knocked in the head recently…

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that it would not have been “that hard” for President Bush to have obtained warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw “nothing wrong” with the decision not to do so.

“My own judgment is that it didn’t seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants,” Powell said. “And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that.”

He’s right about it not being hard to get the warrants:

-The spy court has approved thousands of them in its history & has only rejected five.
-Warrants can be made retroactive, allowing a wiretap to begin without one.
-In the case that the spy court rejects a warrant request — which it rarely ever does — there are two levels of appeals available, one of which is calling an immediate private session of the Supreme Court.

With all that in place, I could get a warrant approved for spying on my neighbor if I felt like it. So….why not just get the warrant??? There’s no reason at all for such surveillance to just go on without the warrant, getting one is as easy as falling.

Of course, we all know why no attempt was made. This was a dragnet, an indiscriminate grab of anything & everything to be sifted through later. Even the spineless state-worshippers currently on the Supreme Court would’ve rejected that one, that’s been illegal since….ever.
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