January 2006 Archives
ExxonMobile announced profits for the fourth quarter 2005 of $10.71 billion, that a makes a $36.13 billion profit for the year. But your gas should still cost $3 per gallon.
A coal mine in Pennsylvania has been on fire since 1962 with no end in site. In the ’80s the government bought the town and shut it down because the fire will burn for possibly another hundred years before it gets through all the coal in the mine.
The chocolate fountainhead really does deserve some explanation, but frankly I don’t think I can do the story its due justice. Suffice it to say that if you were the lucky recipient of a chocolate fountain this year, I have one word for you: re-gift.
Try to imagine for a second a better place to spend your New Year’s Eve than Waco, Texas. Done? Okay, I’m sure you came up with at least 25 locales, one of which may even have been Bagdhad before “Mission Accomplished”. But you didn’t take into account a malfunctioning chocolate fountain, did you? How about finding this great James Joyce quote on the bookshelf of your best friend: “When you wet the bed first it is warm but then it gets cold.”? I didn’t think so.
Did I mention the complete lack of a television, which meant the totally devastating lack of a Carson Daly Rockin’ New Years Eve spectacular?
The best part was Julie getting the buzzer every turn at Catchphrase, which saved me from ever getting buzzed — she’s a good sport like that. Well, okay, that wasn’t the best part that is still the chocolate fountain debacle.
My friend Bob Fancher is a good sport and always up for a healthy, heated political discussion (I don’t like to call them debates). While I was home for Christmas and New Years I visited the Fanchers and brought up the issue of Snoopgate. Not surprisingly I expressed my disgust with the program, particularly the prospect that the NSA or other Executive Agencies would use the program to spy on Americans domestically.
My ultimate argument was that it was illegal for the president to order such a program because it violated constitutional prohibitions on searches without due process (universally agreed in America to be mean a court ordered search warrant). I further argued that the program was unnecessary because a special FISC (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court) court exists specifically to provide warrants for secret surveillance of foreign agents/nationals inside the United States.
He counter by arguing that the president essentially changed the law when he issued the Executive Order authorizing the program. He claimed that that Executive Order superseded constitutional protects against illegal searches. Essentially he gave the president unlimited power to do whatever he wanted by executive order. In my ignorance I failed to note that the executive order is not provided for by the United States Constitution. According to Wikipedia:
Presidents of the United States have issued executive orders since 1789. There is no United States Constitution provision or statute that explicitly permits this, aside from the vague grant of “executive power” given in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution and the statement “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” in Article II, Section 3.
Executive orders do not have legal force by themselves. Most are simply orders issued by the President to United States executive officers to help direct their operation, the result of failing to comply being removal from office. Some orders do have the force of law when made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress due to those acts giving the President discretionary powers.
I did correctly claim that no executive order has the power to override explicit provisions of the constitution. The only legal means for this would be an amendment.
As for the FISC court, well, according to Bob the court is incredibly slow and, in line with official arguments, these warrants sometimes need to be issued within seconds. A slow-moving, deliberative body like a court cannot be expected to move that quickly. Well, it’s a good thing you can request a surveillance warrant post facto. It also only takes a single judge to approve a request. In the entire history of the court, only four requests have been denied out of over 18,000 submitted. That seems pretty efficient to me.
