Breaking the Law
The Bush administration at work – ignoring the law and acting as if it has unique authority to do whatever it wants, regardless of Congress and the Supreme Court, as reported today by The Washington Post:
1. Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government must reexamine every five years whether its ozone standards are adequate. The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee supported the EPA staff's conclusion that lowering allowable levels is needed to comply with the Act and its prior commitments to the Supreme Court. The Agency administrator, however, decided to lower the level but to a lesser degree than what the scientists recommended. Even this weakened response was not acceptable to the White House, which insisted that EPA raise the level further thereby forcing the Agency to disregard the law that regulates its actions.
2. The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations.
Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval. In 2006, 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.
According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights," the report said.
But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court's conclusions.
1. Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government must reexamine every five years whether its ozone standards are adequate. The EPA's Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee supported the EPA staff's conclusion that lowering allowable levels is needed to comply with the Act and its prior commitments to the Supreme Court. The Agency administrator, however, decided to lower the level but to a lesser degree than what the scientists recommended. Even this weakened response was not acceptable to the White House, which insisted that EPA raise the level further thereby forcing the Agency to disregard the law that regulates its actions.
2. The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations.
Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval. In 2006, 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.
According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded "the 'facts' were too thin" and the "request implicated the target's First Amendment rights," the report said.
But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI's general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court's conclusions.
posted by John Weiss at 1:01 PM
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