The ACLU Still Beating A Dead Horse On NSA Legislation
Posted on September 13, 2006
Today the mental midget who is the Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, Caroline Fredrickson, issued a news release expressing the ACLU’s condemnation of Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval for the bills dealing with the NSA’s surveillance program.
“Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee acted as a rubber stamp for the administration’s abuse of power.”
She goes on to say,
“Congress has a right and obligation to conduct meaningful oversight on the unlawful actions of the president. But instead of investigating lawbreaking, the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to make it legal. We urge the full Senate to reject any attempts to ratify this illegal program.”
What makes this illegal? Because they say so?
First off, the idea that this is wiretapping is ignorance. The NSA program is a data mining program. They are capturing electronic signals being transmitted from inside the United States to foreign lands or from foreign soil to the United States.
Next, the data being collected is that of who is being called, the length of the call, which other numbers that party is calling and so forth. This is called data mining. It is nothing more than what is being done each and every time you search for an item over then internet. Information is being collected which is then used to send you offers via email.
So what’s the ACLU’s beef? They are against the war on terrorism. To them, the 2,996 lives lost on September 11, 2001 mean nothing. They have obstructed and denounced every effort this government has taken in order to secure the people of this nation from additional attacks.
They opposed random searches of the New York Subways. They opposed the renewal of the Patriot Act. They opposed the detention of foreign terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. They claim the detainees are being abused if they aren’t given their nightly ice cream bars.
Like most Americans, I don’t give a flying fig about terrorists’ human rights. They think nothing of killing their own women and children if there is a possibility of killing just one American. They have been known to behead Americans working to restore infrastructure and amenities to the people of Iraq. So, as far as I’m concerned, if Ahmed doesn’t get his Eskimo Pie tonight I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
What they also fail to realize is that the NSA is a military intelligence operation. That the information that they gather is used to prosecute the war on global terrorism and to secure the people of the United States. We don’t intend on prosecuting these people. We intend on killing them. That’s what you do in war.
Using their own rules of engagement, why should we give any terrorist quarter? Information that’s why. And our Military Intelligence officers know how to extract that info without causing bodily harm.
The problem with the ACLU is that they think too much like lawyers instead of soldiers. A soldier doesn’t go seeking a warrant to intercept radio communications of the enemy. That goes also for phone communications as well.
So Caroline Fredrickson as far as I am concerned is a prime candidate for a frontal lobotomy. Perhaps it will cure her of her need to tilt at windmills.
Two other proposals were voted out to the floor today as well. One actually proposes actually requiring the administration to wait until a terrorist attack to open an electronic surveillance program. Of course the ACLU supports the proposal that would be the most cumbersome in listening to our enemies proposed by Ms. Dianne Feinstein.
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9 Responses to “The ACLU Still Beating A Dead Horse On NSA Legislation”
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You can beat a dead horse but it aint over till the fat lady sings.
Wait…wait. Maybe thats…
You can beat a dead horse in the water but then you won’t be able to make it drink.
No….wait.
You can lead a fat lady to the water but you can’t make a horse sing.
Oh forget it!
I don’t either, but how do you determine if someone is a terrorist? Who makes the determination, any Joe Schmoe in the Executive branch? That seems like it would be very vulnerable to abuse.
I’m no lawyer, so it’s certainly not my place to say whether this program is legit, but I do applaud any one willing to stand up and ask “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
What does this have to do with dead horses or fat ladies?
Seems to me, if a guy, in Afghanistan is shooting our guys, dressed as a civilian, I’d say he’s either Taliban or al Qaeda in which case he’s a terrorist.
Jeff Molby,
“I’m no lawyer, so it’s certainly not my place to say whether this program is legit,”
You are incorrect as we live in a republic that is the rule of the people by the people and for the people. Do not give lawyers, judges or anyone else the power of an aristocracy. They are our employees and we need to hold them responsible.
If you can not understand the law then it is a bad law as far as you are concerned. Americans need to stand up for their power to be the boss or they will loose it as they are loosing it and have lost it.
I’m sure no one would dispute with your interpretation of that scenario, but they aren’t all going to be that easy.
What if he was unarmed when he was apprehended? What if no soldiers could honestly say that the suspect was involved in the fire-fight?
When the situation is not cut and dried, you need to have someone responsible for weighing the evidence and rendering a verdict. As a key part of the separation of powers, this responsibility has always gone to the judicial branch. (Exception: I’m not sure whether Military Tribunals and Courts Martial are considered Executive or Judicial.) If you don’t allow the captives some sort of hearing, you’re handing that power to the Executive branch. Seems very dangerous to me.
Yeah, as soon as I wrote that, I realized I would probably get a response such as yours. Allow me to clarify.
I do have every right (you could even say I have an obligation to) to form and voice an opinion on this issue. But this is an extremely complicated issue involving numerous laws and a slew of legal precendents interpreting those laws. Honest, well-trained men will spend months hashing this out before our highest courts and even they won’t know the outcome until it’s all said and done. I could form and voice an opinion on this issue, but it would be based solely on intuition. I would have to spend all week reading legal books to form an educated opinion, but even that would be only marginally more useful that what the talking heads will spew.
In this particular case, there is a well-funded organization lobbying for the side that I feel is right, so I’ll just sit back and watch the fight.
I agree with your sentiment, but I don’t think it’s quite that simple. You have three options when writing a law. You can make it very specific, very vague, or somewhere in between.
If you made them all very specific, every situation would be spelled out and it would be very easy for a layman to understand. But we’d probably run out of trees and half of our workforce would probably be working for congress. And they’d still probably forget things.
So the only realistic option is to use laws that are less specific to some degree. But now they’re open to interpretation. Especially when several completely different laws are applicable.
So, I don’t think we could ever reach the ideal that you advocate, I do think our code of laws should be simplified so as to give us laymen a fighting chance.
Jeff Molby,
It is not that hard to correctly interpret the law as the legislators wrote it. All you need are the U.S. Constitution and the FISA Law and to determine what the original intent. Bush is not in violation of the U.S. Constitution as it only covers citizens and is establish among other things to secure the common defense but he is in violation of the FISA law because it requires the executive branch to get a warrant. Lawyers just like to make things complicated so they can make more money. Judges are just lawyers who also play politics. They need to be held accountable by the people despite all their mysticism and mumbo jumbo.
Bush did bring in another law which he said had precedent over the FISA law. It is plausible but it really depends on what the legislators were trying to accomplish in passing the law and not on what Bush or any judge wants it to mean. I do not have enough knowledge of the law Bush mentioned to make a judgment one way or another.
This is an add on to the above post. Most laws are not open to interpretation quite as much once you know the history behind them. The problem is that judges are just like other politicians and self interest is a very big motivator. If the people kept them more accountable to the law then I would feel less uneasy with their rulings.