Thursday, December 22, 2005

A LITTLE REASON FREE FROM PASSION, PLEASE

For those interested in the legal arguments for the NSA intercept program and the constitutional delineation of presidential power, John Hinderaker at PowerLine has a complete summary that I urge you to read. The bottom line?


That is the current state of the law. The federal appellate courts have unanimously held that the President has the inherent constitutional authority to order warrantless searches for purposes of gathering foreign intelligence information, which includes information about terrorist threats. Furthermore, since this power is derived from Article II of the Constitution, the FISA Review Court has specifically recognized that it cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional action.

That being the case, the NSA intercept program, which consists of warrantless electronic intercepts for purposes of foreign intelligence gathering, is legal.


Some people don't like that such a clear case can be made for the President's actions. For them, Bush is simply a liar and a fascist; and the law is completely irrelevant.

Consider the following statements:

The first is from Daily Kos (via LGF) discussing the coming Kristalnacht in America:
It won’t come in the same form. It never does. But it’s coming. The lure of fascism is too powerful for men like the ones currently pissing all over our Constitution.

Probably won’t be the Jews. Maybe Arabs. Maybe gays. Maybe “libruls.” Who the f*ck knows? It almost certainly won’t be recognisable to most people until it’s far too late.

If we let it happen.


As you can see, when it comes to the high anxiety of the Left today, they do not fear Osama Bin Laden or Abu Musab Al Zarqawi--they fear George Bush.

The next two quotes come from an article by Jonathan Last; the first by Stafford Cripps, a Liberal Labor member of Parliament and well-known Marxist in England prior to WWII:
Cripps wrote that after Churchill became prime minister he would "then introduce fascist measures and there would be no more general elections."

Cripps, like many of his contemporaries on the Left in the mid-20th century feared not Hitler--but Churchill. Simone de Beauvoir concurred and

did not believe that Germany was a "threat to peace," but instead worried that the "panic that the Right was spreading" would drag France, Britain, and the rest of Europe into war..
How interesting that the Left then and now should so much fear the imminent implementation of fascism within democracies, but were completely and willingly blind to the rise of fascism in Germany (then) and the dominance of fascism within Islam (now). This is suggestive of a serious detachment from reality secondary to some form of self-delusion.

Long ago, Aristotle pointed out that the law was "reason free from passion." We can only be thankful that our legal system protects us from the histrionic rantings of people suffering from a terrible political affliction.

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