Final Protective Fire

Friday, August 23, 2002

 

It has become the practice of the Left to regularly denounce Attorney General John Ashcroft with repeated smears and namecalling. Likewise, President Bush and other Republicans. I have an email from someone who claims that Republican pundits are not intellectuals, but his repeated argument is merely to use the term "Republican Reich". So I found it interesting that the NYT and WaPo are reporting in an opinion by the Federal Court that reviews FISA wiretap and search warrant applications, that the Federal Court is spanking the executive branch for being lied to in those wiretap and warrant applications. What is being glossed over is that the misconduct occurred largely under Attorney General Reno of the Clinton administration. The opinions cites 75 instances of misstatements and omissions of fact admitted by the Clinton administration in September of 2000. You will find reference to these incidents here, pages 16 through 17.

What was at issue in this opinion was a submission by the Bush Administration's Justice Dept of a new amended set of rules on how to handle cases where there was a foreign intelligence case and a criminal investigation of the same subjects and how to handle the rules over what material collected under a FISA warrant could be shared with the criminal investigation. In part because the court didn't agree with the administration's interpretation of the law and in part because of abuses during the Clinton administration, the court didn't accept all of the administration's proposed amendments.

Robin 10:35 AM