The Most Generous Soul

Wednesday the Congress was briefed on the activities of the National Security Agency regarding monitoring phone calls from outside the country to insideand the NSA’s activities in compiling huge data banks of phone numbersparticularly which phone numbers called which other phone numbers.

As you might have noticedthere has been an enormous hue and cry about this since it was revealed by two newspapers over the last six months. The most recent revelations came last week.

Now the administration has declassified the records of which members of Congress had been briefed on these NSA activities and when.

FOX’s Jim Angle reports that Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi requested the declassification. So it wasn’t a matter of Bush declassifying something just because it makes him look good.

But it does make him look good.

That’s because it turns out that important and crucial members of Congress were briefed about the NSA wiretapping and number gathering programs and have been since 2001.

Prominent among those who have been kept up to date is none other than Nancy Pelosi herself

She was briefed five weeks after 9/11 and several times since.

This is important because Democrats have been screaming bloody murder about this program for the six months that it has been known publicly. They have been saying the president is spying on Americans; that the president is abusing the Constitution; that the president is exceeding his authority; that the president has run amok.

In The L.A. Times Wednesdaycolumnist Max Boot — something of an expert on security matters — correctly notes that we need more spyingnot less.

Alsofor a little context hereit should be noted that Britain has recently discovered that there are 700 active Al Qaeda members running around Britain — at large — whom authorities are trying to locate andpresumablyjail.

How did Britain discover this information? Wiretapsthat’s how.

The NSA is doing important work. I hope the people who have been demanding information get the information they need to realize this is not something they want stopped.

That’s My Word.

Source: foxnews.com

NEW YORKNov. 182001 /PRNewswire/ — After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist casesPresident George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military courthis aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to trysentence — and even execute — suspected foreign terrorists in secrecyunder special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.

Bush’s powers to form a military court came from a secret legal memorandumwhich the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the days after Sept. 11Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke his broad wartime powerssince the U.S.they concludedwas in a state of “armed conflict.” Bush used the memo as the legal basis for his order to bomb Afghanistan. Weeks laterthe lawyers concluded that Bush would use his expanded powers to form a military court for captured terrorists. Officials envision holding the trials on aircraft carriers or desert islandsreport Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor Jr. in the November 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands MondayNovember 19).

The idea for a secret military tribunal was first presented by William Barra Justice Department lawyer — and later attorney general — under the first President Bushas a way to handle the terrorists responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over LockerbieScotland. The idea didn’t take back then. But Barr floated it to top White House officials in the days after Sept. 11 and this time he found alliesNewsweek reports. Barr’s inspiration came when he walked by a plaque outside his office commemorating the trial of Nazi saboteurs captured during World War II. The men were tried and most were executed in secret by a special military tribunal.

Source: sweetliberty.org/a>