But no - that's one of the strange twists here.

If the legality of the wiretap was not put under judicial review a priori, it would *definitely* be put to judicial review in a criminal case. Since the methods of the wiretap couldn't be evaluated, that evidence would be thrown out before the end of the discovery phase.

Anything would have to be a non-ordinary "enemy combatant" type of war court, not your basic criminal court.

But can they use the things they hear in the wiretap be used to get a search warrant to gather "hard" evidence? :confused:

Not if the judge finds out they did.

Today's WaPo

Get a dog.

Just now a talking head on cable news said that the NSA's persistent cookies let them track "wherever you go on the Internet".

Boo!

You know, nobody went into a libertarian panic while I was working on libertarian issues.

(The persistent cookies story is a non-issue, a red herring, even the cookies of the NSA are NOT harmful in any way.)

Actually, the court has given more leeway to 'tainted' evidence. Alito is rumored to be very pro-law enforcement. I don't think anyone could count on a definitive 'no' on the use of that kind of evidence.

The court has said you can use evidence gathered without a proper warrant, or obtained illegally (I think), if you were going to get that evidence legally some other way. Can you think of any other leeway decisions?

Or by 'purged taint', if your actions give similar information.

From here.

So if the police or IRS are given tainted evidence, it may still be admissible since the prosecuting agency did not engage in the warrentless seizure.

You weren't 'lucky' enough to have this administration in office.

But man, you really gave up on the whole libertarian idea, not just the infighting in the party, huh?

Within the LP, there was more cause for libertarian panic in the previous administration. See UG. The opposition can almost always paint the party in power as anti-libertarian, because they're the ones making decisions and practically every political decision can be seen as anti-libertarian.

Infighting within the party proves that politics is inevitable even amongst the supposedly "principled", which in turn proved to me that "principle" is not the operating consideration that even LPers think it is.

I used a small 'l'. I don't know what the big 'L' Libertarian's priorities are, but Clinton was Ayn Rand compared to Bush.

Y'know, though, that's how it *always* looks from the opposite school of thought.

From the left Clinton is fixing the health care system.
From the right Clinton is stealing the health care system.
From the left Bush is stealing the social security system.
From the right Bush is fixing the social security system.

I remember how the Ls (and ls) thought about Clinton when his first two big steps were raising taxes and going after medicine. The sky was falling! We were running towards socialism! Failure imminent!

But it wasn't.

So you decided since the "principle" was not the primary consideration of the LPers it wouldn't be yours either? :confused:

Politics trumps principle in the public square where action counts louder than words.

No, HM, Clinton wasn't remotely a libertarian of any stripe: his political instincts were formed in an essentially one-party State, which isn't going to make a libertarian. Even worse, the only thing Clinton ever cared about was the convenience of Clinton -- a bad habit in a President. This is how you can explain both his Administration's approach to foreign policy and to domestic policy: what conveniences the Clintons? Just the most conspicuous proof of this is in the behavior of the senior echelon of the DoJ during the Clinton era -- they largely confined themselves to running interference for the one-party-state operations of the Clintons.

Over and above the objections of those who think they have solid grounds to object on, I overtly assess George W. Bush as substantially more libertarian (small L) than his too-statist predecessor. Because of this contrast, as well as the incompetence of the national Democratic Party in general, his predecessor never got my vote, while GWB did, and repeatedly. The Republicans are just more satisfactory in time of war, and it's been that way since the late Sixties.

I haven't seen this aired, but is not what the Bush Administration trying to do is function under war powers? This would be simpler had a formal state of war been declared, true, but does it not behoove us to all actually prosecute the war on Terror? I think it does, yet there are those who would confine their efforts to fighting a war on Republicans instead. WTF, you guys?! Do you have even the smallest hope of explaining and justifying that to a skeptic like me? Lame, half-thought reasons might be enough to satisfy your fellow travelers, but how about the people who regard your behavior with stony expressions?