McGentrix wrote:Do you consider national security the equivalent of an extra-marital affair?
That would depend upon the circumstances.
But then it really doesn't matter whether I think national security is the equivalent of an extramarital affair or not. According to your position, it only matters what the president thinks.
Cycloptichorn wrote:Quote:"outright lies about wiretaps"?
Hmmmm...
Quote:When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."
- President Bush, April 2004, nearly three years after he authorized secret domestic surveillance by the NSA without court orders or warrants.
That was a direct lie.
Cycloptichorn
1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
2. You say that he authorized surveillance. What form of surveillance exactly? Tapping someone's house phones without a court order?
Brandon9000, in response to Cyclo's very much to the point post about lying wrote:
1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
Goddamn, that's hilarious . . . you got a passage of the constitution to which you refer for the most transparently juvenile and self-serving piece of horseshit you've ever posted here?
No wait, let me save you the trouble and savor the embarrassment that you ought to feel--although i have no doubt you'll make some puerile comments in a fruitless effort to squirm out of this one:
Article II, Section 4, reads, in its entirety:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
No . . . no, it doesn't read "Treason, Bribery, allegations of perjury if Ken Starr can't come up with anything better he thinks he can make stick, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Jesus Christ, Brandon, the constitution is readily available online, and an elementary school child could shoot your sh!t down. Does your brain shut down when the topic is political?
God, that really cracked me up . . .
Note that noone will specifically deny that Bush was lying. I do believe we have our first, rare instance of an admitted Bush lie by our righties!
I have a bottle of Korbel I've been saving for just such an occassion.
Cycloptichorn
McGentrix wrote:
No, that is how you keep a secret government program designed to gather intelligence against terrorist organizations secret.
You do understand the concept of a secret, right?
McG, You're the one that's retarded. It's no secret that governments gather intelligence against terrorist organizations. If you think it's a secret to terrorist organizations, you're more retarded than most.
talk72000 wrote:That 'morkat' even quoted the Heritage organisation of which he is probably a member or paid employee.
They wouldnt hire him. Organisations like that are not out to embarass themselves.
Ooooooooooo . . . that was wicked evil, Habibi . . . i greatly enjoyed it . . .
Setanta wrote:Brandon9000, in response to Cyclo's very much to the point post about lying wrote:
1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
Goddamn, that's hilarious . . . you got a passage of the constitution to which you refer for the most transparently juvenile and self-serving piece of horseshit you've ever posted here?
No wait, let me save you the trouble and savor the embarrassment that you ought to feel--although i have no doubt you'll make some puerile comments in a fruitless effort to squirm out of this one:
Article II, Section 4, reads, in its entirety:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
No . . . no, it doesn't read "Treason, Bribery, allegations of perjury if Ken Starr can't come up with anything better he thinks he can make stick, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Jesus Christ, Brandon, the constitution is readily available online, and an elementary school child could shoot your sh!t down. Does your brain shut down when the topic is political?
God, that really cracked me up . . .
1. The passage from the Constitution which you quoted mentions only crimes, that is, violations of statute.
2. Lying is usually not a crime unless it's perjury.
Hence, what I said:
Brandon9000 wrote:1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
was precisely correct.
Since it's obvious Bush lied about unauthorized wiretaps, he should be charged with perjury - then impeached.
cicerone imposter wrote:Since it's obvious Bush lied about unauthorized wiretaps, he should be charged with perjury - then impeached.
Is it possible to charge someone with perjury who wasn't under oath when he lied? I have never heard of anything like that and don't think it's legally possible.
Brandon9000 wrote:Hence, what I said:
Brandon9000 wrote:1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
was precisely correct.
Horsiepoop--which is what you inevitably peddle when it comes to politics. The House of Representatives determines what constitues High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and if they ever chose to consider a lie which did not constitute perjury to be a High Crime or a Misdemeanor, your witless, tortured and self-serving attempt at logic would not mean diddly squat.
Setanta wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:Hence, what I said:
Brandon9000 wrote:1. Lying isn't an impeachable offense unless it's perjury.
was precisely correct.
Horsiepoop--which is what you inevitably peddle when it comes to politics. The House of Representatives determines what constitues High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and if they ever chose to consider a lie which did not constitute perjury to be a High Crime or a Misdemeanor, your witless, tortured and self-serving attempt at logic would not mean diddly squat.
The House must act in accordance with the passage from the Constitution which you quoted, or else they could rule that taking a midday nap was impeachable. The passage which you quoted mentions only actual crimes.
Brandon9000 wrote:The House must act in accordance with the passage from the Constitution which you quoted, or else they could rule that taking a midday nap was impeachable. The passage which you quoted mentions only actual crimes.
Actually, if the House thought they could pull it off, they could make taking a midday nap an impeachable offense--and probably should have done that to Ray-gun when he was the empty suit in the White House.
This statement: "The passage which you quoted mentions only actual crimes."--is typical Brandon bullshit. The passage, once again, in its entirety, reads:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Nowhere does anything approaching the locution "actual crimes" appear in that passage. The fifth paragraph of Article I, Section 2, reads, in it's entirety:
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Absolutely no other constraints appear anywhere in the constitution on the power of the House to impeach.
Furthermore, the sixth and seventh paragraphs of Article I, Secion 3 read, in their entirety:
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
You have absolutely no basis for the claim you make, Brandon. But it neither surprises me that you make sh!t up as in this example, or that you go to such silly lengths to attempt to make your claim good.
When there is a law in place to limit the president's ability to perform wiretaps on American Citizens, then he lies about it, that is an impeachable offense by any stretch of the imagination. He simply broke the law. In this country, that is a crime.
January 1, 2006
Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Dec. 31 - The top deputy to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft refused two years ago to approve important parts of the secret program that allows domestic eavesdropping without warrants, prompting two leading White House aides to try to win the needed approval from Mr. Ashcroft himself while he was hospitalized after a gall bladder operation, according to officials knowledgeable about the episode.
With Mr. Ashcroft recuperating from gall bladder surgery in March 2004, his deputy, James B. Comey, who was then acting as attorney general, was unwilling to give his certification to crucial aspects of the classified program, as required under the procedures set up by the White House, said the officials, who asked for anonymity because the program is classified and they are not authorized to discuss it publicly.
That prompted two of President Bush's top aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now the attorney general - to make an emergency visit to George Washington University Hospital to review the program with Mr. Ashcroft during what aides have described as a difficult recovery, the officials said.
The White House and Mr. Ashcroft, through spokesmen, declined to comment Saturday on the emergency meeting. "As the president has stated, the intelligence activities that have been under way to prevent future terrorist attacks have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department," said Jeannie Mamo, a White House spokeswoman.
Accounts from other officials differed as to exactly what was said at the meeting at the hospital. Some officials indicated that Mr. Ashcroft, like his deputy, was also reluctant to give his signoff to continuing with aspects of the program in light of concerns among some senior government officials about the program's legality and its operational controls.
It was unclear whether the White House ultimately persuaded Mr. Ashcroft to approve the program or whether the White House moved ahead without his concurrence. What is known is that in early 2004, about the time of the hospital meeting, the White House suspended parts of the surveillance program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the National Security Agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against possible abuses.
The Justice Department's concerns appear to have led, at least in part, to the suspension, and it was the Justice Department that oversaw an audit conducted on the program.
The audit examined a selection of cases to see how the N.S.A. went about determining that it had probable cause to believe that someone in the United States, including American citizens, had sufficient ties to Al Qaeda to justify the extraordinary step of eavesdropping on their phone calls and e-mail messages without a court warrant. That review is not known to have found any instances of documented abuses.
Officials with knowledge of the hospital meeting said it marked a critical juncture in the N.S.A. program and underscored questions about its operations, how it was overseen and what its future would be. Those questions are likely to be central to a Congressional hearing planned by Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Specter, like some other Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, voiced deep concerns about the program and Mr. Bush's legal authority to bypass the courts to order domestic wiretaps.
One government official said that the White House aides took the unusual step of contacting Mr. Ashcroft while he was hospitalized because of the urgent need for his certification of at least certain aspects of the program.
"You have to look at when Ashcroft was sick," the official said. "They needed him for certification."
The warrantless domestic eavesdropping program was first authorized by President Bush in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. Initially, it was focused on communications into and out of Afghanistan, including international calls between Afghanistan and the United States. But the program quickly expanded.
Several senior government officials say that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it. Some N.S.A. officials wanted nothing to do with it, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, according to a former senior Bush administration official.
It was not until 2004 that the Justice Department finally conducted its audit, officials say. At that point, the Justice Department provided the N.S.A. with a checklist with which agency officials could determine whether they had probable cause to eavesdrop on specific communications into and out of the United States.
Officials have suggested that until that time, the N.S.A. was operating without clear probable cause guidelines. Concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program briefly and revamp it in 2004.
Even after the Justice Department audit, the N.S.A. still had the authority to choose its eavesdropping targets and did not have to get specific approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials before it began surveillance on an individual's phone calls or e-mail messages, officials have said.
Setanta wrote:Brandon9000 wrote:The House must act in accordance with the passage from the Constitution which you quoted, or else they could rule that taking a midday nap was impeachable. The passage which you quoted mentions only actual crimes.
Actually, if the House thought they could pull it off, they could make taking a midday nap an impeachable offense--and probably should have done that to Ray-gun when he was the empty suit in the White House.
This statement: "The passage which you quoted mentions only actual crimes."--is typical Brandon bullshit. The passage, once again, in its entirety, reads:
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Nowhere does anything approaching the locution "actual crimes" appear in that passage. The fifth paragraph of Article I, Section 2, reads, in it's entirety:
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Absolutely no other constraints appear anywhere in the constitution on the power of the House to impeach.
Furthermore, the sixth and seventh paragraphs of Article I, Secion 3 read, in their entirety:
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
You have absolutely no basis for the claim you make, Brandon. But it neither surprises me that you make sh!t up as in this example, or that you go to such silly lengths to attempt to make your claim good.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
1. Treason is a crime
2. Bribery is a Crime
3. High Crimes are obviously crimes
4. Misdemeanors are crimes.
This passage from the Constitution lists the allowable grounds for impeachment and the House is compelled to adhere to it. It is not compatible with the idea that the House can impeach the president for whatever reason it pleases.
I hope there is an Amendment whereby members of Congress cognizant of illegal activities in the Executive Branch while duty bound to start impeachment proceedings, are held to be contributing to those illegality and thus unfit to serve should be ineligible for re-election and private citizens enabled to sue for removal of recalcitrant members.
McGentrix wrote:Hey, know what I just noticed? 85% of the readers on MSNBC that vote in online polls are a bunch of yellow-dog liberals that follow the left-winged propaganda machine.
Interesting!
And the other 15% are just ignorant and uneducated :wink:
