Obama Continues Bush's Illegal Drone Surveillance

[Diomedes]

real or photochop?

[cmleary0919]

Real, here is a link to the video of one being put up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol5IrnYIfI0

[Rome]

That is farging awesome.

[PhillyGirl]

http://www.yahoo.com/s/824967

[Diomedes]

yeah

but the American people have pretty much spoken, and what they've said is that this kind of thing plays largely as "liberal media scores minor point against government"

transparency of government is not important to most Americas.  It's fine with most Americans for the government to spy on citizens without warrants.  Only the guilty ought to oppose it, right?  Most Americans are fine with the idea of granting immunity for any missteps IN THE LAW that communications companies might make in compliance with the government's demand for customer data.

It is however interesting that this news is breaking on a day dominated by headlines about the Democratic primary struggle.   Like the Bush-endorses-McCain story, the conservatives have managed to pull off a mid week news dump rather slickly. 

And no, I don't think I'm being paranoid about the motives and systems in play.  People get paid to orchestrate this shtein and sometimes it really works.

[phillymic2000]

I don't care if they have plans in place to spy on the bad guys, but fargin follow the rules a-holes. this is bs

[Diomedes]

Bush Vetoes Bill That Would Limit Interrogations

President Bush announced his veto on a bill that would require intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as the military.

Ya, keep telling me the U.S. doesn't torture...

[Rome]

He's a farging disgrace.  An absolute disgrace.

[ice grillin you]

romeys up and i havent gone to bed

[Rome]

Watched the Flyers came home and crashed.

[cmleary0919]

Bush Vetoes Bill That Would Limit Interrogations
javascript:void(0);
Insert Hyperlink
President Bush announced his veto on a bill that would require intelligence services to abide by the same rules on torture as the military.

Ya, keep telling me the U.S. doesn't torture...

[phillymic2000]

funny sign.

He kind of looks like the guy from happy Gilmore " That's Happy's jacket Shooter"

[Cerevant]

Now it all makes sense...see, the 4th amendment does not apply to domestic military operations:

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001).

WTF?

Does this mean that the Administration's lawyers believed that it could spy on Americans with impunity and face no Fourth Amendment claim? It may, and based on the thinnest of legal claims -- that Congress unintentionally allowed mass surveillance of Americans when it passed the Authorization of Use of Military Force in October 2001.

Facepalm

[ice grillin you]

Climate Findings Were Distorted, Probe Finds
Appointees in NASA Press Office Blamed

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 3, 2008; A02

An investigation by the NASA inspector general found that political appointees in the space agency's public affairs office worked to control and distort public accounts of its researchers' findings about climate change for at least two years, the inspector general's office said yesterday.

The probe came at the request of 14 senators after The Washington Post and other news outlets reported in 2006 that Bush administration officials had monitored and impeded communications between NASA climate scientists and reporters.

James E. Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and has campaigned publicly for more stringent limits on greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, told The Post and the New York Times in September 2006 that he had been censored by NASA press officers, and several other agency climate scientists reported similar experiences. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are two of the government's lead agencies on climate change issues.

From the fall of 2004 through 2006, the report said, NASA's public affairs office "managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public." It noted elsewhere that "news releases in the areas of climate change suffered from inaccuracy, factual insufficiency, and scientific dilution."

Officials of the Office of Public Affairs told investigators that they regulated communication by NASA scientists for technical rather than political reasons, but the report found "by a preponderance of the evidence, that the claims of inappropriate political interference made by the climate change scientists and career public affairs officers were more persuasive than the arguments of the senior public affairs officials that their actions were due to the volume and poor quality of the draft news releases."

The political interference did not extend to the research itself or its dissemination through scientific journals and conferences, the investigators said. "We found no evidence indicating NASA blocked or interfered with the actual research activities of its climate scientists," the report said, but as a result of the actions of the political appointees, "trust was lost, at least temporarily, between the agency and some of its key employees and perhaps the public it serves."

Kristin Scuderi, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said in an e-mail that director John H. Marburger III "would not comment until he's reviewed the report, and he has not yet done so yet. Therefore, OSTP has no comment at this time."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), one of the senators who pressed for the investigation, said in a statement that the report showed that citizens had been denied access to critical scientific information that should inform public policy.

"Global warming is the most serious environmental threat we face -- but this report is more evidence that the Bush Administration's appointees have put political ideology ahead of science," Lautenberg said. "Our government's response to global warming must be based on science, and the Bush Administration's manipulation of that information violates the public trust."

[Diomedes]

worst president ever