The unitary executive never gives up any power:
The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.
That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.
The EFF guy quoted in the piece thinks that this goes for emails, too.
NobodySpecial
In this case as in many others regarding civil liberties…
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
/Preemptive fuck you too.
PurpleGirl
IIRC, many tried to make the point to the Republicans that a Democratic president would want to use the unitary executive policies too, and did they really want that.
matoko_chan
you have no clue.
the US has auto-keyword filtered all international calls since the first speech recognition algorithm crawled up onto the land…like….i dunno…30 years ago?
no one gave a fuck about it until that NSA guy spilled to the media.
srv
Anything that arrives from or goes outside the border is game. This extends the power TLA’s have had forever to the FBI.
srv
Oh, and y’all might want to know about another loophole on records. You shouldn’t presume your domestic phone call information and billing information is reconciled on a server residing in the USA.
Even if they are, it doesn’t matter:
usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm
Corner Stone
The Obama administration doesn’t want these powers, what they really want is Congress to do its job and balance the executive branch.
c u n d gulag
Remember all of the laws after Nixon, so that we wouldn’t go down that ‘slipper slope’ again?
Well, Little Boots pushed us all the way down that slope, and we’ll never, ever, be able to climb out of it.
Any President, D or R, who didn’t do all of this secret surveillance, and had an attack, would be pilloried, impeached, and deported – at best. I’ll leave the worst to your imagination.
And that’s why a lot of us worked like Hell against Bush and his cabal.
I don’t see us going back, ever.
I hope I’m wrong…
Bob In Pacifica
Time to say goodbye to the black/white left/right either/or dichotomy, folks. Every President for nearly the last fifty years has gone along with the goals of the military-industrial complex. It was under the Bush Administration that extreme rendition went wholesale, but it happened during the Clinton Administration. It was under Clinton that the NSA’s Echelon went into effect, and once a tool is given to the spies, why would they give it back? And so Congress (including Obama) went along with the FISA “changes”. And under every President, whether Carter in Asia or Reagan-Bush in Latin America, haven’t School of the Americas grads been sticking bamboo under troublesome people’s fingernails? But, really, how much worse than the Phoenix Program is any of this. The CIA et al spy and murder, and they don’t do it solely because of who is in the White House, or at the behest of the White House.
Rather, it’s the opposite. The White House is the entertainment for the Beltway media. In fact, it’s best to view the occupants of the White House as mere puppets of the permanent government, moved in and out of public view in order to provide some political narrative to occupy us while the grim continuation of our uber-wealthy goes by mostly unnoticed.
Am I being too negative for a Saturday morning? Can’t wait for the S.F. Giants’ pitchers and catchers to report.
amok92
I like this ‘cuz it will make that asshole Greenwald mad
/BJ obot
unprinter
How
stupidpleasant to imagine it’s only international calls and emails the NSA/FBI/CIA/HomSec goons are snooping.Bob In Pacifica
@PurpleGirl: It was that FISA vote that sealed the deal. It was clear that a Democrat was going to be in the White House and yet the Republicans were either unanimous or nearly unanimous in voting for it.
As much as the Repubs “feared” the marxist/socialist death-panel fascism of an Obama Administration they had no fear about the good citizens working at the NSA perhaps helping out the jackbooted Kenyan to spy on Americans. Why not?
Because the power of the military-industrial complex doesn’t accrue to the Presidency. It accrues to the military-industrial complex. That’s why they should play “Hail To The Chief” to Bob Gates, not the guy on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Comrade Javamanphil
I’ve got Malkin in the “First Right Wing Hack to decry this abuse of power by Obama even though they praised the Bush Administration for using it” pool.
And yes, this sucks.
unprinter
@Corner Stone: This is a joke, right?
Corner Stone
I am seriously craving some raw oysters for lunch. Anyone in the Greater Houston Metro Area have any suggestions?
I’m thinking about trying Floyd’s.
Amir_Khalid
@NobodySpecial: Sooner or later it always comes back to The Who.
Corner Stone
And since Atrrios linked over here:
from his link to the WSJ, so take as you will.
BGinCHI
@Corner Stone: How was the sushi binge?
Corner Stone
@BGinCHI:
Damn it was good. That hostess did not steer me wrong, not even a little bit. I’m debating having something light for lunch and doing sushi again tonight, or having a few dozen oysters for lunch and some fresh fruit for dinner.
Omnes Omnibus
@amok92: Fuck you. I don’t like this, and I don’t think there is any reason for it.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Damn. Did DougJ lend you his crankypants?
BGinCHI
@Corner Stone: Gulf oysters?? Yikes.
Corner Stone
@BGinCHI: What? Government says they are A-OK(tm)
BGinCHI
@Corner Stone: Get an epi-pen and just hold it while you’re eating.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I am tired of people wanting to start the whole Greenwald thing. The unitary executive stuff is crap no matter who is doing it. Doing I think that Obama is doing as good a job overall as one could expect? Yeah, pretty much. Do I think he is doing as good a job on civil liberty as he should? No, not by a fucking long shot. And yes, I am cranky right now. I am working on the taxes of a client this morning; they are complicated and he is kind of a tool.
Master of Karate and Friendship
Those two statements are totally incompatible.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Corner Stone:
Haha )
BGinCHI
@Omnes Omnibus: When are you moving down here?
Are you going to wait for the Guard to club you or just get out ahead of it?
Honestly, the Walker stuff makes me sick. I hope the unions seriously go to the mattresses and this has big political consequences for the WI GOP. I’d think on the face of it, there would be a legal challenge in the attempt to separate some unions from others (exempting police and fire).
WI state Dems need to roll up their sleeves and get to work.
Baud
I would have liked to have seen the memo. I don’t know why they write an article about how they obtained a secret memo and then not post the memo along with the article.
Svensker
@Corner Stone:
You are being sarcastic, aren’t you?
Corner Stone
@Svensker: No. Why else would a former Con Law Professor go along with these decisions?
Pooh
As others have pointed out, the “international” bit of this makes it substantially less of a big deal than the NSA stuff of ’05 or whenever. Creepy? Yes. On pretty firm legal ground? Probably also yes.
jpe
When did “unitary executive” become so devoid of content that it just came to mean “something I don’t like?” At any rate, maybe we should reserve “unitary executive” for what it actually means rather than dumbing down the discourse so much.
sukabi
don’t know why this is such a surprise… the only thing that’s changed is the facade: the public face of the government got a new “look”, but the mechanics of government have stayed the same… same folks running the machinery, so even if the policy had gone through a major change, expecting the diehard, lifers pulling the levers to change procedures is a bit of a fantasy…
until you gut the institutions (dod, pentagon, dhs, doj) of the “true believers” nothing will change.
Maine Independent
“the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity”
So if your auto mechanic is considering some lone wof terrorist activity, and you are having allot of car problems, well, you’re just guilty too.
Me, I’m hoping to hit the lottery big, move somewhere else, and renounce my citizenship (eventually). Bit of a long shot…….
joe from Lowell
This doesn’t really have anything to do with the Unitary Executive concept per se.
“Unitary executive” isn’t a term used to describe a broad executive power as a whole, or even the belief in executive power untrammeled by the other branches in a general sense.
It refers to the belief that the other branches, especially Congress, cannot establish conditions or require approval for the use of a power that the executive has, even if that power is granted by Congress. For instance, if Congress authorizes the creation of the Office of Earwax Enforcement, and writes into the law the condition that the Director must have Ph.D. in Earwax, a believer in Unitary Executive theory would say that the President can appoint anyone he pleases to the job, and doesn’t have to follow Congress’s limitations on who he can appoint.
That doesn’t really seem to apply here. Not all issues of executive power are unitary executive issues.
LosGatosCA
Corollary to Godwin’s Law of Nazi analogies – The Who’s Law of Bosses analogy.
First person to post The Who’s ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’ in the proper context wins the thread/argument.
May also be referred to as the Law of We are all so fucked, just sit back and enjoy it.
joe from Lowell
Haven’t international communications always been subject to warrantless searches?
When I temped at a FedEx facility years ago, Customs Enforcement would come by every few days, and open a few boxes seemingly at random.
I know the Border Patrol, or whatever they call them these days, can search cars coming and going across the border in a way that the government could never search cars within the United States, without first getting a warrant.
Is it different for communications? Is this actually a novel assertion?
Pooh
@joe from Lowell: No, this is not novel. The activities you described were somehow part of the argument that doing things not part of those activities (like monitoring wholly domestic calls between US Citizens) was somehow ok because of the things we already did.
Also, I agree with those who have pointed out that the “Unitary Executive” bullshit is not really applicable here – that theory was essentially, yes I see your duly enacted congressional law, but it doesn’t apply to me, foreign policy, neener-neener. AFAICT, the story being reported on here isn’t against the law given the legit state interest in secure borders, etc…
eemom
@LosGatosCA:
Well said.
A second corollary might be, “Meet the new sheep, same as the old sheep,” which increasingly sums up the mindset on display here.
jinxtigr
I agree with Corner Stone: if the President legally has the power to give up such powers (if it’s his job to relinquish them) it’s also his job to take them on again any time he feels like it.
That said, I’m getting sick of it, because it assumes we have a Congress and Courts that have actual power and will do such things. If they won’t take action to shorten Obama’s leash all he can do is wave red flags in their and our faces- and if they never act, he just made things worse, giving any future President LESS work to seize more power.
So I’m getting tired of the ‘it’s the job of the other branches of government and Obama can’t even make overtures about doing the right thing’ argument.
I guess it’s probably helping keep him alive, at any rate…
AAA Bonds
Every now and then a missive slips out and people realize that they’re still fighting their government on these issues.
I’d suggest that you all adopt an idea: this struggle is eternal, and you need to be prepared to fight it eternally, against Republicans, Democrats, “Libertarians”, whatever.
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship: No, actually they are not. Overall, I think he is doing as well as can be expected. He is doing better in some areas and worse in others. His D- on this issue is balanced by As elsewhere.
joe from Lowell
@Pooh: I remember now: the Bush administration was claiming that being allowed to monitor international calls, or international emails, means they could monitor calls between two people in the US if it went through a router somewhere else.
I think the Obama administration should come clean on exactly what they’re arguing.
Pooh
@joe from Lowell: No, they weren’t arguing that at all, at least not coherently. I mean that was part of there argument, but they were doing some handwaving and question begging about listening to terrorists and such so therefore we can listen to anything. Or as we used to call it around here, “Darrelling”.
The BEST argument was the Unitary Executive bullshit which basically meant that the President had a magical national security wand which exempted him from any and all laws.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
@Corner Stone:
.
.
Exactly. All Constitutional scholars understand that someone has to break the law before the law can be applied. Or for retroactive immunity to be approved and enforced.
.
.
El Cid
Not really new.
This is just an example of a particular and named system, in which there was awareness of an agreement on it.
In those days, a degree of cute trickery was needed, in the opinion of the governments.
You see, they said that they would not spy upon their own nation’s communications, but if one of the other participating nations happened to monitor and share that intelligence, well, it’s not the same thing as spying on your own citizens, because it’s not you, right?
Shithead #3 - formerly Gen Stuck
If the author of this article is accurate on this dispute, then the Obama Admin. needs to be called on it. But international calls originating from American soil have never been in dispute by most dems most repubs, and have always clearly fallen under FISA, that Bush did in fact ignore based on his version of Unitary Executive, that in times of war his Article 2 powers take precedent over Article one powers of congress. There are some temp provisions when war is declared in the constitution, via the AUMF in this case, that suspend things like search and seizure requirements and getting warrants from the judicial branch, but that is only for about 15 days, I think. So Bush just extended that in his tiny brain for everything on a continuing basis.
If however, this dispute Mcclatchy cites, is over a previous dispute on a legal technicality by legal eagles, concerning the routing of international calls through US hubs on US soil, that both ends originate overseas, then that is a different animal. And international calls such as these have never fallen under US law for intercept. unless you consider a wire crossing US soil as originating, some do., I don’t
Corner Stone
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck: There are lower intestines that are less twisted and stinky as this post.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
How so?
edit – Nevermind, not in the mood to converse with sewer trout tonight.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Poor cornerstone, all that hate and bile, and Obama is still president, and will be for 6 more years. You need to pace yourself pumpkin.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, like his A’s on Afghanistan, the bankster bailouts, and the stimulus.
LOL.
liberal
@Shithead #3 – formerly Gen Stuck:
The Oct 2002 AUMF was not a declaration of war. And there’s a clear distinction between them. The AUMF essentially gave the Exec Branch control over the start of hostilities, unlike a declaration of war.
General Stuck
@liberal:
There are constitutional experts that see it your way, but more that don’t, if not a declaration of war. I say close enough for government work via war powers act, and until the scotus happens to say otherwise, then it is a declaration of war for constitutional purposes, and not for left wing dogma purposes.
brendancalling
this fucking pisses me off, because due to the fact that my 7-year-old lives in Quebec with his mom, I make international calls from the US EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
Maybe I’ll save them some trouble and leave messages with the WH after every call.
“Please tell the president that Sam had mac-n-cheese for dinner, he’s watching Sponge-Bob and he likes math class better than anything.”
alwhite
@brendancalling:
Not subtle enough!
When talking to Sam use words like ‘bomb’, ‘the base’, ‘hijack’ ‘C4’ and ‘virgin’ occasionally. For Example:
“We played a gig last night at this placed called, The Base and it was the BOMB! I was looking out at the crowd and I could C4 guys I went to school with but I could only remember one guys name so I yelled out HIJACK! Turns out he works for Virgin Records and came to hear us play.”
That should do the trick.