AG pick: Constitution does not prevent wiretapping of terrorists

[babylonsister]

AG pick: Constitution does not prevent wiretapping of terrorists

By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press


WASHINGTON — President Bush's choice for attorney general told senators Friday the Constitution does not prevent the president from wiretapping suspected terrorists without a court order.

Michael Mukasey said the president cannot use his executive power to get around the Constitution and laws prohibiting torture. But wiretapping suspected terrorists' without warrants is not precluded, he said.

"Foreign intelligence gathering is a field in which the executive branch is regulated but not pre-empted by Congress," Mukasey wrote in response to questions by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

Mukasey's letter was made public by Leahy on Friday as part of a larger package of documents in Judiciary Committee members asked the retired U.S. district court judge from New York to elaborate on two days of oral testimony last week.

His answers focused on queries about executive power and did not address what Leahy and other senators have said is the chief obstacle to his confirmation: Mukasey's refusal to say if an interrogation method that simulates drowning amounts to torture outlawed under domestic and international law.

more...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5249617.html

[robinlynne]

1. Hang on, the man says wiretapping without a warrant is legal, and they even consider him?

[babylonsister]

2. I know; what's wrong with this pic? I hope the judiciary thinks long

and hard before confirming this guy. And I know there's another one who needs to be replaced, but not with Mukasey!

[lonestarnot]

3. Yeah and according to this potential decider assistant, the decider will pick his terraist.

terra terra terra. Fuck that! Reject him. WE ARE THE DECIDERS!

[gratuitous]

4. Hanh? Come again?

And, "Judge" Mukasey, who decides when the person being subject to the unreasonable search and seizure (pretty words, huh? Check the Fourth Amendment of a funny little document I like to call the Constitution) is a "suspected terrorist"? And when do they get to make that determination, prospectively or retroactively? Based on what? And who reviews that decision? And is any evidence developed from these wiretaps admissible, or just the substance of the phone calls themselves? And is a "suspected terrorist" entitled to examine the evidence against him, or does he just go to jail, secure in the knowledge that the nameless, faceless people who are sentencing him were doing so in service to the highest purposes, like making sure the populace is wet-your-pants scared and keeps re-electing lunatic politicians who think this represents the best of the American system?

Perhaps you'd be more comfortable being the AG under someone else. Like Stalin.