Well this is just dandy; but why didn't Fitzgerald or the DOJ do this years ago when the emails were first discovered missing?

Posted at March 18, 2008 4:47 PM in response to Judge Presses White House on Emails

Tester @7:26 pm - As to your first "issue", I, for one, would not believe anything Bush says. He is not very well informed on the details of things and rarely really understands what he is babbling about. Tack onto that the known propensity of Bush for dishonesty and outright lying. I am at a loss as to why you think the "President's open denial" means diddly squat. Now, I don' buy it, but the Bush position at the time was that they had the legal power pursuant to their Article II powers in conjunction with the AUMF. If given written promises and certifications, which they almost certainly were, I don't believe that it would have been patently unreasonable for a telco to rely on that. I would not have, but I understand how many could.

As to your second issue, Sen Jello Jay Rockefeller, Paul W @7:46 with this "I think that's a misreading of the passage in Rockefeller's essay. He's pretty clearly talking about the decision not to try to pass a law indemnifying the telecom companies, which says nothing about whether the executive branch already gave the telecoms an indemnification agreement on its own." and yesiwantthefrieswiththat @ with this "Rockefeller's editorial on October 31, 2007, does not say that indemnity was never granted by Bush. It says that indemnity is not part of the current FISA changes being disucussed by the Senate." give you the answer. By the way, Rockefeller would love to have all this shut down by immunity, because the more the truth comes out, the worse he looks.

As to your third issue, I will give you the same warning I have given everybody else that thinks the Qwest part of this is a grand explanation of anything. It may be, or it may not be; we don't have anywhere close to enough information to make any determination. In fact, we don't even know with any certainty that Qwest's non-participation was due to a legal objection. That view is based upon language in a pleading in the criminal case against Joe Nacchio who was prosecuted and convicted for financial fraud at Qwest. There have been rumors that the real reason that Qwest was the holdout was that Nacchio was trying to cut a more profitable deal so that he could use the proceeds to cover the financial irregularities at Qwest. I don't know if that is true or not, but it is at least plausible. Many explanations of the Qwest part are plausible; and we have no idea what the true story is at this time.

Now, I don't know for sure that my indemnification theory is correct. I think that it is quite likely that it is, but the only way to really know is to ask the questions and get the answers. n That is all I ask, that people understand the argument and it's ramifications and demand answers before granting immunity and shutting down the lawsuits that are our best path to discovery of what has been done in our name.

Posted at March 4, 2008 11:05 PM in response to The Telecoms and The Big, Bad Lawsuits