ƒcGlenn Greenwald notes that the Silent Patriot at Crooks & Liars points to the fact that the possible lawbreaking by the FBI concerning NSL's is rooted in the Signing Statements Bush penned when the Patriot Act was renewed in 2006.   So much for accountability from this criminal administration.   Will the Dems have the guts to force the issue...?   Story Developing...

Glenn Greenwald

The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush

Multiple media outlets are focusing on the unsurprising story that the FBI seems to have been abusing its powers under the Patriot Act to issue so-called "national security letters" (NSLs), whereby the FBI is empowered to obtain a whole array of privacy-infringing records without any sort of judicial oversight or subpoena process. In particular, the FBI has failed to comply with the legal obligations imposed by Congress, when it re-authorized the Patriot Act in early 2006, which required the FBI to report to Congress on the use of these letters.

That the FBI is abusing its NSL power is entirely unsurprising (more on that below), but the real story here -- and it is quite significant -- has not even been mentioned by any of these news reports. The only person (that I've seen) to have noted the most significant aspect of these revelations is Silent Patriot at Crooks & Liars, who very astutely recalls that the NSL reporting requirements imposed by Congress were precisely the provisions which President Bush expressly proclaimed he could ignore when he issued a "signing statement" as part of the enactment of the Patriot Act's renewal into law. Put another way, the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore.

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Tags ::  Politics • National Security Letters • Signing Statements • Unitary Executive • Bush