A Congressional Research Service report "concludes that the administration’s justification for warrantless eavesdropping authorized by President Bush conflicts with existing law and hinges on weak legal arguments," the Washington Post reports.
The 44-page report said that Bush probably cannot claim the broad presidential powers he has relied upon as authority to order the secret monitoring of calls made by U.S. citizens since the fall of 2001… The report also concluded that Bush’s assertion that Congress authorized such eavesdropping to detect and fight terrorists does not appear to be supported by the special resolution that Congress approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which focused on authorizing the president to use military force.
Powerlines’ John Hindrocket again displays his flair for sheer stupidity, trying desparate to argue that the CRS does not say what it says:
The CRS report, which you can access here, is 44 pages long. Yet the Post, apparently not wanting to confuse its readers by exposing them to the actual report, rather than Democratic politicians’ interpretations of it, quotes only two sentence fragments:
"It appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here," the authors of the CRS report wrote. The administration’s legal justification "does not seem to be . . . well-grounded," they said.
The Post’s coverage of the CRS report is deeply misleading. In fact, the CRS concluded:
Whether an NSA activity is permissible under the Fourth Amendment and the statutory scheme outlined above is impossible to determine without an understanding of the specific facts involved and the nature of the President’s authorization, which are for the most part classified.
So is the Post misleading, or is Hindrocket?
Hindrocket is misleading. The sentence he quotes ("Whether an NSA activity is permissible…") is not the conclusion of the CRS report (as Hindrocket says) , but the beginning of the analysis in an introductory form. In that quote, the authors are speaking in generalities (i.e, "whether an NSA activity is permissible" as opposed to "whether the NSA activity is permissible").
Unlike the introductory sentence, the immediately following sentences address the issue at hand:
If the NSA operations at issue are encompassed in the definition of "electronic surveillance" set forth under FISA, it would be consistent with Congress’s intent that such surveillance must be in accorandance with FISA procedures.
Then the coup de grace, in the next sentence:
Although section 109(a) of FISA does not explicitly limit the language "as authiirzed by statute" to refer only to Title III and to FISA, the legislative history suggests that such a result was intended.
After all the analysis, the report then concludes with the statement given in the Post, which reads in full:
From the foregoing analysis, it appears unlikely that a court would hold that Congress has expressly or impliedly authorized the NSA electronic surveillance operations here.
So, rather than quoting the conclusion of the report, Hindrocket merely quotes the FIRST sentence of the analysis, and passes it off as the conclusion.
If a report said:
"Whether it is day or night depends on the time of day. If it is after 7:00 p.m., it is night. Our analysis indicates it is 11:30 p.m. Therefore, it is night."
Hindrocket would write:
The report was inc0nclusive as to whether it was day or night:
"Whether it is day or night depends on the time of day."
John Hindrocket, who purports to be an attorney, is either acting stupid or being venel.
RELATED: Glenn Greenwald also rips apart another recent Hindrocket post.