Let Bush, NSA do their jobs
December 27, 2005
Jon Dougherty
The anti-war, anti-self-defense Defeaticrats scored another victory last week for terrorists who are, at this very moment, relentlessly plotting new attacks, which they hope will kill many more Americans – a figure that will include, of course, a number of Defeaticrats.
After forcing the administration to "admit" that, essentially, it was doing everything in its power to protect the ever ungrateful wing of the Defeatist Party, our nation was preparing, in peace, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the very purveyor of universal peace.
But all may not be calm. As we celebrate another year free of domestic terror attacks, scores of Muhammad's "holy warriors" are actively planning the demise of the American "infidels," and you just know they have to be happy with the week's developments. Thanks to the loose lips of someone who can only be accurately described as an enemy of the state, Muhammad's minions now know another aspect of our battle plan. Damage assessments are still out, but I'd say aiding and abetting terrorists in our midst will eventually lead to the deaths of more Americans than 10 years' worth of roadside bombs in Iraq.
Defeaticrats are pointing fingers at President Bush who, last week, copped to a New York Times report that, yes, he ordered the National Security Administration to monitor some people inside the United States.
Admittedly, this practice is strictly limited by federal law, which – for all intents and purposes – says no U.S. agency can conduct domestic spying operations without a warrant and the specific blessing of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.
But these times, they aren't normal. And Bush's order to the NSA was specific, in that he didn't ask the agency to "spy on Americans," as the Defeaticrats have incessantly wailed. He asked it to monitor suspected terrorists, thank you very much, a task which the NSA has obviously been performing well since no more airliners have been flown into buildings and our mass transit systems have not been attacked.
Like it or not – and you can bet the Defeatist Party does not – Bush was right on when he insisted in a recent press conference that he most certainly does have the constitutional authority to order such warrantless surveillance, an opinion he has based correctly and, in no small part, on the permission slip Congress signed when lawmakers authorized him to conduct the war on terror.
It should also be loudly noted the Defeaticrats have not been able to produce a single person who, under Bush's NSA directive, has been wrongly accused or inappropriately incarcerated. There has not been a single American citizen, for example, who has been the victim of an inappropriate storm-trooper assault of the kind that was, let's say, suffered by the criminal mastermind Elian Gonzales who, at 5-years old, became the only immigrant Bill Clinton's INS could actually find.
And speaking of Clinton, where were the Defeaticrats when his adviser, Paul Begala, publicly celebrated his boss' flipping of the bird to the Constitution? Begala, you remember, championed Clinton's excessive use of executive orders in a July 5, 1998, New York Times piece when he chirped, "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool."
Or how about when Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in comments picked up by the Washington Times, June 14, 1999, bragged, "We've switched the rules of the game. We're not trying to do anything legislatively"?
Then there was that time when Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, echoing Clinton's belief that, as president, he had the "inherent authority" to order warrantless searches of Americans' homes for the purposes of foreign intelligence-gathering:
The Department Of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes and that the president may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the attorney general.
The accompanying Washington Post story, which was buried on Page A-19, noted, "The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order."
And Bush is the Constitution killer? Whatever.
The president has done precisely what the American people elected him to do and want him to do. We expect him and the rest of the federal government and Congress to use every taxpayer-funded tool at their disposal to defend this nation. That is their constitutional duty, and their moral obligation.
"It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy," Bush told reporters earlier this week. He's being far too polite. "Shameful" is not the word I would use – try "treasonous."
The Defeatist Party doesn't want to win the war on terror, but it wants to "win" America's political wars so badly, it is willing to destroy the country in the process. This is not the thought process of rational people. |
