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liberals draft al-Queda bill of rights
Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on August 17, 2006 ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) and "its agents, employees, representatives and any other persons or entities in active concert or participation" with the agency to halt the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program.
And so it begins.
The program allowed the NSA to monitor communications between U.S. residents and people in other countries who have suspected ties to terrorist group al Qaeda, without getting court-ordered warrants.
Taylor wrote in her order that the program, authorized by U.S. President George Bush in 2002, violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of freedom of speech and association and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. She feels that the NSA program also violates the separation of powers clause in the Constitution, as well as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set courts to issue warrants for wiretaps focused on counterintelligence.
This decision is so extreme left that one wonders how much law -- as opposed to politics -- is actually included in this ruling. Hasn't Judge Taylor ever heard that it's illegal to yell "Fire!" in a public place without cause? That too is a violation of the constitutional right to "free speech." Yet we have all accepted that in some cases, the need to protect the public (the greater good) takes precedence over the individual rights entrenched in the constitution.
This program was not about "spying on American people" as the liberal left has painted it in the media. This program authorized wiretapping of calls that originated from outside the USA to someone inside this country when either the caller or the receiver of the call was under suspicion of terrorist activity. This program very likely played a key role in the ability of American, Canadian and British governments to intercept the terrorist plots of the past few months before they could be carried out.
The ultra-liberals are so bent on screaming "foul" over every little privacy concern that they have forgotten we are at war. Instead of protecting those who voted them into office, people like Dick Dubin and Pat "Leaky" Leahy seem intent on spilling the beans about as many anti-terrorist programs as possible and crafting some soft of "al Qaeda Bill of Rights."
Does this mean that all constitutional rights are thrown out the window just because we are engaged in a war? Of course not. When the American Constitution was drafted, it was meant to protect the people of the nation from oppressive government. But there's a vast chasm between oppressive government and listening in on phone calls between suspected enemy combatants. Naturally, there are activities that must be protected at all times. Freedom of religion, for example, means that even in a state of war with extremist Muslims, we must protect the right of Muslims to practice their faith in peace. But those rights do not extend to those bent on our destruction. That's where Judge Taylor and her supporters are getting confused. I don't want to stand over the mutilated bodies of my friends or family because some non-elected extremist judge wants to take over the legislative branch of the United States of America.
