Whistleblower exposed NSA wiretapping because ‘this is crazy’

Well here’s a new slant on the illegal wiretapping done by the Bush Administration of “terrorists” -U.S. citizens talking to people in the US. This wiretapping is not just over the air talking like wireless telephone, CB radio or such as you’ll see in the interview below. Don’t forget about the 4th amendment:The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,…..
As you read this don’t forget that the president ordered this wiretapping first in February of 2001 ….long before 9/11

Former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm says “we learn that the only way for us to be safe is that the Government breaks the law?”

The Supreme Court held in Katz v. United States (1967), that the monitoring and recording of private conversations within the United States constitutes a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes, and therefore the government must generally obtain a warrant before undertaking such domestic wiretapping……

The whistleblower who exposed the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program three years ago told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday that he was motivated by a sense that “this is crazy.”

Former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm had remained anonymous until he spoke to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff for an article last week. His appearance with Maddow was his first television interview.

Appearing clearly unaccustomed to public speaking, Tamm emotionally explained, “My entire life, really, was based on trying to enforce the law … and I believed that the law was being broken in the place where I was working.“

Tamm noted that he was not the only one in his office at the Justice Department who was aware of the wiretapping program, but he was the only one who stopped and said, “Wait a second. We assume that what they are doing is illegal? I don’t understand that. Why are we part of that?”

“I just stepped back and said, ‘This is crazy,’” Tamm told Maddow. “This is not what the Department of Justice is all about. This is not what the Constitution is about.”

Tamm would now like to see serious consideration of prosecutions for these crimes. “It offends me that we feel we’re not strong enough as a country, that our laws are not strong enough, that our Congress is not strong enough, that our courts are not strong enough to protect us,” he stated. “And I personally — I’m a prosecutor … I think it should be looked at very seriously.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Dec. 15, 2008.

more about “The Raw Story | Whistleblower exposed…“, posted with vodpod

You can read the article at The Raw Story.com

While I am at it here’s another interview of Mark Klein a former ATT employee on Washington Journal on CSPAN…listen closely to what he says :

Russia Needs Help because Oil Falls

What a headline!  It reminds me also that the Middle East will be next in line to ask for a bail out because they can’t pay the light bill on those big hotels and developments.  I bet they can’t even pay to create snow in those man made ski slopes in the desert.  China was booming because of oil too (aside from the prop up from Wally World), so I guess they’ll be lobbying our congress for money too.

This article hit the AP and Yahoo today:

MOSCOW (AP) – Russia would come under crippling financial pressure and may need to raise money externally if oil languishes at an average of $30 a barrel over the next two years, the World Bank predicted Friday. The bleak scenario would mark a rapid unraveling of Russia’s oil-fueled economic gains over the past eight years, during which time the government has paid down most of its foreign debt and built up a vast stockpile of international reserves.

“If oil prices in 2009 and 2010 average $30 a barrel, that would be a nightmare scenario for a global economy,” Zeljko Bogetic, the World Bank’s chief economist in Russia told investors on Friday. “The pressures on the current account and public finances in Russia would quickly rise to a point where the financing constraint would become so sharp that it’s possible even to envisage Russia’s return from a creditor to international organisations to (that of) a borrower.”

At $50 a barrel, Russia could drain much of its reserve funds and run budgetary deficits, but would not face a “meltdown” scenario, said Bogetic.

Oil prices took a sharp turn downward this week, with the February light sweet crude contract trading just over $42 a barrel—more than $100 lower than its July peak—despite a large output cut pledged this week by oil producers’ cartel OPEC.

Some major oil-importing countries have criticized OPEC’s move to push up prices during a global slowdown.

The World Bank currently forecasts an average oil price of $75 a barrel over the next two years, said Bogetic.

Among emerging markets, Russia has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial crisis and plunging oil prices, the mainstay of the Russian economy. These factors have put the national currency under intense strain and triggered massive stock market losses and capital outflows from the country.

Russia, which grew at over 8 percent last year, is facing a severe slowdown in growth, and possibly even recession next year, analysts say. Torrid figures released earlier this week showed that industrial output had plunged 10.8 percent in November from the previous month, signaling a dramatic slowdown in the final quarter.

“Clearly we are in the middle of a major growth recession in Russia,” said Bogetic. “I would call it a growth recession, not an output recession—yet.”

He said the World Bank had tweaked its earlier projection of 3 percent growth next year to between 2-3 percent.

So, let me guess, since we’re not using so much of their darned old oil, they can’t build up a massive military to taunt us with?  They can’t back up their threats to shoot at us trying to protect our interests?  They can’t build up their excessive empires because we’re not stuffing money in their pockets with oil money?  Ha, ha, ha, sounds fine to me. 

Steve

 

Raise Your Hand If You Thought They Cared!

Here’s the latest slap to your face if you’ve been keeping up.  Not only do the imbeciles in the hallowed halls of Congress build themselves a memorial visitors center at a huge cost to taxpayers (who have stinky armpits according to Harry Reid), they now think they’re exhaustive work of handing out billions of your grandkids future garners them a hefty pay raise.  When will this country get enough?  They’re ignoring the Constitution every day with violations of a natural born president, posse comitatus, federal reserve…and I could go on.  PLEASE PEOPLE, read the Declaration of Independence!  WAKE UP.  The following article is from TheHill.com:

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise 
By Jordy Yager 
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET] 
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”

However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.

Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.

“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”

Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.

Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.

In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.

In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.

Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.

Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.

“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”