Does anyone even care?

[Annie]

Anyone can read this, not hard. Lots of footnotes.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment04/01.html

... The Court has drawn a wavering line. 13 In Harris v. United States, 14 it approved as ''reasonable'' the warrantless search of a four-room apartment pursuant to the arrest of the man found there. A year later, however, a reconstituted Court majority set aside a conviction based on evidence seized by a warrantless search pursuant to an arrest and adopted the ''cardinal rule that, in seizing goods and articles, law enforcement agents must secure and use search warrants wherever reasonably practicable.'' 15 This rule was set aside two years later by another reconstituted majority which adopted the premise that the test ''is not whether it is reasonable to procure a search warrant, but whether the search was reasonable.'' Whether a search is reasonable, the Court said, ''must find resolution in the facts and circumstances of each case.'' 16 However, the Court soon returned to its emphasis upon the warrant. ''The [Fourth] Amendment was in large part a reaction to the general warrants and warrantless searches that had so alienated the colonists and had helped speed the movement for independence. In the scheme of the Amendment, therefore, the requirement that 'no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,' plays a crucial part.'' 17 Therefore, ''the police must, whenever practicable, obtain advance judicial approval of searches and seizures through a warrant procedure.'' 18 Exceptions to searches under warrants were to be closely contained by the rationale undergirding the necessity for the exception, and the scope of a search under one of the exceptions was similarly limited. 19

During the 1970s the Court was closely divided on which standard to apply. 20 For a while, the balance tipped in favor of the view that warrantless searches are per se unreasonable, with a few carefully prescribed exceptions. 21 Gradually, guided by the variable expectation of privacy approach to coverage of the Fourth Amendment, the Court broadened its view of permissible exceptions and of the scope of those exceptions. 22

By 1992, it was no longer the case that the ''warrants-with- narrow-exceptions'' standard normally prevails over a ''reasonableness'' approach. 23 Exceptions to the warrant requirement have multiplied, tending to confine application of the requirement to cases that are exclusively ''criminal'' in nature. And even within that core area of ''criminal'' cases, some exceptions have been broadened. The most important category of exception is that of administrative searches justified by ''special needs beyond the normal need for law enforcement.'' Under this general rubric the Court has upheld warrantless searches by administrative authorities in public schools, government offices, and prisons, and has upheld drug testing of public and transportation employees. 24 In all of these instances the warrant and probable cause requirements are dispensed with in favor of a reasonableness standard that balances the government's regulatory interest against the individual's privacy interest; in all of these instances the government's interest has been found to outweigh the individual's. The broad scope of the administrative search exception is evidenced by the fact that an overlap between law enforcement objectives and administrative ''special needs'' does not result in application of the warrant requirement; instead, the Court has upheld warrantless inspection of automobile junkyards and dismantling operations in spite of the strong law enforcement component of the regulation. 25 In the law enforcement context, where search by warrant is still the general rule, there has also been some loosening of the requirement. For example, the Court has shifted focus from whether exigent circumstances justified failure to obtain a warrant, to whether an officer had a ''reasonable'' belief that an exception to the warrant requirement applied; 26 in another case the scope of a valid search ''incident to arrest,'' once limited to areas within the immediate reach of the arrested suspect, was expanded to a ''protective sweep'' of the entire home if arresting officers have a reasonable belief that the home harbors an individual who may pose a danger. 27

Another matter of scope recently addressed by the Court is the category of persons protected by the Fourth Amendment--who constitutes ''the people.'' This phrase, the Court determined, ''refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with [the United States] to be considered part of that community.'' 28 The Fourth Amendment therefore does not apply to the search and seizure by United States agents of property that is owned by a nonresident alien and located in a foreign country. The community of protected people includes U.S. citizens who go abroad, and aliens who have voluntarily entered U.S. territory and developed substantial connections with this country. There is no resulting broad principle, however, that the Fourth Amendment constrains federal officials wherever and against whomever they act.

The Interest Protected .--For the Fourth Amendment to be applicable to a particular set of facts, there must be a ''search'' and a ''seizure,'' occurring typically in a criminal case, with a subsequent attempt to use judicially what was seized. Whether there was a search and seizure within the meaning of the Amendment, whether a complainant's interests were constitutionally infringed, will often turn upon consideration of his interest and whether it was officially abused. What does the Amendment protect? Under the common law, there was no doubt. Said Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington: 29 ''The great end for which men entered in society was to secure their property. That right is preserved sacred and incommunicable in all instances where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole. . . . By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set foot upon my ground without my license but he is liable to an action though the damage be nothing . . . .'' Protection of property interests as the basis of the Fourth Amendment found easy acceptance in the Supreme Court 30 and that acceptance controlled decision in numerous cases. 31 For example, in Olmstead v. United States, 32 one of the two premises underlying the holding that wiretapping was not covered by the Amendment was that there had been no actual physical invasion of the defendant's premises; where there had been an invasion, a technical trespass, electronic surveillance was deemed subject to Fourth Amendment restrictions. 33 The Court later rejected this approach, however. ''The premise that property interests control the right of the Government to search and seize has been discredited. . . . We have recognized that the principal object of the Fourth Amendment is the protection of privacy rather than property, and have increasingly discarded fictional and procedural barriers rested on property concepts.'' 34 Thus, because the Amendment ''protects people, not places,'' the requirement of actual physical trespass is dispensed with and electronic surveillance was made subject to the Amendment's requirements. 35

The test propounded in Katz is whether there is an expectation of privacy upon which one may ''justifiably'' rely. 36 ''What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.'' 37 That is, the ''capacity to claim the protection of the Amendment depends not upon a property right in the invaded place but upon whether the area was one in which there was reasonable expectation of freedom from governmental intrusion.'' 38

The two-part test that Justice Harlan suggested in Katz 39 has purported to guide the Court in its deliberations, but its consequences are unclear....

 

[nosarcasm]

you have a picture posted...in the picture one looks a awful lot like "Chuck Norris"...if it is him and you are related...does he know about your left wing rantings?

We haven't heard the last from Chuck Norris.......

1. If you ask Chuck Norris what time it is, he always says, “Two seconds till...” After you ask, “Two seconds to what?” he roundhouse kicks you in the face.

2. Macgyver can build an airplane out of gum and paper clips, but Chuck Norris can kill him and take it.

3. Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.

4. Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

5. Filming on location for Walker: Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris brought a stillborn baby lamb back to life by giving it a prolonged beard rub. Shortly after the farm animal sprang back to life and a crowd had gathered, Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked the animal, breaking its neck, to remind the crew once more that the good Chuck giveth, and the good Chuck, he taketh away.

6. Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his dad did.

7. There are no disabled people in the world. Only those people who have felt the wrath of Chuck Norris.

8. Since 1940, the year Chuck Norris was born, roundhouse kick related deaths have increased 13,000 percent.

9. Chuck Norris is currently suing NBC, claiming Law and Order are trademarked names for his left and right legs.

10. Chuck Norris does not have AIDS but he gives it to people anyway.

11. Chuck Norris has recently changed his middle name to ”F__cking.”

12. When Chuck Norris sends in his taxes, he sends blank forms and includes only a picture of himself, crouched and ready to attack. Chuck Norris has not had to pay taxes ever.

13. There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

14. There are two kinds of people in this world: people who suck, and Chuck Norris.

15. In the movie “Back to the Future” they used Chuck Norris’ Delorean to go back into time and into the future. When they gave it back to him with a scratch on it he was angry and roundhouse kicked Michael J. Fox, which years later was the cause of his Parkinson’s disease.

16. Chuck Norris spends his Saturdays climbing mountains and meditating in peaceful solitude. Sundays are for oral sex, KFC and Tequila.

17. Chuck Norris always has sex on the first date. Always. The only time he didn’t was in 1941, otherwise known as the beginning of the Holocaust.

18. Chuck Norris can enter up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Select, Start using only his erection.

19. Crop circles are Chuck Norris’s way of telling the world that sometimes corn needs to lie the f_ck down.

20. There is no theory of evolution, just a list of creatures Chuck Norris allows to live.

21. When Chuck Norris goes to donate blood, he declines the syringe, and instead requests a hand gun and a bucket.

22. Chuck Norris once walked down the street with a massive erection. There were no survivors.

23. In an average living room there are 1,242 objects Chuck Norris could use to kill you, including the room itself.

24. Chuck Norris has two speeds: walk and kill.

25. Chuck Norris is the only man to ever defeat a brick wall in a game of tennis.

26. When Chuck Norris was born, the nurse said, “Holy crap! That’s Chuck Norris!” Then she had had sex with him. At that point, she was the third girl he had slept with.

27. Chuck Norris can set ants on fire with a magnifying glass. At night.

28. It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

29. Chuck Norris is not lactose intolerant, he just refuses to put up with lactose’s sh#t.

30. Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

31. When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down




:alco: ( I stole it, but hey its Christmas)

 

[Mr. P]

Is this the Chucky Cheese guy?

 

[archangel]

nosarcasim...Merry Christmas to you also.... :crutch: <<<< watch out for the roundhouse! :rotflmao:

 

[Annie]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/05_12_18_corner-archive.asp#085374

Should be top link, pdf

The following is perhaps easier to understand than the DOJ response. This is only an excerpt:

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012631.php

On the Legality of the NSA Electronic Intercept Program

It has been widely suggested that the NSA electronic intercept program that has been carried out by the Bush administration for the last three years is, or may be, illegal. The New York Times and other media outlets have implied, without saying outright, that the program is unconstitutional or otherwise improper. The Democrats have picked the ball up and run with it; the Democratic National Committee sent out an email yesterday that characterized the program as "illegal surveillance" constituting an "explosive scandal."

In fact, though, if one reviews the controlling legal authorities, it is hard to see what the fuss is about. For purposes of this analysis, I have assumed that the NSA intercepts electronic messages (phone calls and emails); that when the agency learns of a foreign cell phone or email address that is being used by a terrorist, it inputs that phone number or address into its surveillance system and is then able to intercept all incoming and outgoing communications; that the intent of the program is to intercept only international communications, i.e., those where at least one of the parties is located outside the United States; but on relatively rare occasions, communications between two people who are both located in the U.S. are intercepted. Under the governing legal principles, however, the precise details of the program shouldn't make any difference.

The starting point, of course, is the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution sets out the powers and duties of the President. Some people do not seem to realize that the executive branch is coequal with the legislative and judicial branches. The President has certain powers under the Constitution, and they cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional legislation any more than the President can limit the powers of Congress by executive order.

Article II makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces. As such he is preeminent in foreign policy, and especially in military affairs. This was no accident; as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74, "Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand." The federal courts have long recognized that when it comes to waging war, the President, not Congress or the courts, is the supreme authority. In Fleming v. Page, 9 How. 603, 615 (1850), the Supreme Court wrote that the President has the Constitutional power to "employ [the Nation's armed forces] in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy."

No one questions this basic principle. If our soldiers or intelligence agencies discover a terrorist in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere, the President or his designees can order an air strike or other attack to kill him. It would be very odd if the President has the authority to kill a terrorist, but not to intercept his telephone calls or search his cave.

There is one relevant constitutional provision that acts as a restraint on the President's inherent power as Commander in Chief. That is the Fourth Amendment, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So all searches and seizures of Americans or their property (including, as the courts have appropriately ruled, interceptions of telephonic and electronic communications) must be reasonable. Note, however, that this requirement does not apply to terrorists overseas. A Special Forces soldier can pick a cave arbitrarily and search it. He isn't trying to prosecute terrorists, he is trying to kill them. He doesn't need probable cause.

The Fourth Amendment includes requirements for the issuance of search warrants, and many critics of the NSA program seem to assume that this means that all searches must be executed pursuant to a warrant. This assumption is wrong. There are dozens of situations where warrantless searches have been approved by the courts. The overriding principle is that searches of Americans (defined to include resident aliens) must be reasonable.

One of the many situations where warrantless searches have been approved is when the government is seeking foreign intelligence information, such as information relating to potential terrorist threats. Next to the Constitution itself, of course, the highest authority is the United States Supreme Court. At least three Supreme Court cases have discussed this subject.

In 1967, the Court decided Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347. Katz involved the warrantless interception of a conversation held by a criminal defendant in a phone booth. The Court held that the Fourth Amendment applies to such conversations, and that in an ordinary criminal prosecution (subject to many exceptions, as noted above) a warrant is required for wiretap information to be admissible in court. The Court specifically noted, however, that its decision did not apply to situations involving national security:

Whether safeguards other than prior authorization by a magistrate would satisfy the Fourth Amendment in a situation involving the national security is a question not presented by this case.

Five years later, the Court decided United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972). This case arose out of a criminal prosecution for conspiracy to destroy government property. (One of the defendants was charged with dynamiting a Michigan office of the C.I.A.) The Court's majority opinion framed the issue as follows:

[This case] involves the delicate question of the President's power, acting through the Attorney General, to authorize electronic surveillance in internal security matters without prior judicial approval.

[Emphasis added.] While acknowledging that American governments had conducted warrantless surveillance in internal security cases "for more than one-quarter of a century," the Court held such surveillance unconstitutional under the circumstances presented.

For the present purpose, the relevant portions of the opinion are those that distinguish the case before the Court from cases involving foreign intelligence gathering:

[T]he instant case requires no judgment on the scope of the President's surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without this country.

And again:

We emphasize, before concluding this opinion, the scope of our decision. As stated at the outset, this case involves only the domestic aspects of national security. We have not addressed, and express no opinion as to, the issues which may be involved with respect to activities of foreign powers or their agents.

It should be noted, too, that the Court did not hold that in domestic security cases, warrants are always required; it merely rejected the government's assertion of a blanket exemption for all such surveillance.

The third relevant Supreme Court case is Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004). Hamdi was an American citizen who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and sued the Defense Department, claiming that his indefinite detention as an enemy combatant was unconstitutional. The Court upheld Hamdi's detention, while also ruling that he was entitled to a limited hearing regarding the facts of his detention. The government offered alternative theories in support of Hamdi's detention; the Court's plurality opinion describes them as follows:

The Government maintains that no explicit congressional authorization is required, because the Executive possesses plenary authority to detain pursuant to Article II of the Constitution. We do not reach the question whether Article II provides such authority, however, because we agree with the Government's alternative position, that Congress has in fact authorized Hamdi's detention through the AUMF [the post-September 11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force].

The Court noted that apprehending military combatants is a necessary incident of the use of military force:

We conclude that detention of individuals falling into the limited category we are considering, for the duration of the particular conflict in which they were captured, is so fundamental and accepted an incident to war as to be an exercise of the "necessary and appropriate force" Congress has authorized the President to use.

Thus, neither the language of the Constitution nor the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence can justify a claim that the NSA program is illegal. While the Court has never specifically ruled on the issue, its decisions are entirely consistent with the administration's view that the President has the inherent constitutional authority to obtain foreign intelligence information through warrantless searches. We turn now to the decisions of the federal Courts of Appeal...

 

[Annie]

So you believe the President is above the law?

I don't think he is, however I'm not so sure you are correct about the 'law' being the only thing in play. This was a battle lost, though he came through it ok:


http://newsbusters.org/node/3298

N.Y. Times, Get Your N.S.A. Stories Straight
Posted by Mithridate Ombud on December 20, 2005 - 13:32.

Dear journalists of the New York Times,

Perhaps you'd like to take a few moments to gather yourselves and figure out which of your stories are correct and which stories are politically motivated fabrications.

COURT SAYS U.S. SPY AGENCY CAN TAP OVERSEAS MESSAGES

By DAVID BURNHAM, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (NYT) 1051 words Published: November 7, 1982

A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Because the National Security Agency is among the largest and most secretive intelligence agencies and because millions of electronic messages enter and leave the United States each day, lawyers familiar with the intelligence agency consider the decision to mark a significant increase in the legal authority of the Government to keep track of its citizens.

Reverses 1979 Ruling

The Oct. 21 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit involves the Government's surveillance of a Michiganborn lawyer, Abdeen Jabara, who for many years has represented Arab-American citizens and alien residents in court. Some of his clients had been investigated by the F.B.I.

Mr. Jabara sued the F.B.I, and the National Security Agency, and in 1979 Federal District Judge Ralph M. Freeman ruled that the agency's acquisition of several of Mr. Jabara's overseas messages violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of ''unreasonable searches and seizures.'' Last month's decision reverses that ruling.

In earlier court proceedings, the F.B.I. acknowledged that it then disseminated the information to 17 other law-enforcement or intelligence agencies and three foreign governments.

The opinion of the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals held, ''The simple fact remains that the N.S.A. lawfully acquired Jabara's messages.''

The court ruled further that the lawyer's Fourth Amendment rights ''were not violated when summaries of his overseas telegraphic messages'' were furnished to the investigative bureau ''irrespective of whether there was reasonable cause to believe that he was a foreign agent.''

 

[Hobbit]

Nobody is above the law. However, the law allows for the president to conduct wire taps without a warrant for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence only as long as the attorney general has issued permission for the use of this power. The permission lasts for one year before it must be renewed.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

A) We have not declared war. Legally, this is not wartime.

Was Bush lying when he said

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. "

Why didn't you quote me, coward. It's my post being discussed. Perhaps it's such high octane truth you don't want it repeated.

An authorization to use force is good enough for most non-pointy, non-eggheaded, non-libs. Officials lie about top secret programs, bonerboy.

 

[Jimmyeatworld]

What gets me is it's the same people that were bitching and whining about the government not doing something about the terrorists involved with 9/11 that are bitching about this.

Apparently, it's okay to go after someone before they actually commit a crime, based on nothing but speculation. Now that we know there is a terrorist threat on our own soil, the same people are throwing a fit about doing something that is perfectly legal that helps track the terrorists down and stopping them. "They are eavesdropping on us!" they scream, when that isn't true. The government isn't listening to someone talk to their Aunt Wilma about her rose garden, they are eavesdropping on terrorists overseas that are talking to people in the United States. I think that is a good thing.

Common sense. I wish I could bottle it and force feed it to some people.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Ahhhhhh, but we're not talking about 1811 are we? No, we're talking 1801/1802.
Or was it the Patriot Act? You should really make yer mind up kid...Then get back to me.

OK. Read it. Not in there.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

http://terpsboy.com/Articles/Wiretapping.html

I tend not to lend credibility to opinion articles in which the name of the person writing it isn't available.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

I tend not to lend credibility to opinion articles in which the name of the person writing it isn't available.

You could still address the ideas. I guess all you have are ad hominem attacks. Pitiful.

 

[Annie]

I tend not to lend credibility to opinion articles in which the name of the person writing it isn't available.

Editorials often aren't signed. Are you saying the WSJ is a 'questionable source?'

 

[manu1959]

Editorials often aren't signed. Are you saying the WSJ is a 'questionable source?'

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..editorials are written by the editor of the newspaper

 

[Annie]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..editorials are written by the editor of the newspaper

Not to mention, sometimes the 'editorial board.' Sssshhhhhh

 

[Bonnie]

Editorials often aren't signed. Are you saying the

WSJ is a 'questionable source

?'

Apparently he is..... But if the NY Times printed that it would be totally different

But here's one more for good measure signed and everything.........

The New York Times' Christmas gift -- sorry, holiday gift -- to the nation's political dialogue was its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency has been intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects abroad and U.S. citizens or legal residents in the United States.

What the Times didn't bother telling its readers is that this practice is far from new and is entirely legal. Instead, the unspoken subtext of the story was that this was likely an illegal and certainly a very scary invasion of Americans' rights.

Let's put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America's enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America's enemies but not to wiretap -- or, more likely these days, electronically intercept -- their communications. Presidents have asserted and exercised this power repeatedly and consistently over the last quarter-century.

To be sure, federal courts have ruled that the Fourth Amendment's bar of "unreasonable" searches and seizures limits the president's power to intercept communications without obtaining a warrant. But that doesn't apply to foreign intercepts, as the Supreme Court made clear in a 1972 case, writing, "The instant case requires no judgment on the scope of the president's surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without this country." The federal courts of appeals for the 5th, 3rd, 9th and 4th Circuits, in cases decided in 1970, 1974, 1977 and 1980, took the same view. In 2002, the special federal court superintending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wrote, "The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."


Warrantless intercepts of the communications of foreign powers were undertaken as long ago as 1979, by the Carter administration. In 1994, Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, testified to Congress, "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."

In the Dec. 15 Chicago Tribune, John Schmidt, associate attorney general in the Clinton administration, laid it out cold: "President Bush's post-Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents."

"News stories" in the Times and other newspapers and many national newscasts have largely ignored this legal record. Instead, they are tinged with a note of hysteria and the suggestion that fundamental freedoms have been violated by the NSA intercepts.

Earlier this month, a Newsweek cover story depicted George W. Bush as living inside a bubble, isolated from knowledge of the real world. Many of the news stories about the NSA intercepts show that it is mainstream media that are living inside a bubble, carefully insulating themselves and their readers and viewers from knowledge of applicable law and recent historical precedent, determined to pursue an agenda of undermining the Bush administration regardless of any damage to national security.

And damage there almost certainly would be were the program to be ended, as many Democrats and many in the mainstream media would like. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of NSA and now deputy national intelligence director, has come forward to say, "This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States."

The Constitution, Justice Robert Jackson famously wrote, should not be interpreted in a way that makes it "a suicide pact." The notion that terrorists' privacy must be respected when they place a cell-phone call to someone in the United States is in the nature of a suicide pact. The Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures in the United States should not be stretched into a ban on interceptions of communications from America's enemies abroad.

The mainstream media, inside their left-wing bubble, evidently thinks that there is not much in the way of danger. They should take a trip to Ground Zero, to the Sept. 11 memorial at the Pentagon, to Shanksville, Pa., where the heroes of United flight 93 prevented the terrorists from hitting their target in Washington.

Michael Barone is the Senior Writer for U.S. News & World Report.

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/michaelbarone/2005/12/26/180370.html

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Editorials often aren't signed. Are you saying the WSJ is a 'questionable source?'

Oh, its an editoral, just one persons opinion. OK. So why do I care?

Just because an editorial is published in a reputable paper doesn't make it right. You are aware than an editorial is merely one person's opinion, right?


Where aren't editorials signed, anyway? I don't think I've ever seen a paper where there weren't names of the writier in the editorial section.

 

[Annie]

Oh, its an editoral, just one persons opinion. OK. So why do I care?

Just because an editorial is published in a reputable paper doesn't make it right. You are aware than an editorial is merely one person's opinion, right?


Where aren't editorials signed, anyway? I don't think I've ever seen a paper where there weren't names of the writier in the editorial section.

Perhaps you don't read the 'editorials' all that often? There are editorial columnists and there are editorials. The columnists sign, while the editorials are written by one or more of the 'board' members. There are reasons, but it would be worth your while to find the reasoning behind the practice.

 

[dmp]

seems like the answer is still 'no - nobody cares'.

 

[GotZoom]

Fine! Geez...I'll answer.

No.