The FBI has learned that Osama bin Laden is planning a major attack next week on
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
Ahmmmm, let’s just call it hilariously pathetic and be done with it.
Suspected Criminal
In fairness to the Bush administration, everyone is a “potential criminal” under its theory of wiretapping. So it’s pretty doubtful that we actually missed anything of interest to national security.
demkat620
At what point does the world declare the US one gigantic parody site?
maxbaer (not the original)
Maybe they can get Rudy’s staffers to do it. They don’t seem to need the money.
Jake
This just in: PEPCO cuts electricity to FBI HQ.
OK, I made that up, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Man, I would have loved to hear those phone conversations.
“[This call may be monitored to insure quality customer service] ATT Billing Department, may I help you?”
“Uh, yeah. This is Agent … Jones from the [mumbles] My ireway aptays have been cut off.”
“…I’m sorry sir could I have your name and account number?”
“Well … can you tell me if this call is being recorded?”
“No sir, they’re recorded at random.”
“…Shit. I’ll send you a letter.”
numbskull
As noted elsewhere on the internet toobs, we shouldn’t “just be done with it.”
Remember, this was all so important, so crucial, to have FISA altered, with loss of Constitutional protections. So now we find that it wasn’t all that important to keeping us safe. But we’re still stuck with the eavesdropping being quasi-legal.
Now, why do you think the bushies would do this? I can think of at least two reasons. One, they want to be allowed to spy on anyone at any time with with no oversight at all. Two, it helped them achieve political points for a brief moment in time. Power for power’s sake – it’s what’s for dinner!
Margaret
Sorta blows the argument that the telecoms were acting “out of patriotism” and therefore deserve immunity from prosecution and lawsuits, does it not? It won’t matter. In the end the Democrats in congress will give the telecoms the immunity that the Republicans in congress are demanding because they are interested in exactly the same thing the telecoms are: Money. It’s disgusting.
Robert Johnston
Those telecom companies should be more careful. Who knows: crazy right-wingers might start calling for nationalization of their industry if they start behaving like they don’t have to do exactly what the government tells them to, no questions asked and no reward expected.
SnarkyShark
The only reason we are even slightly semi-free is because these guys are so freakin incompetent.
No immunity for telecoms. If found guilty, shoot every third lawyer on staff. Take the top three execs and do something worse than death. Take all their money and ruin their credit. Let em see how the proles live.
We are getting close to the guillotine in every square tipping point.
PaulW
If the FBI is defaulting on paying the bills… what other agencies are having financial difficulties right now? Is our budget situation across the federal gov’t really this bad? This plus the massive debt to China, the massive deficit overall, the billions in lost funds overseas, the crumbling infrastructure, the budget difficulties at the state level… Has anyone else noticed the Republicans REALLY aren’t that good at balancing checkbooks…?
taodon
In the article, it stated that one field office had bills in excess of $66k. Either there are a lot of suspected terrorists in that region – or the Bush Administration is spying on more than just suspected terrorists and spies…
STEVEinSC
Not to worry. With the coming bipartisan stimulus package, the telecoms will get an economic incentive to just directly bill the govenment through a new omnibus Patriot’s Defend America Visa Card. This new card will pay for the (off the books, know what I mean, know what I mean, wink, wink) domestic spying, Eye-rak war, the deficit and the Chinese trade imbalance. See, it’s the magic of compound interest which makes this all possible.
Jake
Bwahaha! I guess the Feeb thought “Set a thief to catch a thief” was an instruction, not an aphorism.
Dennis - SGMM
It’s clear to me that we must cut taxes so that the government will have sufficient money to pay its phone bill.
myiq2xu
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding! We Have a Winner!!
You don’t really think His Supreme Excellency, Doctor, Field Marshal, Sith Lord, Vice-President for Life Richard B. (Dick) Cheney gives a rat’s ass about terrorists do you?
Why would Big Dick and Lil’ George be worried about “Telecom Immunity” if all they had been doing was illegally wiretapping suspected al Qaida agents?
Why would a loyal Bushie like James Comey (or John Ashcroft) balk at eavesdropping on enemies of the state? Why is this program so secret that they didn’t even want to admit it existed?
Let me give you a couple of hints: Nixon’s “enemies list,” “the plumbers,” “COINTELPRO,” Hoover’s secret blackmail files, “unitary executive.”
They aren’t spying on terrorists, they are spying on us!
It makes you wonder if that’s why the Democrats in Congress keep giving G-Dub everything he wants.
Am I being paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
gypsy howell
Oh gosh, ya think?
OF COURSE THAT’S WHAT THEY’RE DOING!!!!!
gypsy howell
I’ve been insisting this point to Mr Howell for years now. Blackmail is the stick and cash is the carrot.
Stepping up the 24/7 surveillance on everyone in congress could lead to some pretty interesting blackmail scenarios, eh? And hmmm… where do you think all those missing billions in cash supposedly sent over to Iraq went? Couldn’t have ended up in some off-shore accounts of our congresscriminals to buy their votes and their silence, could it? Nah. That would be CRAZY.
merciless
Am I being paranoid, or not paranoid enough?
It’s only paranoia if they’re not out to get you. Yours is a healthy and rational fear.
And yes, I also agree about the blackmailing, enemies list idea. It’s curious how often members of Congress, judges, and members of the administration have started to protest or investigate something, and then suddenly decide not to.
Bob In Pacifica
Well, lawsuits are really expensive, and if the government isn’t paying their bills, how can the telecoms fight these things in court? It’s just not fair.
myiq2xu
Seven or eight years ago I would have laughed at someone who told me that our government would:
1) Use the DOJ to go after the opposition party
2) Try to change the law to purge the voter rolls of likely Democratic voters
3) Be the single largest employer (by far) of graduates from a tier 4 law school, with a few of them put in very high positions despite their youth and inexperience.
4) Fire US Attorneys for refusing to file bogus charges against members of the opposition party, or for pursuing investigations against members of the party in power.
5) Let low-level White House operatives interfere in on-going investigations at DOJ
6) Let the OVP claim it was a member of the “Fourth Branch” of government.
7) Destroy emails and other documents in direct violation of the law.
8) Make torture official US policy
9) Run secret prisons and kidnap people from other countries to fill those prisons.
10) Deny the power of habeas corpus to prisoners
11) Expose a covert CIA operative in order to go after her huband because he exposed administration lies
12) Appoint an Attorney General who can barely remember his own name.
13) Etc., etc., etc.
Back then I would have called it bad fiction. Now, I would believe anything about this bunch, including human sacrifice and cannabalism.
TheFountainHead
At first, I was really pissed at Harry and Nancy…now I’m pretty well convinced that they’re being held hostage by Darth Cheney.
bob
Can we drown the FBI in the bathtub now?
J sub D
So, who wants these people in charge of their health care? Sorry we were a few months late with that liver your mother needed, but, you know, these mistakes happen.
gypsy howell
I’d rather take my chances with the incompetence of government-paid healthcare than with the expensive murder-by-spreadsheet care I have from my corporate health overlords now.
Jake
Someone has suggested putting the Feeb in charge of health care?
That’s news to me, and I write about Medicare for a living.
Oh wait, that was one of those straw man doohickies. Never mind.
myiq2xu
When they round us up and put us in camps, they’ll have a doctor examine us to make sure we don’t die during torture, and a medical professional will administer the Zyklon-B when we are done confessing.
gypsy howell
This wins Cheery POTD.
J sub D
Then regale me tales of the heroic medical efficiency that the medicare/medicaid system has displayed to date. You can throw in the compassionate VA system while your at it. Straw man? HHS put it out there. I love to burn it down. I volunteer in a soup kitchen two days a week. I’ve heard o variation of this at least ten times in the last couple of years.
Person A – You got a medicare card.
Person B – Yeah.
Person A – Want to make $50.00?
Person B – Yeah.
Person A – I’ll drive you. (I’m assuming Person A gets a finders fee)
Person B – I’m coming.
Straw man? HHS put it up.
Robert Johnston
I’m sure you just unknowingly ripped that out of somewhere in Jonah’s book. The push for universal health care is clearly an example of liberal fascism in action because it’s liberal, and, well, we all know that liberal fascism ends up with Zyklon-B because it’s fascism, damnit!
J sub D
Oh, wait! I take it all back. The DHS bureaucrats are all messed up, but the HHS bureaucrats have got it going on.
Never mind.
J sub D
Besides it’s off topic. On topic is the FBI has it a cranial rectal inversion problem. Do ya think maybe they got a late payment notice or 6 before termination?
Jake
Yesterday some drunken dimwit floated a stinking turd in one of the posts. When told to StFu he unleashed a barrage of whining because no one would take his turd seriously. He steadfastly refused to admit that treating his turd as anything but a turd would be a waste of time on par with an anthropologist trying to reason with a man who is convinced God created the world in seven days.
Here we go again.
Sorry, J sub D, I can’t play with you. It wouldn’t be fair to me because I’d have to compress knowledge gained over several years into a form you might be able to understand before I could even get to your “arguments,” such as they are. It wouldn’t be fair to you because from your two comments it’s clear you lack the reasoning capacity to understand anything I might say beyond Shut The Fuck Up.
See? That saved a lot of time.
Robert Johnston
But you forgot the most important part:
Fetchez la vache!
J sub D
Jake, your command of the English language impresses me no end. Certainly, I’m no match for you mentally. I am in awe of your genius and experience in the happy, happy, fun land of medicare and medicaid. But like I apologized for earlier, Off topic. I would guess that our civil discussion and posting crossed in the tubes. Have a nice weekend.
If you’ve got the time, you perhaps can work on your social skills. Just a friendly suggestion. ;-)
Dreggas
Masters degree in creationism coming to texas…
Bill Arnold
The first sentence of the article suggests that these are all wiretaps, not just FISA wiretaps. This article if anything actually decreases my (still very high) paranoia levels because it implies a high level of incompetence, and doesn’t suggest any new information about counter-opposition party wiretapping/surveilance by the executive branch.
Jake
Dear J sub D,
I apologize for responding to your stinking turd before you had a chance to flush it.
Regards,
Jake G.
myiq2xu
Miss Manners says that the polite thing to do when someone lays a stinking turd in the room is to ignore it.
Todd Dugdale
I think that after Bush is out of office a few FBI agents are going to come forward with testimony that the majority of the warrantless wiretapping was conducted on domestic dissidents. That is the only reason that makes sense for circumventing FISA. Far beyond “keeping tabs” on dissent, the wiretapping provides huge amounts of raw material that can be *re-assembled* to create conversations that *never occurred* – this much is child’s play, especially with the digital technology available today. Thus, “evidence” can be constructed out of whole cloth and business leaders, politicians, foreign leaders, journalists, clerics, etc. can easily be blackmailed with the “exposition” of falsified conversations in which they “admit” to crimes or pecadillos.
It would take 3 or 4 people working full-time to create a sufficient number of falsified conversations, and surely there are that many butt-sniffing, Kool-Aid-drinking, morally bankrupt people in the FBI. If not, it could easily be out-sourced to “disposable” people in the private sector.
Yeah, I know, tin-foil hats, etc.
On the same note, I’ve noticed fear among the cons at redstate over the Democrats being allowed these “absolutely critical” powers should they assume the White House. This “unitary executive” stuff works both ways, and the Republicans are just now starting to realise it.
Chuck Butcher
What makes my head want to explode is that there was sufficient evidence gathered pre-9/11 to stop it, gathered by plain old policework. The actual justification for the abridgements of the BOR is the incompetence of the agencies, not the unavailability of informtion. Funny how that works, they screw up, we get screwed.
JWW
Michael D
You filed the post under General Stupidity, I’m glad to see you understand where it was meant to be. That is, where most of the shit you post belongs. Is it your personal database?
Michael D.
JWW: If only we had a “Get a Life” category for comments! :-) What are you? A child? Or are you just home alone on a Saturday night and felt the need to lash out at someone due to your lack of said life?
Nancy Irving
We need to cut taxes more to raise revenue so we can pay for this. :)