U.S. Constitution
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Title: A Worthless Piece of Paper
Source:
Lew Rockwell
URL Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/02/ ... itano/like-a-soviet-commissar/
Published: Feb 12, 2015
Author: Andrew P. Napolitano
Post Date: 2015-02-12 10:56:58 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 3606
Comments: 27
President George W. Bush was fond of saying that “9/11 changed everything.” He used that one-liner often as a purported moral basis to justify the radical restructuring of federal law and the federal assault on personal liberties over which he presided. He cast aside his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution; he rejected his oath to enforce all federal laws faithfully; and he moved the government decidedly in the direction of secret laws, secret procedures and secret courts.
During his presidency, Congress enacted the Patriot Act. This legislation permits federal agents to write their own search warrants when those warrants are served on custodians of records — like doctors, lawyers, telecoms, computer servers, banks and even the Post Office.
Such purported statutory authority directly violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy in our “persons, houses, papers and effects.” That includes just about everything held by the custodians of our records. Privacy is not only a constitutional right protected by the document; it is also a natural right. We possess the right to privacy by virtue of our humanity. Our rights come from within us — whether you believe we are the highest progression of biological forces or the intended creations of an Almighty God — they do not come from the government.
This is not an academic argument. If our rights come from within us, the government cannot take them away, whether by executive fiat, popular legislation or judicial ruling, unless we individually have waived them. If our rights come from the government, then they are not rights, but permission slips.
The terms of the Patriot Act were made public, and those of us who follow the government’s misdeeds could report on them. After all, this is America. We are a democracy. The government is supposed to work for us. We have the right to know what it is doing in our names as it is doing it, and we have the right to reveal what the government does. Yet, under this law, the feds punished many efforts at revelation. That’s because the Patriot Act prohibits those who receive these agent-written search warrants from telling anyone about them. This violates our constitutionally protected and natural right to free speech. All of this has been publicly known since 2001.
Then, in June 2013, Edward Snowden, the uber-courageous former CIA and NSA official, dropped a still smoldering bombshell of truth upon us when he revealed that the Bush administration had dispatched the NSA to spy on all Americans all the time and the Obama administration had attempted to make the spying appear legal by asking judges to authorize it.
Snowden went on to reveal that the NSA, pursuant to President Obama’s orders and the authorization of these judges meeting in secret (so secret that the judges themselves are not permitted to keep records of their own rulings), was actually capturing and storing the content of all emails, text messages, telephone calls, utility and credit card bills, and bank statements of everyone in America. They did this without a search warrant based on probable cause — a very high level of individualized suspicion — as required by the Constitution.
Snowden revealed that Obama’s lawyers had persuaded these secret judges, without any opposition from lawyers representing the victims of this surveillance, that somehow Congress had authorized this and somehow it was constitutional and somehow it was not un-American to spy on all of us all the time. These judges actually did the unthinkable: They issued what are known as general warrants. General warrants were used against the colonists by the British and are expressly prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. They permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. That’s what the NSA does to all of us today.
Last week, we learned how deep the disrespect for the Constitution runs in the government and how tortured is the logic that underlies it. In a little-noted speech at Washington and Lee Law School, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of both the CIA and the NSA, told us. In a remarkable public confession, he revealed that somehow he received from some source he did not name the authority to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy so as to obliterate it. He argued that the line between privacy and unbridled government surveillance is a flexible and movable one, and that he — as the head of the NSA — could move it.
This is an astounding audacity by a former high-ranking government official who swore numerous times to uphold the Constitution. He has claimed powers for himself that are nowhere in the Constitution or federal statues, powers that no president or Congress has claimed, powers that no Supreme Court decision has articulated, powers that are antithetical to the plain meaning and supremacy of the Constitution, powers that any non-secret judge anywhere would deny him.
If the terms and meaning of the Constitution could be changed by the secret whims of those in the executive branch into whose hands they have been reposed for safekeeping, of what value are they? No value. In such a world, our Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper.
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" our Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper. "
We are becoming a police state? Gee, someone is getting paranoid /sarc.
The canary clan will not like this article. They will attack Lew Rockwell & Andrew P. Napolitano as questionable & unreliable sources.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
#2. To: Deckard (#0)
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a040677nixonnotillegal#a040677nixonnotillegal
April 6, 1977: Nixon: ‘If the President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal’Interviewer David Frost has a difficult time with his subject, former President Richard Nixon, in the day’s early questioning (see April 6, 1977). Frost attempts to recoup with a line of questioning suggested by his adviser James Reston, Jr., one used in the trial of former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman (see January 1, 1975). Were there no limits to what a president can do, even if the president wants to do something plainly illegal? he asks. Could he do anything despite the law? Burglary? Forgery? Even murder? “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Nixon retorts. “Never had his imperialism been so baldly stated,” Reston will later reflect. Frost asks if the dividing line between, for example, a police burglary and the murder of an antiwar protester is only the president’s judgment? Nixon agrees, and adds: “There’s nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven’t read every word, every jot and every tittle, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we’re all talking about.” [Time, 5/30/1977; Reston, 2007, pp. 102-105; Landmark Cases, 8/28/2007]
Entity Tags: Richard M. Nixon, David Frost, James Reston, Jr, John Ehrlichman
Timeline Tags: Nixon and Watergate
These arguments really go back to the defense of the Lincoln administration actions.
#3. To: Stoner (#1)
The canary clan will not like this article.
I think they're starting to figure out that nobody cares what they think.
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.â€
#4. To: CZ82 (#3)
" The canary clan will not like this article.I think they're starting to figure out that nobody cares what they think. "
Sure took them long enough.
Dense!
Si vis pacem, para bellum
#5. To: Deckard (#0) (Edited)
Does the KGB deliver Comrade Snowden's toilet paper via Fedex or does he have to stand in line for it in the "new" Soviet state-establishment?
"There is no god but the Tzar!"
#6. To: VxH (#5)
Piss off troll- Snowden is 1000 times the American that you are.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts#7. To: VxH (#5)
Does the KGB deliver Comrade Snowden
Why do you hate the fourth amendment?
The government was violating it. It was everyones job to report it. Only Snowden did what was right.
#8. To: Deckard (#6)
Piss off troll
ESAD Comrade Alice's self-inflating infotoy.
Snowden is 1000 times the American that you are.
Dah Comrade!
All good Americans are Useful Idiot metrosexual pussies who defect into the arms of Vlad Putin's Oprichniki state-estabishment.
FAIL.
#9. To: VxH (#8)
All good Americans are Useful Idiot metrosexual pussies who defect into the arms of Vlad Putin's Oprichniki state-estabishment.
You're an idiot.
We're done here.
Sod off you bloody tosser, go give yourself a wristy why doncha?
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts#10. To: A K A Stone (#7)
Only Snowden did what was right.
Yea right.
The suuper genius "administrator" was smart enough to steal multiple terabytes of data for the benefit of his Oprichniki land lords - but too STUPID to keep the whistleblower emails he claims to have sent... BUT CAN'T PRODUCE.
Bullshyte.
He and Bwadley Manning should both swing from the same rope.
#11. To: Deckard (#9) (Edited)
We're done here.
Don't forget your pump, Priss!
#12. To: A K A Stone (#7)
The government was violating it. It was everyones job to report it. Only Snowden did what was right.
Agreed. Snowden tried to go through official channels.
When that failed he stood up and did what any patriotic American should have done, at a great cost to his personal life.
He should be praised as a hero.
One only needs to look at those who call Snowden a traitor to realize that he's right.
Leftists and neocons agree -
(Socialist Democrat) Harry Reid: “I think Snowden is a traitor.”
John Boehner: “He’s a traitor.”
(IRA Terrorist supporter) Rep. Peter King: “This guy is a traitor; he’s a defector.”
(War Criminal and torture mastermind) Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a “traitor” but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney’s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.
Snowden says : "Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and [Rep. Peter] King, the better off we all are."
(Leftist gun-grabber and socialist) Feinstein said that Snowden had committed “an act of treason” in June after the former NSA contractor revealed he had leaked troves of classified NSA documents.
John Bolton, who forced his first wife to participate in group sex, characterized Snowden’s actions as treason, and urged against any public talk of amnesty.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts#13. To: VxH (#10)
People who don't support the fourth amendment should swing from rope if anyone does.
#14. To: A K A Stone (#13) (Edited)
Ok, can we start with the infiltraitors who failed to vet Comrade Snowden and keep him from browsing folk's private data without obtaining permission from the courts?
#15. To: Deckard (#12)
Agreed. Snowden tried to go through official channels.
Bullshyte.
Produce the emails or STFU.
#16. To: VxH, A K A Stone (#14) (Edited)
Ok, can we start with the infiltraitors who failed to vet Comrade Snowden?
You really are a NSA tool and surveillance state cheerleader, aren't you?
How about starting with Hayden.
Former CIA & NSA Head: After 9/11 US Constitution Is “A Movable Feast”
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts#17. To: VxH (#15)
Your faith in our government to not go full Lois Lerner with the missing emails is quite intriguing.
#18. To: Deckard (#16) (Edited)
Does Comrade Snowden have to stand in line for Toilet Paper or do you Oprichniki shills deliver these days?
#19. To: Dead Culture Watch (#17)
Your faith in our government to not go full Lois Lerner with the missing emails is quite intriguing.
Comrade Snowden was smart enough to steal multiple terabytes of data - but too STUPID to make copies of the whistleblower emails he claimed he sent?
Either he's a monumental dumba$$ or he's lying.
Either way - FAIL.
#20. To: VxH (#18)
Do you have your own copy of the Constitution that you wipe your ass with?
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts#21. To: VxH (#19)
Lol... You seem very angry..... Valium can help you immensely.
The government was spying on its citizens, yet your rage is directed at the one who alerted us to the extent of this.
Fascinating.
#22. To: Deckard (#20)
Do you have your own copy of the Constitution that you wipe your ass with?
I'd rather use copies of Comrade Snowden's whistle blower emails, but he can't seem to produce them.
#23. To: Dead Culture Watch (#21) (Edited)
Fascinating.
Not as fascinating as the fact that Comrade Snowden landed in the bosom of the Oprichniki state-establishment.
How much is gas in Russia these days? Is there an Orthodox discount?
#24. To: VxH (#23)
Google is your friend.
#25. To: Dead Culture Watch (#24) (Edited)
Google is your friend.
www.google.com/search?q=G...d+Money&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
"AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE"
That Google?
#26. To: Deckard (#16)
Agreed. Snowden tried to go through official channels.Bullshyte.
Produce the emails or STFU.
Maybe you should ask him to prove Snowden "DIDN'T" try to go thru official channels?
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.â€
#27. To: Stoner (#4)
You know I've always wondered if they were that dense or just getting paid to be that dense?
“Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.â€
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