Protecting Civil Liberties Through Eavesdropping?
by Brian Fahling in Agape Press
President Bush's recent disclosure that he authorized the National Security Agency (NSA), the secret electronic and satellite spy agency, to intercept communications by people living in the United States who are suspected of terrorist activities or of having terrorist ties, has Democrats and some Republicans crying foul.
{This doesn't bother me like it does other people. They are not monitoring everyone in the United States. They are monitoring our ENEMIES. Any American who supports a nation we are at war with is a TRAITOR who has committed TREASON. I have no problem with them being spied upon~~just as they are acting as spies against their own nation and people.}
Mr. Bush authorized the eavesdropping even though warrants can be obtained through a secret federal court, created in 1978, for domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens or foreigners suspected of terrorist activities. Mr. Bush, however, argues that his actions in bypassing the secret court are lawful and necessary to prevent potential terrorist attacks. A recent Wall Street Journal article points out, though, that the secret court last year rejected no warrants and granted them at the rate of almost five a day.
And since objections to the president's actions are coming from both sides of the ideological divide, the concerns cannot be dismissed as mere partisan bickering. There is a threat to our civil liberties, they say, when the Executive branch lays claim to so expansive a power.
They are right.
But conceding the point does not decide the question of whether Mr. Bush has abused his authority as Commander in Chief in a time of war and grave danger to our nation. A president's highest duty is to secure and protect the people and the nation he serves. Civil liberties would be passé in a nation brought to its knees by nuclear or biological terror.
The Framers, as one writer has noted, understood that the executive power was to be divided into two spheres: normal constitutional conduct, inhabited by law and universal rules; and a realm where universal rules are inadequate to meet the particular emergency situation and where fixed principles of law must be replaced by discretion and politics.
Mr. Bush's actions in defense of this nation, it can be argued, are well within this American constitutional theory of emergency power.
I think it fair to assume that those members of Congress who find fault in Mr. Bush's actions would hold a different view if they believed another 9/11, or worse, was imminent; they would not sacrifice thousands or millions of American lives on the altar of civil liberties.
I think the threat is imminent and potentially catastrophic, which causes me to regard the civil liberties of people who are suspected of terrorist activities to be a less-than-pressing concern.
...Mr. Bush is willing to risk his legacy and his party on false claims and his own desire to expand the power of his office {I don't think any President would risk that}; I am quite unwilling, however, to gamble the security of this nation and the lives of my wife and children on that supposition.{The question to ask is, are you willing to risk your family's lives?} We cannot afford to be wrong.
I allow, too, for the possibility that I am wrong...
Mr. Bush is keeping faith with the American people by doing what is necessary to protect us in dire times. I hope members of Congress will support him in his efforts. If they do not, and we are struck again, our blood will be on their hands.
Then our civil liberties will not be in danger.
They will be gone.
A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.
Thomas Jefferson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Traitor--one who has committed treason
Treason--1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More from: National Review
Probable cause
by Andrew C. McCarthy
Al Qaeda is an international terrorist network. We cannot defeat it by conquering territory. It has none. We cannot round up its citizens. Its allegiance is to an ideology that makes nationality irrelevant. To defeat it and defend ourselves, we can only acquire intelligence — intercept its communications and thwart its plans. Nothing else will do.
The president is not above the law, but neither is any other branch. The highest law in the United States is the Constitution.
From the hysteria that abounds, one would think that if FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) was not merely ignored but repealed, we would be living in a dictatorship, with All the President's Men snooping into every phone call, every library, and every bedroom. It is nonsense. Congress retains the power of the purse. Nothing prevents it, tomorrow, from passing a law that denies all funding for any domestic surveillance undertaken by the NSA or any other executive branch agency.
The president could do nothing but veto such a bill. But if, as leading Democrats and civil-liberties extremists maintain, the NSA program is truly one of the most outrageous, execrable, impeachable acts ever committed in recorded history, that veto would easily be overridden.
So why doesn't Congress just do it. Why doesn't it, literally, put its money where many of its mouths are? Why don't the people's representatives bring to heel this renegade, above-the-law president and his blank check? Because they'd lose, decisively and embarrassingly, that's why.
Because they'd have to take an accountable position on life-and-death. Because such a vote, in the middle of a war in which millions of American lives are at stake, would say, unambiguously, that they actually believe the government should not monitor enemy communications unless a federal judge — someone no one voted for and voters cannot remove — decides in his infinite wisdom that there is probable cause. It's so much easier to carp for a scandal-happy media about "the privacy rights of ordinary Americans," as if that were really the issue.
But the sound and fury signify nothing to those ordinary Americans (We the People). Two wartime Novembers ago, with national security — that is, their own safety — the defining campaign issue, they went to the polls in record numbers. This may be news to some, but upon considering in whose hands to place the weighty responsibility of defeating al Qaeda, they didn't elect the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Top of Page
President Bush's recent disclosure that he authorized the National Security Agency (NSA), the secret electronic and satellite spy agency, to intercept communications by people living in the United States who are suspected of terrorist activities or of having terrorist ties, has Democrats and some Republicans crying foul.
{This doesn't bother me like it does other people. They are not monitoring everyone in the United States. They are monitoring our ENEMIES. Any American who supports a nation we are at war with is a TRAITOR who has committed TREASON. I have no problem with them being spied upon~~just as they are acting as spies against their own nation and people.}
Mr. Bush authorized the eavesdropping even though warrants can be obtained through a secret federal court, created in 1978, for domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens or foreigners suspected of terrorist activities. Mr. Bush, however, argues that his actions in bypassing the secret court are lawful and necessary to prevent potential terrorist attacks. A recent Wall Street Journal article points out, though, that the secret court last year rejected no warrants and granted them at the rate of almost five a day.
And since objections to the president's actions are coming from both sides of the ideological divide, the concerns cannot be dismissed as mere partisan bickering. There is a threat to our civil liberties, they say, when the Executive branch lays claim to so expansive a power.
They are right.
But conceding the point does not decide the question of whether Mr. Bush has abused his authority as Commander in Chief in a time of war and grave danger to our nation. A president's highest duty is to secure and protect the people and the nation he serves. Civil liberties would be passé in a nation brought to its knees by nuclear or biological terror.
The Framers, as one writer has noted, understood that the executive power was to be divided into two spheres: normal constitutional conduct, inhabited by law and universal rules; and a realm where universal rules are inadequate to meet the particular emergency situation and where fixed principles of law must be replaced by discretion and politics.
Mr. Bush's actions in defense of this nation, it can be argued, are well within this American constitutional theory of emergency power.
I think it fair to assume that those members of Congress who find fault in Mr. Bush's actions would hold a different view if they believed another 9/11, or worse, was imminent; they would not sacrifice thousands or millions of American lives on the altar of civil liberties.
I think the threat is imminent and potentially catastrophic, which causes me to regard the civil liberties of people who are suspected of terrorist activities to be a less-than-pressing concern.
...Mr. Bush is willing to risk his legacy and his party on false claims and his own desire to expand the power of his office {I don't think any President would risk that}; I am quite unwilling, however, to gamble the security of this nation and the lives of my wife and children on that supposition.{The question to ask is, are you willing to risk your family's lives?} We cannot afford to be wrong.
I allow, too, for the possibility that I am wrong...
Mr. Bush is keeping faith with the American people by doing what is necessary to protect us in dire times. I hope members of Congress will support him in his efforts. If they do not, and we are struck again, our blood will be on their hands.
Then our civil liberties will not be in danger.
They will be gone.
A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.
Thomas Jefferson
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Traitor--one who has committed treason
Treason--1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY
2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More from: National Review
Probable cause
by Andrew C. McCarthy
Al Qaeda is an international terrorist network. We cannot defeat it by conquering territory. It has none. We cannot round up its citizens. Its allegiance is to an ideology that makes nationality irrelevant. To defeat it and defend ourselves, we can only acquire intelligence — intercept its communications and thwart its plans. Nothing else will do.
The president is not above the law, but neither is any other branch. The highest law in the United States is the Constitution.
From the hysteria that abounds, one would think that if FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) was not merely ignored but repealed, we would be living in a dictatorship, with All the President's Men snooping into every phone call, every library, and every bedroom. It is nonsense. Congress retains the power of the purse. Nothing prevents it, tomorrow, from passing a law that denies all funding for any domestic surveillance undertaken by the NSA or any other executive branch agency.
The president could do nothing but veto such a bill. But if, as leading Democrats and civil-liberties extremists maintain, the NSA program is truly one of the most outrageous, execrable, impeachable acts ever committed in recorded history, that veto would easily be overridden.
So why doesn't Congress just do it. Why doesn't it, literally, put its money where many of its mouths are? Why don't the people's representatives bring to heel this renegade, above-the-law president and his blank check? Because they'd lose, decisively and embarrassingly, that's why.
Because they'd have to take an accountable position on life-and-death. Because such a vote, in the middle of a war in which millions of American lives are at stake, would say, unambiguously, that they actually believe the government should not monitor enemy communications unless a federal judge — someone no one voted for and voters cannot remove — decides in his infinite wisdom that there is probable cause. It's so much easier to carp for a scandal-happy media about "the privacy rights of ordinary Americans," as if that were really the issue.
But the sound and fury signify nothing to those ordinary Americans (We the People). Two wartime Novembers ago, with national security — that is, their own safety — the defining campaign issue, they went to the polls in record numbers. This may be news to some, but upon considering in whose hands to place the weighty responsibility of defeating al Qaeda, they didn't elect the judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
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posted by conservative~by~nature | 2:02 PM
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