has failed to set up legal rules for determining who can be detained. Prisoners facing long-term captivity without trial will inevitably seek to challenge their detention in federal courts, a right that they have under the 2008 Supreme Court decision Boumediene v. Bush. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has neglected to work with Congress to establish evidentiary rules governing these proceedings, such as how to handle classified information, witness testimony, and discovery rights. With so many legal and procedural questions still unanswered, Obama remains determined to use taxpayer dollars to buy and renovate a Gitmo look-alike so that he can claim to have carried out his pledge to close the original facility. This is the price the American public pays when a president makes a hasty promise without knowing if it’s possible to keep it." read the full account, A New Guantanamo by Stephanie Hessler

Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book

Sometimes I can't help myself. Not only am I addicted to reference books, I swoon over serendipity in the stacks. Yesterday I pulled off Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book, 680+ pages of unclassified documents about CIA, Homeland Security, counterintelligence, Patriot Act, detainee treatment, how to share information about terrorists, and information sharing, etc. Another thing that overwhelms me--how much Obama has to learn, if this is just the unclassified, imagine what else he's trying to take in. No wonder he's tracking to the middle, with all the Clintonistas standing around him like that TV ad for cell phone support.

Don't laugh. Have you ever read the National Security Act of 1947? You know, you go through life thinking you read, write and speak American standard English. . . and then you read a government document.

"Notwithstanding any provision of law identified in section 904, the President may stay the imposition of an economic, cultural, diplomatic, or other sanction or related action by the United States Government concerning a foreign country, organization, or person when the President determines and reports to Congress in accordance with section 903 that to proceed without delay would seriously risk the compromise of an ongoing criminal investigation directly related to the related to the activities giving rise to the sanction. Any such stay shall be effective for a period of time specified by the President, which period may not exceed 120 days, unless such period is extended in accordance with section 902."