Letters to the Editor
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Their utter disregard for the law is stunning
The bottom line in all this is these authoritarian bastards think they're above the law and until someone slaps the cuffs on them, they're right.
What are we going to do about it?
Pitchforks? Torches? Bueller? Anyone?
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Authoritarians
GG:
Thus, as long as the telecoms were "directed" by a Bush official to allow warrantless spying (which they were) and as long as the President authorized it and "determined it to be lawful" (which he did), then they are immune from all accountability and consequences -- even if what they did (as a federal judge already found) was clearly illegal and even if (as the federal court also found) they knew it was illegal.
The central problem is that America, as a people, seems to be buying into the doctrine that anything that the President does, as long as it is related to 'defense', is lawful and proper.
As a young man I often asked God to explain how the Germans in the 30s could allow the rise of the odious ideology of fascism. God seems to be showing us how easy it is for a people to fall into this trap. Unfortunately, history records that the only way out is a total collapse of the infected country.
Hmmm. How does the economy look is the Asians stop buying our debt?
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Nixon's Ghost Can Rest Easy Now
His claim that "when the president does it, that means it's not illegal" has been justified.
In fact, Smirky has gone much further.
Now, when the president merely tells someone else to do it, that means it's not illegal.
I retract my prediction that Smirky and Darth will declare martial law before the 2008 elections. Their new miraculous powers mean they don't have to declare a new kind of law at all.
They don't even have to go through the formality of labeling someone an enemy combatant. Simply order the nearest Blackwater mercenery to shoot to kill whoever is annoying them most, and problem solved.
No, no, officer, no problem here. The president ordered it.
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So let me get this straight
If the police come to me, in a "time of war" (on Drugs), and ask me to break into the house next door (where some college students live) and look for/plant some weed, because some damn leftist judge probably won't give them a warrant, it's my simple patriotic duty to do this?
Funny how, despite the intense pressure applied over past decades to raise drug possession to the status of a crime against the state, things haven't quite come to this on the local level. It's only happening on the federal level. There is no such understanding in any other area, among law enforcement, the judiciary, or otherwise.
It's almost as though the telecoms were actively volunteering for this patriotic duty before the NSA went to them.
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Nuremberg Trials
Have these guys ever heard of them?
I guess when everything you do is predicated on WHO is doing it, not WHAT they're doing, the Rule of Law becomes "judicial whimsy".
How did we get to the point where any of the things these people spout is respectable?
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Black and white
Goldfarb's column has excellent material for putting this in black and white for your Congressman.
Emailed this morning to my Democratic Representative:
A recent column by a prominent Beltway pundit included the following.
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As our Congress works heroically to make permanent the vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers it vested in the President two months ago and to protect the corporations which allowed warrantless surveillance in violation of the Leftist doctrine called “law,” it is clearly understood in the Beltway that only the fringe Leftists – the shrill partisan “activists” – actually subscribe to this radical new agenda of “warrants,” as well as the accompanying extremist doctrines such as the “rule of law.”
The Weekly Standard
18 Oct 2007
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To me, this is one of the most outrageous apologies for government lawlessness that I have ever read and it shocks, saddens and, most of all, worries me that it could ever be written with any level of seriousness in this country. I took an Oath of Office to defend and uphold the Constitution and I strongly believe that certain elements of the Executive Branch that I work for are breaking this oath by subscribing to the above quote. I urge you to read that quote again and think about how it dismisses the Fourth Amendment and is contradictory to the Oath that you took. I note that you voted for the mis-named Protect America Act. In the future, please support the Constitution and work AGAINST telecommunications amnesty and the weakening of the existing FISA system developed in response to previous government excesses.
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Lawful Orders
When I was in basic training the Army spent some time teaching us the difference between a lawful order and an unlawful order. It was our duty to obey all lawful orders, and to disregard all unlawful orders. Therefore, this principle of Law rather than Leaders is (or was) firmly established at least in our military.
Now, unlike the telecomms, we privates didn't have a platoon of lawyers to tell us whether any given order was unlawful, and you can imagine the courage it must take to disobey an order because you believe it to be unlawful. But the telecomms have no such excuse. They have legal departments and the backing of civil law. They well know their duties under the law. And regardless of what the Weekly Standard may say, the principle of Law applies. The precedents set at the Nuremberg Tribunals make it quite clear that "just following orders" is no defense for breaking the law. The telecomms should be held accountable to their customers and to the law. And people like Michael Goldfarb should be reminded that they are espousing views that are classic fascism, pure and simple.
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Why the surprise?
If the Geneva convention can be called "quaint" and few Americans get upset, why should this be any different. Even the people who might object to warrentless wiretaping on principle don't really have a great pratical concern about this since it involves those dirty terrorists who threaten their safety.
The US is the last civilized country to retain the death penalty. The growing opposition to the death penalty is based largely on the realization that there are innocent people being convicted, not on the principle that it is wrong in principle.
Underlying the generally acceptance of renditions, extreme interrogation methods, lack of habeas Corpus of detainees, warentless wiretapping, etc, is that they all invlove people who are assumed to be guilty, so why worry about their rights.