i>Having paid a good deal of AMT in my time, I agree that it can be unfair. So, raise the limit. Simple solution.
Remove the tax cuts targeted towards those earning more than, say, $500,000 per year. Again, simple.
You and I may think its simple, but legislators say it will cost the treasury. And I am sure any such move would be denounced as a tax cut for the rich.
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I don't know what you mean by 'widespread', but it appears to have been systematic at Gitmo.
I don't believe it and I think making such charges w/o a good basis damages the country.
Also, there are the secret 'locations' of CIA prisoners spirited away to countries more adept at torture than we are.
That is known as rendition. And nothing new. I recall Gore being enthusiastic about it during the Clinton administration days.
While we're on the subject of the loyal opposition's wholesale memory failure, perhaps it is worth reviewing Al Gore's support for the practice of "extraordinary rendition" (aggressively anti-rendition Wikipedia entry here). I stumbled across this passage in Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, published last year in a fairly blatant attempt to compare the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts unfavorably with those of Bill Clinton:
Snatches, or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government.... The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." (pp. 143-144)
This passage is especially interesting in light of Gore's more recent speechifying, in which he specifically denounced rendition. No more "go grab his ass."
Al Gore supported rendition before al Qaeda had declared war on the United States and hung its battle flag on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the African embassies, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Bali disco, the Madrid trains, and the United Nations.
From tigerhawk blog
If we don't work on anti-terror operations with countries which practice torture - like Pakistan, Egypt wouldn't seiously hamper the antiterror effort?
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Warrants aren't needed for foreign monitoring and thats been the position of every administration since Carters.
One end of the conversation was in the US, so, yes, a judicial approval would be needed.
I don't agree and cite the following:
A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
washingtontimes.com
Gen. Hayden explains the NSA telephone program
John B. Dwyer
The American Thinker
On Jan 23, 2006, Gen. Hayden explained the mission, the responsibilities, of the NSA in an address to the National Press Club. He explained how the terrorist surveillance program was NOT domestic spying vis-a-vis hostile, misleading headlines & stories in the antique media. Now that this issue has been resurrected, it might be a good idea to revisit Gen. Hayden’s remarks. Here is an excerpt:
<<< The president’s authorization allows us to track this kind of call more comprehensively and more efficiently. The trigger is quicker and a bit softer than it is for a FISA warrant, but the intrusion into privacy is also limited: only international calls and only those we have a reasonable basis to believe involve al Qaeda or one of its affiliates. The purpose of all this is not to collect reams of intelligence, but to detect and prevent attacks. The intelligence community has neither the time, the resources nor the legal authority to read communications that aren’t likely to protect us, and NSA has no interest in doing so. These are communications that we have reason to believe are al Qaeda communications, a judgment made by American intelligence professionals, not folks like me or political appointees, a judgment made by the American intelligence professionals most trained to understand al Qaeda tactics, al Qaeda communications and al Qaeda aims.
Their work is actively overseen by the most intense oversight regime in the history of the National Security Agency. The agency’s conduct of this program is thoroughly reviewed by the NSA’s general counsel and inspector general. The program has also been reviewed by the Department of Justice for compliance with the president’s authorization. Oversight also includes an aggressive training program to ensure that all activities are consistent with the letter and the intent of the authorization and with the preservation of civil liberties.
Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.
This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda. We bring to bear all the technology we can to ensure that this is so. And if there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported. But the incident, what we call inadvertent collection, would be recorded and reported. But that’s a normal NSA procedure. It’s been our procedure for the last quarter century. And as always, as we always do when dealing with U.S. person information, as I said earlier, U.S. identities are expunged when they’re not essential to understanding the intelligence value of any report. Again, that’s a normal NSA procedure.
So let me make this clear. When you’re talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications.
Let me emphasize one more thing that this program is not—and, look, I know how hard it is to write a headline that’s accurate and short and grabbing. But we really should shoot for all three—accurate, short and grabbing. I don’t think domestic spying makes it. One end of any call targeted under this program is always outside the United States. I’ve flown a lot in this country, and I’ve taken literally hundreds of domestic flights. I have never boarded a domestic flight in the United States of America and landed in Waziristan. In the same way—and I’m speaking illustratively here now, this is just an example—if NSA had intercepted al Qaeda Ops Chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Karachi talking to Mohamed Atta in Laurel, Maryland, in say, July of 2001—if NSA had done that, and the results had been made public, I’m convinced that the crawler on all the 7 by 24 news networks would not have been “NSA domestic spying.” >>>
americanthinker.com
Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, Director of the National Security Agency, testified today that it would not be feasible to track al Qaeda's international communications if it were necessary to obtain a search warrant on a conversation by conversation basis:
<<< But the administration officials called FISA impractical and ineffective for tracking al Qaeda, saying the law would require separate warrants for each U.S.-bound phone call placed by an overseas suspect.
"It would cause a tremendous burden," said NSA Director Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander.
"You'd be so far behind the target if you were in hot pursuit, with the number of applications that you'd have to make and the time to make those, that you'd never catch up." >>>
Where, exactly, do the Democrats stand on the NSA international terrorist surveillance program? When they're done waxing eloquent about civil liberties, do they want to continue intercepting terrorists' international communications, or not? I suspect that as a practical matter, as with a number of issues, it all depends on which party occupies the White House.
powerlineblog.com
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Foreign terrorists captured fighting Americans abroad don't have and shouldn't have habeas corpus.
Much as we despised them, the Taliban was the official government of Afghanistan. Nationals and even foreign fighters fighting against our invasion would be classified as enemy combatants, which means the Geneva Convention should have applied to them.
Also, the government has the ability to label YOU or ME an enemy combatant, at which time our rights to being charged in a timely fashion, trial, representation, etc are all gone.
You seem to have switched topic from habeas corpus to Geneva conventions. Enemies held under the Geneva conventions don’t have habeas corpus. As for government labeling you or me an enemy combatant, I think we won't be unless we, say go to Afghanistan to fight against American troops like John Walker Lindh did, iow unless we actually BECOME enemy combatants by our actions.
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What? The FBI didn't open Moussawi's laptop before 911. Think they should have?
The FBI's recent abuses of the Patriot act should cause us all alarm and consternation. Because it CAN be you and me. Besides, I don't need to be robbed, assaulted, or murdered to know that having laws that punish those who do is a good thing. I don't need to personally have my records searched and my rights taken to see that it is unAmerican and unConstitutional.
I guess that was a no, they were right not to inspect Moussawi’s laptop. And the FBI was right to play it safe and not aggressively pursue evidences of terrorists in the US prior to 911 – even though the 911 attack might have been prevented.
The Constitution exists to protect the rights of US citizens. It is not a suicide pact designed to prevent the protection of US citizens from attack by foreign enemies. |
