Text 17765, 124 rader
Skriven 2006-02-08 02:22:29 av Ed Hulett (1:123/789.0)
Ärende: A liberal speaks
========================
Who in here does this "Matt Mullen" sound like?

From powerline blog:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013075.php

A Liberal Speaks

We get a great many emails, a considerable number of which are from
liberals. A few of these are thoughtful and informative. The vast
majority are not. Today we got an email from a Democrat named Matt
Mullen. It's above average for an email from a lefty--more coherent and
less profane than most. He was responding to this post, where I related
a story that Debra Burlingame told yesterday:

    One of the most telling moments is when Debra Burlingame points out
that prior to the September 11 attacks, the NSA was surveilling an al
Qaeda member in Yemen who placed or received more than a dozen phone
calls to and from a number in San Diego. Because these calls involved
someone in the United States, the NSA didn't listen to them. It turned
out that the "Kahlid" who was receiving the calls in San Diego was one
of the September 11 hijackers. In fact, he was one of the hijackers who
murdered Debra's brother, the pilot of American Airlines flight 77.

    This is what Democrats and the news media call "domestic spying."
Do the Democrats really want to return us to the days when al Qaeda
could call its American operatives with impunity?

Mr. Mullen took offense at my question, and responded:

No dumbshit. We want the president to spy on al queda, BUT we want him
to follow the damned law too! Oh, I'm sorry, is that too nuanced for
you thick headed fools? If Hillary Clinton were doing what Bush is
doing you guys would be going ape-shit.

    Respectlessly, Matt Mullen

This is what passes for argument on the left. Note, first, that if the
NSA program were terminated, as some have demanded, we would be right
back where we were before September 11, with phone calls from
terrorists into the U.S. going unheard. This can fairly be described as
"call[ing] American operatives with impunity."

But Matt, like many other Democrats, admits that President Bush is
doing the right thing. He agrees with the President's decision to order
the NSA to intercept international terrorist communications, including
those with one end in the U.S. He wants the NSA to listen in on al
Qaeda calls to the U.S., but he wants the President to "follow the
damned law too!" As Matt no doubt knows, we have written extensively on
the legal issues surrounding the NSA terrorist surveillance program. At
least five federal appellate decisions stand for the proposition that
the President has the constitutional authority under Article II to
order warrantless surveillance for foreign intelligence gathering
purposes. This means that the NSA program is legal. Matt offers no
argument or authority to the contrary.

Presumably the "damned law" Matt wants NSA to comply with is FISA. But
the Constitution, as well as FISA, authorizes the President to carry
out electronic surveillance. As the FISA court of appeals wrote in
2002, if FISA tried to limit the President's Article II power to
conduct warrantless surveillance, it would be unconstitutional to that
extent. Matt offers no comment on these legal principles. Probably he
is unaware of them.

Section 109 of FISA also says that FISA does not apply where
surveillance is "authorized by [another] statute." The administration
argues, supported by the Hamdi case, that Congress's Authorizaton for
the Use of Military Force authorizes intercepting enemy intelligence,
which, like detaining enemy combatants, is a "fundamental and accepted
incident of war." If the administration is right, FISA does not come
into play at all. Matt must know about this argument, since it has been
widely reported, but he makes no attempt to rebut it.

The essence of Matt's rather surly communication, I think, is the
suggestion that the administration could "follow the damned law"--i.e.,
FISA's procedures--without negatively impacting its ability to
intercept enemy communications. (If that were true, one can only wonder
what the fuss is all about!) Like many liberals, Matt apparently
doesn't understand that obtaining a FISA order is a very complicated
matter. A large amount of information must be assembled, and legal
opinions must be obtained. If you doubt that assembling the necessary
package to place before a judge would take days, if not weeks, read 50
U.S.C. Sec. 1804.

Matt has no doubt heard on the mainstream media and left-wing web sites
that FISA's onerous procedures are really no problem, since the statute
contains a 72-hour "emergency" provision that would allow surveillance
to begin immediately, as long as a judge signs an order within 72 hours
thereafter. This, however, is wrong. As Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales has patiently and repeatedly explained, surveillance cannot
begin until the Attorney General makes a finding that 1) an "emergency
situation exists," and 2) "the factual basis for issuance of an order
under this subchapter to approve such surveillance exists." That means
that even in an emergency, the same onerous factual showing that is
normally made to a judge must be made to the Attorney General--legal
opinions, "minimization procedures," and all. In the meantime, as the
days tick off the calendar, the al Qaeda henchman overseas can continue
calling his American contacts "with impunity," as I put it in my
original post.

Matt, of course, knows nothing of this.

Judging from his writing style, Matt is young, probably a teenager, so
there may be hope for him. But our email inbox confirms what we see
when we read the newspapers: liberalism is the philosophy of the
ill-informed; the intemperate; the marginal.

=============================================

"[T]he ill informed; the intemperate; the marginal." That sums up the
left quite well.

Ed

-- 
"I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting
himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his
religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity
according to the dictates of his own conscience." -- George Washington
(letter to the General Committee of the United Baptist Churches in
Virginia, May 1789)

--- XanaNews/1.17.6.6
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