adam.oliner.net

There you have it, folks: Bush authorized the NSA to conduct domestic spying. He ordered them to spy on you, for your own good. He says he will continue to do so as long as he is President. That’s not all, however, because he also accuses the press of endangering national security by reporting on this debacle after news of it leaked to people at the Times. It’s not illegal, he asserts, despite the fact that numerous NSA officials refused to participate because of… wait for it… legality concerns. Perhaps most intriguing of all is the President’s curious statement, “I’m also using constitutional authority vested in me as Commander-in-Chief.” Not as President; as Commander-in-Chief. Was martial law declared without our knowledge? All of this was done, so the President says, “to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life.”

Instead of consulting your internal moral compass and asking whether, legality aside, Mr. Bush is behaving ethically, let’s instead discuss his claims from a logical perspective and see if we can’t find a disturbing rational hole through which one could pass the entirety of the Universe. I think we can all agree that the Founding Fathers would have considered governmental phonetaps without court approval to be in violation of the spirit of the Fourth Amendment. Even though the Founders never established a Right to Privacy, making a phone call to a friend is a situation in which a reasonable American would have an expectation of privacy. Again, however, let’s not focus on legality. Let’s not focus on the President’s mistaken impression that his oath was about protecting the American people rather than defending and upholding the Constitution. Those are all interesting topics, but, instead, let’s talk about who is endangering “our freedom” and “our way of life.”

Our American way of life includes being about to read any books we want, without wondering if Homeland Security is going to come knocking. Our American way of life includes the right to not be

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 18th, 2005 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.