McCain Embraces Bush on Civil Liberties
The Republicans haven't even held their convention, yet their presidential nominee has already announced his intention to commit impeachable offenses if elected.
WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
Would it be too much to ask that we have a president who doesn't think he’s above the law?
The article digs out this nice quote:
Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.
It annoys me how Republicans so routinely, nonchalantly vilify the ACLU. Sure, they defend a lot of controversial (dareisay, 'fucked-up') people, but that’s the point. Freedom wouldn't exist if (1) only the people who said things we all agreed on were allowed to express themselves and (2) the only thing that protected us was the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights has power because people like the ACLU slam people who try to undermine it, and they're consistent.
That 1978 statute --- FISA --- was designed specifically to reinforce the 1st and 4th amendments, as Nixon and Johnson had severely eroded them in their quest to stamp out dissent. That McCain and Bush are perfectly willing to tear the statute down should send every thinking person in the United States a signal about how dangerous our leaders have become and how important it is that we fight this trend as hard as possible.
On the ACLU, there's a quote
On the ACLU, there's a quote I love that goes something to the effect of "The public opinion will take care of protecting the speech people like, it's the speech people don't like that needs defending."
And I'm amazed anyone who hopes to get anywhere in politics is even touching the issue of wiretapping right now. It's so unpopular, so illegal, I can't imagine it. I don't care what he thinks is right (even though he is wrong. I agree with vigilance, but this was some kind of 1984 shit that went down) it's just strategically and politically backwards.
Paix et amour,
Joe!
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