From today’s Slate Magazine, a roundup of NSA horror stories. Violations of law, violations of our Constitutional rights, violations of our freedoms and liberty. Resist Bush while we can.

Listening In and Naming Names
The old tricks of the National Security Agency.
By Patrick Radden Keefe
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2005, at 3:22 PM ET

The storm of controversy notwithstanding, Friday’s revelation that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless eavesdropping in the United States should come as no surprise. The press tends to shy away from covering America’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency, fearing precisely the kind of scolding President Bush delivered to the New York Times. But the truth is that the NSA—which has an estimated $6 billion annual budget bigger than those of the CIA and the FBI combined—has a decidedly checkered history when it comes to playing by the rules. Both before and after Sept. 11, 2001, the secrecy surrounding the eavesdropping agency has obscured a dangerous institutional tendency to overreach.

In 1978, congressional investigations revealed that the NSA had spied on civilian anti-war protesters during Vietnam. The response was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. To prevent future abuses, the act drew a line between foreign intelligence and domestic law enforcement. The NSA was free to spy abroad, but when its agents wanted to wiretap in the United States, they had to ask a secret FISA court for a warrant. It was easy enough to get the warrants: Officials had to show probable cause that the person they were after was an agent of a foreign power. And the court, comprised of a rotating panel of federal judges chosen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, almost never rejected an application. Governed by FISA, the supposedly rehabilitated NSA quietly went back to work. On the rare occasions over the last three decades when NSA directors have spoken publicly, it has been to offer assurances that the agency does not spy on U.S. citizens.

The problem was that with FISA under its belt, Congress effectively let the TV be the babysitter. Legislators relied on the new law to do the work, and oversight of electronic intelligence-gathering fell into serious decline. The justifiable secrecy surrounding eavesdropping became a bureaucratic carte blanche, and the NSA refused to produce hard information to back up its generic assurances that it was not abusing its powers. In the Reagan years, Rep. Norman Mineta, D-Calif., who served on the House intelligence committee, neatly summarized the relationship between the spies and the committee: “We are like mushrooms. They keep us in the dark and feed us a lot of manure.”

Two years before Sept. 11, members of the House intelligence committee asked the NSA’s general counsel for the internal legal guidelines that governed eavesdropping on the conversations of U.S. citizens. The agency stonewalled—not a good sign. The NSA’s flimsy excuse was a Procrustean extension of attorney-client privilege, whereby any document that happened to be sitting on the desk of an NSA lawyer did not have to be handed over to Congress. The aftermath of Sept. 11 might have prompted greater oversight of electronic intelligence-gathering. After all, one of the major conclusions of both the bicameral congressional investigation and the 9/11 Commission was that Congress had been lax in that oversight. But after decades of keeping Congress at arm’s length, the 9/11 Commission members were a piece of cake for the NSA. Despite its manifest size and resources, and its failure to hear so much as a whisper about al-Qaida’s 9/11 operation, the agency merited only a few fleeting references in the commission’s 500-page report.

After 9/11, the first sign that the NSA was overreaching on eavesdropping came when the famously circumspect FISA court took the unprecedented step of publishing a 7-0 decision in May 2002. The court, which approved about 10,000 warrant applications between the passage of FISA and Sept. 11, 2001, rebuked the Justice Department and the FBI for giving it wrong information in 75 post-9/11 applications for search warrants and wiretaps. The FISA judges called for stricter policing of FISA’s delineation between domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence operations to “protect the privacy of Americans in these highly intrusive surveillance searches.”

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft appealed, and it emerged that in the years since FISA was passed in 1978, a second secret judicial body—the FISA court of appeals—had been lurking in the wings. The Washington Post called this three-judge panel “a kind of ghost within the American judiciary”—one that had the peculiar distinction of never having had occasion to convene. Why not? Because it was established “to review the denial of any application” to the FISA court. And the court didn’t deny applications.

The following year, as Washington began its full-court press for an invasion of Iraq, the NSA launched a surge of eavesdropping on delegates to the U.N. Security Council in New York. The operation was revealed when an English eavesdropper leaked an NSA e-mail requesting British assistance in the effort. It was a front-page story in Europe and around the world, but the American press didn’t run with it, showing a level of deference to NSA secrecy matched only by Congress. Nevermind that the eavesdropping took place in Manhattan and violated the General Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, all of which the United States has signed.

More dramatic—and also largely overlooked—was the disclosure last spring during John Bolton’s confirmation hearings that the NSA was giving policy-makers and other intelligence agencies information about U.S. citizens. Since 1978, the NSA has insisted that when it intercepts a communication between a targeted foreigner and a nontargeted American it will redact the name of the American from the resulting intelligence report. The redactions are made to protect the privacy of the individual who was not the target, and to satisfy the Constitution’s prohibition of warrantless searches. Yet at his hearings, Bolton admitted that on several occasions while he was an undersecretary of state he had asked the NSA to reveal the names of Americans in agency intercepts. The NSA obliged without any showing of cause or process of review. Newsweek investigated and learned that during one 18-month period in 2004 and 2005, the NSA supplied the names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to interested bureaucrats and spies.

That violation is arguably more egregious than the new revelations of warrantless eavesdropping. It involved vastly more people. (Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping reportedly targeted between 500 and 1,000 people a year.) And it was an informal practice, without even the thin legitimacy of a secret executive order.

To be sure, the Times story is a bombshell. And if President Bush and Alberto Gonzales continue to argue that warrantless eavesdropping was justified under the authority granted by Congress after Sept. 11, this story will be an important chapter in the narrative of the Bush administration’s promotion of executive power. But the shock—shock—professed in Congress and on editorial pages that a U.S. intelligence agency would exceed its mandate and play fast and loose with statutory and constitutional curbs? That seems at best naive and at worst a too-little-too-late gesture by the very people who should have seen this coming. Bush’s executive order authorizing the NSA wiretaps is just the latest iteration (and not even the latest: See today’s story about the FBI’s surveillance of an Indianapolis Vegan Community Project) in a consistent pattern of inadequate oversight of legally questionable eavesdropping operations.

In 2002, then-director of the NSA Michael Hayden took the unusual step of asking for more debate about what his agency should and should not be able to do. “What I really need you to do,” he told Congress, “is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want the line between security and liberty to be.” That debate did not occur, and to judge by events and revelations in the intervening years, the agency—and the White House—interpreted the absence of protest as a vote of confidence and erred on the side of security. Now the talking heads are talking and a congressional inquiry is planned for January. Four years later, Michael Hayden may get his answer.

This president must be impeached! He has assumed dictatorial powers and wants even more power. He has a plan for world domination. He lied to get us into a war with Iraq. There is nothing he has not failed at: the economy, international relations, balancing the budget, responding to disasters, protecting us from drugs, guns, terrorists, our nation’s education system is a disaster and our medical system is in a freefall to decrepitude. President George W. Bush must be impeached, reviled and disgraced as a top priority of every freedom loving individual American. Write your fucking Congressmen. It is NOT futile! Stick your head out your window and yell: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it any more!” It is NOT stupid. Draft and sign petitions. Read Anarchist’s Cookbook. It’s on the web and it will teach you skills for armed resistance if that should become necessary. This coming year is an election year. Speak up, goddammit!!! Give money. Give time. Sit on a phone bank or go door to door. GET FUCKING MAD!!! NO TIME FOR BEING NICE NO TIME TO BE SHY SPEAK UP SPEAK UP GET A FUCKING BUMPER STICKER THIS SHIT IS FUCKING IMPORTANT DAMMIT IT’S FUCKING CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND GULAGS IT’S BEING STRIPPED DOWN TO THIRD WORLD STATUS BOTH POLITICALLY AND ECONOMICALLY DON’T YOU GET IT? WE’RE BEING GENTLY LED INTO SLAVERY GET FUCKING ANGRY GODDAMMIT THIS MATTERS

Here’s a story about Bush’s drive for power:

San Fransisco Chronicle

Here’s an excerpt to get you interested:

Experts ponder Bush’s rationale
Some wonder why law wasn’t changed instead of circumvented by administration
Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

During the four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has responded to questions over its more controversial national security policies, relating to interrogation methods, incarceration policies and investigative techniques, with the argument that they were crucial in the fight against terror.

But some national security experts say that such arguments may not be enough this time to quell questions over the clandestine surveillance of Americans.

“I think there is enormous understanding and tolerance for an argument from necessity, and there’s willingness to retroactively forgive what might strictly speaking be violations of the law,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy of the Federation of American Scientists.

“What becomes harder to understand is four years after 9/11 the administration has not sought modification of the law, but has rather asserted unchecked authority,” he said.

How badly off the beam is President Bush? The next story will give you an idea. A judge on the super-secret, hush-hush court resigned because Bush was so illegal

Washington Post

By Carol D. Leonnig and Dafna Linzer

Updated: 11:21 p.m. ET Dec. 20, 2005

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John D. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.

The rest of the story includes some stuff about Chuck Hegel and Olympia Snowe jumping ship with Arlen Spector leading in asking for investigations, blah blah blogblah!!!

Judge Quits

This judge takes a hike from a cushy lifetime job. Republicans are starting to go “whoa”. Get fucking mad, people. Impeach this man.

Associated Press
Updated: 3:17 p.m. ET Dec. 18, 2005
WASHINGTON – Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid called the Republican-led Congress “the most corrupt in history” Sunday, and distanced himself from Jack Abramoff, a powerful lobbyist at the center of an escalating probe.

He would know.

Roman Senator Cicero ended all his speeches by saying “Carthage Must Be Destroyed!”. After Hannibal crossed the Alps, Romans sailed against their commercial rivals, forcing Hannibal, who they could not defeat on the field, back home. Eventually, Rome would conquer Carthage, put all its people in slavery and salt the ground.

We face the same daily menace.

Not from a foreign threat.

Not even from terrorists.

From our own government.

We must resist this government, this fascist administration.

It threatens us and the world.

We are no longer free. Even if we sit in front of our televisions in our own homes, we are captives of cruel and cunning jailers.

President Bush not only admits to making 30 orders to violate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments by requiring the National Security Agency to intercept and monitor American citizens’ cell phone calls overseas without benefit of warrants, but he attacks those who question his decision as irresponsibly aiding and abetting terrorists.

He also warns Congress they must re-enact the Patriot Act, giving him war powers to roust Americans without warrants and lawyers and the possibility of being kidnapped and tortured in a North African dungeon. It is tantamount to the legislation passed in the 1930s by Germany after the phony Reichstag Fire, giving Adollph Hitler the power to be Der Fuerher.

How is Bush any different from Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Napoleon, any of the dictators?

He even has a plan for world domination.

We must resist.

While we still can.

Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet named “Common Sense” that became a “best seller” and helped prompt the American Revolution. He also wrote pamphlets that helped spark the French Revolution.

We need him today.

The news of the past week or two leads me to believe that a new revolution is necessary in our nation.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, the tree of liberty must at times be watered by the blood of tyrants.

I believe that now is that time.

We learned today that this president authorized the warrantless eavesdropping on American cell phone calls overseas. Thousands of Americans calling overseas were intercepted by the National Security Agency. It is such a blatant violation of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments that several NSA employees refused to participate, despite the secret presidential order.

I wonder if the half British lovely Juliet and her visiting friends Laura and Amber, who made dozens of calls to England with silly girl calls to friends about how much fun it is to be young and beautiful and visiting Los Angeles, were among the calls intercepted.

We also learned this week that the military, the Department of Defense, has spied on thousands of Americans who have protested the Iraqi war. They even infiltrated a Quaker meeting in Florida.

Does this mean that my picture standing along Classen Blvd. in front of Memorial Park with a “Honk for Peace” sign is somewhere in a DOD file? How about Lisa Ghariani and Tara Feurborn? How about our friend Rex Friend the Quaker attorney and former partner of Doug Parr? Are we all headed for a concentration camp that once housed German Nazis in El Reno?

Have you used your credit card this holiday season? American commercial records of credit card use is being “data mined” by our government looking for terrorists. Is your purchase of a sweater for cousin Bill in a government data base? Is it like that silly Mel Gibson movie “Conspiracy Theory” where everyone who buys “Catcher in the Rye” is flagged?

Our libraries are required to allow the government to search their records of books loaned to citizens under the Patriot Act. Been to Oklahoma City’s new library yet?

President Bush now admits that our pre war intelligence on Iraq was wrong, but he takes responsibility for leading us into war for the wrong reasons because deposing Saddam was the right thing to do. What? The ends justify the means? Will he next tell us, as Mussolini did his country, that he’s making the trains run on time? Or, perhaps, as Hitler did, that we must break some eggs to make an omlette? Madness, I tell you, MADNESS!!!

It is now clear beyond dispute that America is running torture chambers, defended by Vice President Cheney, in Eastern Europe and North Africa. We — and I mean you and I through the CIA — kidnap people off the streets of Germany and Italy and take them away and torture them in violation of the Geneva Convention and the American Constitution. This is not a wild charge by some mad foreigner, it is documented truth reported by American and European journalists.

Speaking of journalists, did you know that America is now in the top five of countries who jail journalists? We are tied with Myanmar, the former Burma, a regime that is among the most outlaw of the military juntas in the world, a country and government that is of, by and for heroin dealers in south Asia.

America now incarcerates more of its citizens — over 1,000,000 — than any other country in the world, including Russia and China. Oklahoma, for example, incarcerates more women than any other state in the United States.

Did you realize that it is now legal, under the Patriot Act, for police agencies to “sneek and peek” search your house? They can LEGALLY enter your home when you are gone, search your files and computer and leave without ever telling you. You do not even have the right to know WHY they are interested in you nor what they were looking for.

I would take comfort in my moral superiority should I read that these things were done by Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. I am outraged that I am writing about my own country.

I can’t even blame Bush, really. I blame you and me for allowing Tom DeLay to take illegal corporate cash, laundring it through the Republican National Committee and using it to redistrict Texas so that 5 additional Republicans could be elected to the House of Representatives, giving the GOP control over a branch of government. We just let it happen. You and me. Voters. Americans who haven’t paid enough attention and who lack a capacity for outrage.

We’ve allowed ourselves to be blinded by false issues like abortion and creationism while our basic freedoms have been crushed under a blinding blizzard of seemingly innocent legalistic paper.

I would prefer to overthrow this government by legal means of a free election. I am not so sure that we any longer have free elections in a practical sense. How is it any longer possible for common citizens to raise these issues and inform the electorate when there is so much corrupt corporate cash on the other side? Will Halliburton allow us to upset their billionaire club shell game? I think not.

I believe the time approaches when we must take up arms against a sea of troubles. When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune require us to inquire whether we will be or not be. When our lives of quiet desperation can no longer be quiet.

Mao famously said that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. All the guns are at present on the other side. We have blogs and posters. When is it right to arm ourselves? I’m not talking about buying a 9 mm. I do not mean for the pupose of personal security, because no amount of shotguns and pistols will protect us from the military might of this repressive government. What I mean is no less than this: at what point is it legitimate for Americans to seek the violent overthrow of their own elected government?

If they come and get me for writing this, how much longer will it be before they come for you? If they do not come for you, when are you no longer free, even if you do sit in your own home in front of your own television?

I am asking you what IS America?

Is America the First Amendment? Do we have Freedom of the Press if we are jailing journalists? Do we have freedom of assembly if you can’t attend a Quaker meeting without being observed by spies? Do we have freedom of religion if the government can put policemen in the examining rooms of gynecologists to keep them from recommending an abortion because of the religious beliefs of a minority that is temporarily in power?

Is America the Second Amendment? Is the freedom to have an armed militia free if all the militia are run by the government? Is it freedom to be armed when the arms you can buy cannot fight the repressive Department of Defense that is monitoring you?

Is America the Fourth Amendment? The right to be free of unreasonable search and siezure absent a judicial warrant is no freedom if they can listen to your cell calls, look in your computer without telling you and track your purchases through your credit cards.

Is America the Eighth Amendment? Sorry about that. We torture, so the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment is now out the window.

Is America the Sixth Amendment? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges. You no longer have the right to an attorney. We can take you to Gitmo and try you without recourse to the courts or representation.

Is America the Fourteenth Amendment? Not if you are Muslim. Your chance for equal treatment under the law is out the window.

Did they tell you in grade school that America would be the kind of country where SuzArt’s 81 year old mother is separated from her walker/cane and strip searched before being allowed on a plane?

When is enough just that: Enough?

What does your common sense tell you?