Then we agree that the facts are against you. Thanks

That says the "D"s owned their policy, and the "R"s owned theirs.

The difference is that I'm honest enough to say that.

So your view is that honesty is a form of self abuse? Figures.

One other thing ... would you like me to start digging up the "started by a D continued by an R" programs? I can take a wild guess about your reaction to that too.

Like I said, you break it you bought it. I can take a wild guess which part your find embarassing.

That may be true, but for some reason the moderation doesn't seem to be even handed on that point.

That appears to be false. If you read the article and the Wikipedia entry it seems pretty clear that those are different streams of government effort with diferent goals (intelligence vs law enforcement), scope, and methodologies. Then there is this gem from the artilce linked in the summary:

As far as presidents "whose hands are clean," I think that depends on some points of clarification. The Church Committee was addressing actual abusive conduct or misuse of law enforcement or intelligence. What is abusive in one context or set of facts may be perfectly legitimate in another. As a practical matter, for intelligence agencies or law enforcement to be useful they have to have the ability to do things that would be abusive if misused. One of the difficulties comes in drawing the lines. The US has at times gotten it wrong at times by drawing poorly chosen lines. Signs of 9/11 were missed because of that.

And lets not forget there is a flip side to this:

The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.

That can't be true since everything has been Bush's fault well into the Obama administration. The Obama administration and its allies in the media keep reminding us of that.

If they approved, implemented, or reimplemented a policy they own it. Remember this part of the summary?

Do you have a reason why they aren't responsible?

Could you remind me again what party affiliation the two officials mentioned in the summary had?

There is an old rule in stores: you break it, you bought it.

In politics: you implment it, you own it.

The policy was owned by the Clinton administration when they approved it and either continued or reimplemented it.

I know people that have gone to court and beaten speeding tickets. In some cases it was due to the state's witness not appearing (the police officer), in others is was having better evidence.

What that tells me is that persuasive evidence has to be presented in court to obtain a conviction. It may not always work out that way, but on average that is the way to bet. And that's before you get to cases where there is an affirmative defense.

I don't think your facts showed up.

Janet Reno and Eric Holder authorized mass surveillance of Americans? That's going to sting for some people, it's a little hard to blame that one on George W. Bush.

Yes it's Constitution Thursday and time to blame Bill Clinton's administration for stepping on the rights of the American people for a newly revealed outrage touching all Americans during peacetime.

Remember Elian!

Australia has a different body of law which provides different rights and obligations, a different court system, and different precedents. What might have failed in the US court system may succeed in Australia's court system. That is neither right or wrong, but it does mean that similar facts can result in different outcomes in different locales. Different political entities often reflect different values and priorities in their laws. The US has the 1st and 2nd Amendments to its Constitution which provides greater protections in those areas than most countries. On the other hand Europe has stronger data protection laws tied to the individual's rights. Australia has many fine points of its own.

Downloading pictures of naked children would be a really bad idea for testing that theory. I strongly advise against it.

That's funny since I probably link to the Guardian more than I do Fox News.

Al Qaida, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, North Korea, Iran, ... others.

At a minimum they received copies of all published documents informing them of highly secret intelligence techniques, capabilities, programs, and strategies of the US and its allies. From this they can device counter measures or use it as a blueprint to devise capabilities of their own as Russia has done.

It is also likely that the highly capable intelligence services of various nations (such as Russian and China) were able to obtain the entire trove of stolen and leaked documents.