When a Republican president eavesdrops on America's enemies, liberals shout "civil liberties." When a Democratic congressman eavesdrops on political enemies, liberals shout "civil liberties"--civil liberties for the spy and not the spied on.
I had the displeasure of being forced to listen to this guy at a community college "forum" during the run up to the 04 election. It basically consisted of him talking for the better part of an hour and then taking a question. His arguments and positions were cut from the pages of the far left and easily refutable using basic critical thinking. The sad part is that he wins his district by huge margin, mainly because he represents an extremely liberal area of Seattle.
He's kind of like Ted Kennedy in the sense that as long as he talks and walks the extreme left mantra then he's golden. No amount of scandal or corruption could unseat him. The ruling that you alluded to wouldn't even be an issue to most of his constituency. It might even be a positive, ie….Republican/Conservatives getting what they deserve through any means necessary.
Heh heh, heh, heh......, ya Beavis, he said Boehner.
Actually, I think the court was wrong in ruling against him. It hearkens back to the flawed concept of a right to privacy - for which there is no basis in reality (and, less importantly, no basis in the constitution). No one needs privacy to have free speech. Whether or not there is a chilling effect is irrelevant - so long as the right of freedom of action (and, inherent in this right, the right of freedom of speech) is sanctified.
This is why Bush is not wrong in wiretapping Americans.
I support many laws that would increase the protection of citizen's privacy from the government, but I agree that there is no inherent right to have privacy.
Dan,
I think I partly agree with you. Gleaning your view from the very few references you have made to the eavesdropping "scandal," we agree that Bush has absolutely no "political" problem here. He immediately began boasting, as well he should *politically* speaking, of how blowing off the FISA law demonstrates his utter commitment to protecting Americans and reveals the Dems failure on this score. The Dems, or the left will get absolutely nowhere with this issue politically as it can be too easily spun as steps taken to, as you say, eavesdrop on "America's enemies." So your attack on Feingold's posturing on this score was dead on.
But . . . I don't care about the partisan politics of our ruling class, where they pretend that the other guy is the lawless one. Both parties are, and while Bush's violation of law to spy on people with an eye to national defense could never be a realistic cause of impeachment, surely it is an example of the general dismissal of law and lack of constitutional restraint by DC?
The issue w/ the NSA wiretapping, isn't the president eavesdropping on our enemies, that is allowed for under current law and protocol, let alone common sense. The problem is that the preferred method of Bush is such a general dragnet that it necessarily involves high numbers of cases where there is no probable cause at all to eavesdrop and so in all those cases they just ignore the law and don't request permission from a FISA court.
I don't think that it is so much that I care for "Civil Rights" as it is that I care about the rule of law. One need not be an anarcho-libertarian to prefer to live under a modest government that doesn't overreach either abroad or at home.
As ASDF points out in another thread oaths mean nothing to these people; their vows to uphold the constitution (and thus govern conservatively, with a sense of the inherent limits of politics) are utterly meaningless.
I am often reminded these days of Robert Bolt's dramatization of St. Thomas More's refusal to bend to the lawlessness of the tyrant Henry VIII. Bolt has More explain himself by saying: "When a man takes an oath he’s holding his own self in his hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then — he needn’t hope to find himself again."
Shame on both McDermott and Bush.
