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U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#51

Post by theflyingkiwi42 »

tptacek wrote: post #30
mpyne wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's allowable. In fact I thought last decade some reporter went to prison for years for "contempt of court" for refusing to comply with a valid subpoena (but I forget the name).

Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to out Bush administration sources who outed Valerie Plame's status as a covert operative as political retribution.

Lewis Libby did not out Valerie Plame's status. It was reporter Robert Novak who did. It was also never 'leaked' as political retribution.

"In late August 2006, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage revealed publicly that Novak had based his disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's CIA identity on then still-classified information that Armitage initially gave him while Armitage was still serving in the State Department." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_timeline

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#52

Post by gyardley »

rayiner wrote: post #47
gyardley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're not talking about something like your ability to smoke weed here - the right to bear arms is a constitutional one. You might as well ask 'why do people love states rights except when it comes to free speech?' Same thing in my book.

Fun fact: none of the Bill of Rights originally applied to the states. In 1795, Illinois, California, and New York could have banned all guns totally Constitutionally. It wasn't until the 1900's that the Bill of Rights was interpreted to apply to the states via the 14th amendment.

Hell, I'm not sure the Second Amendment was fully incorporated against the states until McDonald v. Chicago in 2010.

Doesn't matter a bit to me, though - it's incorporated now.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#53

Post by speeder »

I am from Brazil, and I must ask:

Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom, when US ignores its own constitution, takes away freedom from its citizens, and most important to me, takes away freedom from citizens of other countries while claiming to do the exact opposite?

I am from Brazil, and many people here remember the US backed (and enforced sometimes) rightwing government that we had during the cold war.

Many people remember their loved ones that will never come back from our prisons, or from CIA hands.

Many people in many countries, why the US come to "save" them, and instead put in power people like Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Castelo Branco, Augusto Pinochet, Mohammad Pahlavi, and many, many, many others.

US only care about its corporations, it only fights to defend its profits, it is clear when it kicked João Goulart out of Brazil for supporting agrarian reform and other left-leaning policies, when it helped rebels kill both Lybia and Iraq leaders after they stopped selling oil for USD, when it "saved" Afghanistan from URSS by training Osama Bin Laden...

I think it is a outrage that people around the world only started to remember 11 of september after the Trade Center was attacked, not after US bombed Chile (9/11/1973) and forcefully kicked out a elected president to "save" chileans and give them "democracy" in the form of a oppressive dictator friendly to US business.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#54

Post by hga »

rayiner wrote: post #47
gyardley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're not talking about something like your ability to smoke weed here - the right to bear arms is a constitutional one. You might as well ask 'why do people love states rights except when it comes to free speech?' Same thing in my book.

Fun fact: none of the Bill of Rights originally applied to the states. In 1795, Illinois, California, and New York could have banned all guns totally Constitutionally. It wasn't until the 1900's that the Bill of Rights was interpreted to apply to the states via the 14th amendment.

2nd Amendment jurisprudence way back when didn't think that.

Among other things, how could the states be allowed to prevent the Congress from calling up the militia, one of the latter's enumerated powers?

You're also skipping the step in 14th Amendment jurisprudence where it was explicitly passed to protect freedmen from things like stripping them of the RKBA, and it was judicially nullified in 5 years. That the Supremes started taking it seriously decades later is not a bad thing, at least if you care about the rule of law. That they took 140 years to apply it to the 2nd Amendment has more than a little to do with today's lack of respect for a Federal government which all too often holds itself as being above the law.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#55

Post by jbuzbee »

salimmadjd wrote: post #10

This is so strange! When was a last time AP released anything that wasn't more than government PR. On many important issues like lead up to Iraq war and now to a potential Iran war, AP has just reported what's been expected of them. My thought is the wiretap was set to catch potential whistleblowers than to do anything with reporters or AP itself.

Give me a break - I'll assume you're just woefully uninformed. For example:

http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#56

Post by hga »

gyardley wrote: post #52
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: none of the Bill of Rights originally applied to the states. In 1795, Illinois, California, and New York could have banned all guns totally Constitutionally. It wasn't until the 1900's that the Bill of Rights was interpreted to apply to the states via the 14th amendment.

Hell, I'm not sure the Second Amendment was fully incorporated against the states until McDonald v. Chicago in 2010. Doesn't matter a bit to me, though - it's incorporated now.

It wasn't.

Although it remains to be seen if this means much of anything, the changes on the ground to date are minimal to nothing. They recently denied cert in an appeal of NY's capricious concealed carry laws, and have given Illinois extra time to appeal an opposite direction decision against it. Keep and bear arms, after all.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#57

Post by angersock »

speeder wrote: post #53

I am from Brazil, and I must ask: Why the US citizens and government propaganda insists that US is about freedom, when US ignores its own constitution, takes away freedom from its citizens, and most important to me, takes away freedom from citizens of other countries while claiming to do the exact opposite? I am from Brazil, and many people here remember the US backed (and enforced sometimes) rightwing government tha…

Now, you can hardly judge a country on one or two acts of unrelated political activism abroad... :P

More seriously, it's complex--painting it in the simplest broad strokes of "The US only cares about corporations" is unfair. The US is not the US; it's a combination of local, state, and federal governments and bureaucracies.

There's almost certainly near no magical evil council sitting atop it all scheming about how to wring profits from other countries at any cost; instead, we have the misguided actions and interactions of generally well-meaning people that are so segregated from the big picture and scared of losing their jobs that they make mistakes which snowball.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#58

Post by angersock »

MartinCron wrote: post #29
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #22

So inside of just a few days, we have political opposition groups targeted for audits -- including questions about donors and volunteers -- and surveillance of the press. The easier we make it for some analyst in FBI headquarters to determine everywhere a potential terrorist cell has been, the easier we make it for some other analyst to conduct political spying and harassment like the world has never seen before. You…

we have political opposition groups targeted for audits That could be extremely ugly politics, or it may not be. Paying special attention to tax status compliance of anti-tax activists might just be a pragmatic profiling. Kind of like giving extra attention to young men flying alone on one way tickets while checking no luggage.

"Kind of like giving extra attention to young men flying alone on one way tickets while checking no luggage."

That's the only way I travel right now. Pragmatic or not, that's bullshit.

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#59

Post by TomatoTomato »

rayiner wrote: post #47
gyardley wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we're not talking about something like your ability to smoke weed here - the right to bear arms is a constitutional one. You might as well ask 'why do people love states rights except when it comes to free speech?' Same thing in my book.

Fun fact: none of the Bill of Rights originally applied to the states. In 1795, Illinois, California, and New York could have banned all guns totally Constitutionally. It wasn't until the 1900's that the Bill of Rights was interpreted to apply to the states via the 14th amendment.

More specifically, Gitlow v. New York, 1925. Before then, the Supreme Court ruled in Barron v. Baltimore, that the Constitution's Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government [1] and had only recently looked at the 5th amendment w.r.t. the 14th.

Fun factoid #2, most states had (varying degrees of) "official" religions. This 14th amendment ruling also ended state support of religion in the few states that hadn't changed their constitutions by that time.

Fun factoid #3: This ruling happend about a month before the Scopes trial [2]. Interesting time the 1920s.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitlow_v._New_York

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial

Re: U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

#60

Post by eli »

hga wrote: post #43
vacri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swiss ownership of guns is nothing like US ownership. 'guns per capita' doesn't illuminate anything about the significant cultural differences.

Errrm, isn't it the case that the default is that a Swiss citizen can own guns? Which is the default for 2/3rds of the US population, and includes permanent resident aliens. I know there are significant cultural differences, but when you come down to it, does the government trust the people or not? This is the touchstone for that question.

Sorta. It's more like a significant portion of the population is required to be in the army reserves.
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