All with the blessings of the Department of Justice, the Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, and, of course, the ever-expanding Right-wing activist Judiciary.
Let us not forget the mainstream media's complicity in this forced expropriation of human rights. The absolute uppermost precept of the Federal Communications Commission is that all licensees operate "in the public interest;" not far behind is the requirement that any news presentation be honest, fair and equitable.
The only "public interest" anyone at the FCC seems to concern themselves with anymore is whether or not the Christian Right finds all programming morally acceptable. As for news, far too much of which is currently supplied by corporate masters, the general rule is "air anything that won't do too much damage to our pals at the White House."
Take the philosophies employed in defense of King George XLIII's wiretapping scheme, and its associated collection by the NSA of electronic data on billions of communications between American citizens since 9/11/2001 (if not earlier than that).
One excuse is that it's darn hard to know where those pesky terrorists might be at any given moment, so the intelligence community has got to keep track of everybody's contact patterns. They actually have the impudence to compare it to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt White House hunting for German and Japanese spies during World War II.
Note to George: We're not fighting the Wehrmacht or Imperial Japanese Army.
Yet, every time King George gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar of illegality, Gonzo intones the "but it's Constitutionally acceptable" mantra.
The Attorney General fails to acknowledge that George repeatedly sidesteps and ignores bills enacted through Congress and signed into law by Presidents truly worthy of leadership stature afforded by the office.
Regarding the NSA data collection at the whim of the White House, the AG cited a 1979 Supreme Court ruling, attempting to pass off the information collected as "business records," and as such not entitled to 4th Amendment privacy considerations. However, by taking this route he is completely by-passing the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, wherein a prior court order is necessary before call records may be turned over to the Government.
Time and again Gonzo has conveniently cherry-picked an older law or court ruling to justify the illicit overreaching edicts of the King. "The Government is bound by the laws Congress passes," stated Kate Martin, director, Center for National Security Studies, "and when the Attorney General doesn't even mention them, it is symptomatic of the Government's profound disrespect for the rule of law."
In a move that mirrors one of the major gripes our Nation's crafters had against the monarchy from which they broke free, agents of the Gonzo Justice Department slipped into a Congressperson's office under cover of darkness, on Saturday night, May 20, 2006 when no official would be anywhere near the Hill, for the sole purpose of searching and seizing without any restraint or authoritative oversight.
The FBI agents who carried out the raid did not invite the Congressional sergeant-at-arms, or anyone else charged with protective duties, to observe the ransacking of Louisiana Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson's office.
Now, Jefferson is not number one on my list of Democrats that I'd toss a life preserver to were New Orleans to flood again, but there are wrong ways and right ways to go about extracting information.
With 219 years of adherence to the Constitutional principle of separation of powers, as well as the speech debate clause therein, House leaders Dennis Hastert and Nancy Pelosi concurred jointly that the DOJ was wrong in seizing records from his office. The anger among members of Congress, to have any lawmaker's official House suite swooped down upon in such a manner, is both widespread and deeply felt.
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