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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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Now!
Bush's nominee for head of the CIA,
Gen. Michael Hayden, at a press conference, offered an interpretation
of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution that removes the
requirement of "probable cause" from that important
guarantee of freedom.
Asked by Jonathan Landay of
Knight-Ridder about the Fourth Amendment's standard of "probable
cause" for issuance of a warrant for a police search, Gen.
Hayden disputed the standard.
"No, actually -- the Fourth
Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search
and seizure." Hayden said, trying to correct Landay.
"But it does say probable"
Landay tried to interject.
"No, the amendment says
unreasonable search and seizure," snapped Hayden.
Now the problem here is that
the General, who was running the National Security
Agency as it has been operating a secret program, just disclosed
by USA Today, that monitors the phone calling records of virtually
all phone customers of AT&T, Bell South and Verizon, is selectively
quoting from the Fourth Amendment.
In fact, what the Fourth Amendment
says is:
The right of the people to
be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and
no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by
Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to
be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The trick here is that under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the NSA is
required to obtain a court warrant for any domestic surveillance.
What Bush has done is to authorize secret monitoring of Americans
communications without a warrant. At the same time,
once he was caught in the act, both Bush and Gen. Hayden have
claimed that they are following the same strict guidelines as
if they were going to court for a warrant.
Clearly, however, the standard
for a warrant, as laid out by the Founding Fathers, is "probably
cause," not the much looser "reasonable" that
Hayden asserted to Landay at the press conference.
We Americans, and the members
of Congress who are being asked to consider Hayden's fitness
to serve as CIA director, need to challenge this spook's sleight
of hand.
Clearly there is no "probable
cause" for monitoring all the phone records of the entire
customer base of three of the nation's largest phone service
providers.
That's why Hayden tried so
hard to deny that the standard for monitoring people's communications
is "probable cause."
The president and his subordinates
have been found out violating the Constitution in a serious way.
If this is not an impeachable
act, I don't know what is.
CounterPunch
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