The FISA Model for Summary Execution?

CuteOldGuy's Avatar
Want to phony "due process" at work? Here it is, courtesy of the spineless traitors in Congress, from both parties.

Here's the article:

Diane Feinstein and some liberals have suggested that, if the president’s targeted killing policy is too unilateral, the remedy might be found in something modeled after the FISA court.

Make no mistake: Such a court would be nothing more than a rubber-stamp. At best.

In 1978, after Church Committee hearings exposed massive abuse of FBI search procedures to spy on and harass Americans in the United States, many of them totally peaceful, Congress instituted a number of reforms to rein in these abuses. The most well known was probably the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act. It created a FISA court to issue special warrants for spying on international communications with a suspected foreign enemy.

The law did not create a real court in the judicial branch, but rather an executive branch panel with secret proceedings housed right in the Justice Department.

Between 1978 and September 11, 2001, there were about 13,000 FISA applications. Guess how many were rejected? Zero. That’s right, zero. This included a warrant issued to spy on a man in Phoenix accused of organizing a crime ring to steal and sell baby food.

After 9/11, FISA was apparently too strict for the Bush administration, so it asked for looser standards under the USA PATRIOT Act. The Justice Department then loosened the restrictions even further. Then, in December 2005, the public learned that Bush had circumvented even this pitiful process altogether and had ordered the NSA, a military agency, to spy on Americans without any warrants whatsoever. In 2007 and 2008, Congress voted to legalize Bush’s illegal behavior and immunize anyone who was complicit from prosecution, and to create even looser standards for the executive branch to spy on Americans without warrants. Obama has vastly expanded warrantless electronic surveillance.

This is the model liberals want to constrain the president in summary executions: A model that failed to decline a single warrant out of 13,000 from its inception to 9/11, a model the government easily modified to its advantage after a crisis, a model the Bush administration was rewarded for ignoring altogether, a model that was amended by an enthusiastic bipartisan effort to allow an unprecedented power that the current administration uses to issue tens of thousands of warrantless wiretapping orders every year.

No thanks. It’s bad enough that Obama is killing people without judicial oversight. It doesn’t take a cynic to fear that after a few years of a FISA-style summary execution court, the president will be ordering Americans to be gunned down in the streets of Manhattan and Tulsa. But the fig leaf of the “rule of law” will be there, and so the outrage will have subsided.


Another truth for the liberals to ridicule and ignore. However, it is still a fact.

http://blog.independent.org/2013/02/...ary-execution/
It is ok the citizens will all be armed with assault weapons..
Yssup Rider's Avatar
so will the bosses...
JD Barleycorn's Avatar
I've always liked the term Star Chamber. Sounds so much more regal than Fisa Court.
CuteOldGuy's Avatar
Star Chamber is a more accurate description. Now watch WPF google it and become an instant expert on the subject.

pmdelites's Avatar
The Who had it 100% abso-fucking-lutely correct...
"meet the new boss. same as the old boss"

do you seriously think that obama woke up one morning and said to the powers that be in theI US Govt "we need to be able to kill bad-ass americans overseas!"
i think it was more the CIA, FBI, DHS, etc., etc., etc. telling him "let us at 'em!!!" and he just said "sure, why not? what's the worst that can happen? a few people will die who shouldnt have been targeted."

that's my take on this aspect of the US government.
TexTushHog's Avatar
I think that Congress should definitely come up with a scheme of oversight for the drone attacks and individual targeted killing. Frankly, I'm not sure that you can get anything stronger than a FISA type supervision through Congress. I'm not sure that it's a "rubber stamp," but it's certainly not as strong as I would like.
CuteOldGuy's Avatar
‎"Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent." -Alexis de Tocqueville
I B Hankering's Avatar
“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
― Daniel Webster
Yssup Rider's Avatar
That's two in a row from Daniel Webster, IBSyndrome. I suppose you're quite the bookWORM today.
I B Hankering's Avatar
That's two in a row from Daniel Webster, IBSyndrome. I suppose you're quite the bookWORM today. Originally Posted by Yssup Rider
And that’s the second of Webster’s sage quotes you’ve derided today, Assup; thus, showing that you unquestionably lack the wisdom to understand.
Yssup Rider's Avatar
You love that thesaurus, don't you IBShittingworms?

Who you gonna quote tomorrow?

Lets see ... Today it was Webster.

Tomorrow? ALEX KARRAS!



I never knew Webster was that small...
CuteOldGuy's Avatar
Complex thought eludes you, doesn't it, Assup? No wonder you are the reigning . . .

DIPSHIT OF THE YEAR 2013

ASSUP!!!