Bad Deeds for 5-17-2007

White House opposes military pay raise – The White House has come out in opposition to a proposal by Congress to raise military pay by 3.5 percent, according to a report by Army Times.

Contrary to Gonzales Claim, At Least 26 Prosecutors Were Targeted for Firing – The Justice Department considered dismissing at least 26 U.S. attorneys between February 2005 and December 2006, say sources familiar with documents withheld from the public, far more than had been previously acknowledged by Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales and the Bush administration. The latest inconsistency in Gonzales’s congressional testimony came as investigators also learned of administration efforts to replace prosecutors in Florida and Colorado after GOP lawmakers complained that alleged Democratic “voter fraud” wasn’t being pursued enthusiastically enough, bringing to nine the number of battleground states in which the White House sought to install “Bushies” with a more pronounced partisan bent. 2 additional prosecutors were considered for ouster

Warrantless tapping initially was authorized by President Bush according to testimony by former deputy attorney general James Comey – Did Mr. Bush start by authorizing the agency to intercept domestic e-mails and telephone calls without first getting a warrant? Mr. Bush has acknowledged authorizing surveillance without a court order of communications between people abroad and people in the United States. That alone violates the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Domestic spying without a warrant would be an even more grievous offense. The question cannot be answered because Mr. Bush is hiding so much about the program. But whatever was going on, it so alarmed Mr. Comey and F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller that they sped to the hospital, roused the barely conscious Mr. Ashcroft and got him ready to fend off the White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, and Mr. Bush’s counsel, Alberto Gonzales. There are clues in Mr. Comey’s testimony and in earlier testimony by Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Ashcroft’s successor, that suggest that Mr. Bush initially ordered broader surveillance than he and his aides have acknowledged.

PBS Frontline’s “Spying on the Home Front” program was downright chilling and showed a very clear and complete picture of the Bush administration’s vastly expanded domestic surveillance programs and their impact on civil liberties. At one point, the program showed how Alberto Gonzales was very deceitful during his Senate testimony on the NSA warrantless wiretapping program. On numerous occasions he made it abundantly clear that he was only testifying on that specific program, which leads one to conclude that there are likely other (and more intrusive) domestic spying programs in place. Indeed, when Sen. Feinstein asks him if there are any other programs, he says “I don’t know how to answer that.” In case you missed it, I highly recommend watching the entire thing on the PBS website. This is by far the most comprehensive report to date on the extent and severity of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 domestic surveillance activities.

Bush administration attempts to control the Civil Liberties Watchdog Board’s agenda and edit its public statements – White House lawyers engaged in substantial edits of the Civil Liberties Watchdog Board’s annual report to Congress. A majority of the board sought to remove an extensive discussion of recent findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general of FBI abuses in the uses of so-called “national-security letters” to obtain personal data on U.S. citizens without a court order. The White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language stating that the panel planned to investigate complaints from civil-liberties groups that the Justice Department had improperly used a “material witness statute” to lock up terror suspects for lengthy periods of time without charging them with any crimes.

Documents Show NYPD Spied On Groups Suspected To Be Raising Anti-GOP Funds

Regards,

Jim