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I have mixed reactions over FISA because I am a big supporter of civil liberties and less government intrusion into my life but I did think this should be shared. Thanks to Stop the ACLU for the blogburst and go here to check out the original entry as well as many more informative pieces.

The meltdown continues!

Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president's unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.

I'm glad they included the reminder of the New York Times act of treason, revealing specifics on a secret program and informing our enemies of the tools we use against them. Of course the ACLU think this was a courageous act of "whistle blowing" and in their twisted world, an act of patriotism. In the real world it was an a cowardly act of treason.

Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president's fear-mongering. With today's vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution," said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans' international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American."

Of course the ACLU have made up all these accusations out of thin air, and can't win any lawsuit they have launched against this program. They can't provide any evidence to prove their claims and have been smacked down numerous times because they have absolutely no standing. Of course they have repeated their own lies so many times they believe them to be true now. That is what happens to the paranoid. The program is not designed to spy on innocent Americans, and the government would have no interest in those conversations anyway. The program is designed to listen to international phone calls that flagged to known terrorists and their financers. The program is designed to protect innocent Americans.

The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government's general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major "concession" by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies' reports.

Any information obtained on terrorists should be used, and when compromising...one must make concessions.

The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president's warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies' right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal - only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.

Blah, blah, blah. These telecom companies cooperated with the government and provided protection and prevention of terrorist attacks on many innocent Americans. What they did was their patriotic duty, and they should be seen as heroes, not criminals. Of course the ACLU are disappointed they can't sue these rich companies to line their own pockets.

Still...the ACLU remain steadfast:

In advance of the president's signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.

"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."

Can't wait to watch you guys get shot down again. Anyone know how we can sue the ACLU for continually thwarting the government's efforts to protect us?



Zemanta Pixie

Just got this in earlier and needed to share.

The video above is from ADF, and is practically a commericial for them, but I don't see anything wrong with that at all. I urge you to go join and donate! By the way, Kender inspired this post. He wanted to write the blogburst, but his rant inspired me and I wanted to add more. So, I'm gonna use Kender's quotes throughout.
It seems a German citizen claimed that the CIA abducted him, drugged him and sent him to a prison in a third world country where he was tortured and finally released on a hilltop in another country in a case of mistaken identity. The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed the case without comment after the Bush Administration said that if the case were not dismissed it would threaten state secrets. What I want to know is WHY a group that calls itself the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union is so concerned with the civil liberties of a German citizen. The last time I checked our civil liberties did not apply to the citizens of other countries, and the ACLU is not the arbiter of international law.
Last March, the ACLU went crying to the U.N. about how 'evil' the U.S. is.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Human Rights Network today urged the U.N. Human Rights Committee to hold the U.S. government accountable for flagrant and repeated violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). "Locally, nationally and globally, the United States has repeatedly failed in its responsibility to uphold basic human rights," said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. "We are appealing to the international arbiters to hold the U.S. accountable to basic human rights standards."
As sickening as this is; it is only one step in the ACLU's agenda to undermine America's sovereignty and freedom that so many soldiers have sacrificed and died to preserve. The ACLU are obviously frustrated by their inability to advance their radical agenda more quickly under the U.S. Constitution, and are now determined not only to convince the American judiciary to look to international law, but also to use it as a means to their ends. They hold it as a higher authority than our own Constitution and are more than willing to sacrifice our sovereignty in their pursuit to radically force change on America to fit their own radical views. The sad thing is that they don't have to try very hard to convince our judiciary. While they lost ground in the case above, they win enough to make it scary. Last year, former ACLU lawyer, and current Supreme Court Justice, Ruth "Snoozer" Ginsburg gave a speech that argued explicitly for the relevance of foreign law and court decisions to interpretation of the American Constitution. She isn't the only Justice that buys into this philosophy. FIVE Justices believe that international law should bear weight in interpreting our constitution. The ACLU don't hide this agenda, they are proud of it.
The ACLU sponsored a conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, October 9-11, 2003, to promote the use of international law in U.S. courts. The conference was titled "Human Rights at Home: International Law in U.S. Courts." Publicit for the event stated, "The emphasis throughout the conference will be on using international law and human rights norms to advance justice in U.S. courts or on behalf of U.S. clients." Some of the alleged human rights "injustices" cited were in the areas of "environmental justice," "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights," and "children's rights." ACLU publicity included comments from ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and conference organizer Ann Beeson. Romero said, "Our goal is no less than to forge a new era of social justice where the principles of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights are recognized and enforced in the United States." Beeson added, "From the grassroots level all the way to the Supreme Court, international human rights law is beginning to emerge as a tool for the victims of discrimination here at home."
The ACLU's rhetoric and efforts to use international law to rewrite, undermine, and bypass the Constitution has already gone beyond academic debate into the realm of actual use. As stated earlier, there are plenty of judges that have already adopted the philosophy and the ACLU are already participating in court cases where the judge uses international law in their decisions. It isn't only at the federal level, but has penetrated even into the state level. All through the confirmation process of Justice Alito, the ACLU and leftards were screaming that Alito was a racist bigot that would undermine judicial precedent. However, this judicial philosophy has more potential to undermine judicial precedent than any current philosophy being espoused, and it has already proven to do so. The purpose of the judicial branch is to interpret the law and determine if laws are constitutional. There are several major flaws in the use of international law in our courts. Not only does it undermine the very authority of the Constitution deeming it impotent of any power, but it also gives the judicial branch a power that was never intended to be granted to it; the power to write law. Followers of this philosophy view the Constitution merely as a persuasive authority, equated with foreign law, to be relied upon if they are in line with her predetermined beliefs. It doesn't really matter if their beliefs are inconsistent with the Constitution itself, they can simply find a foreign law that is. New rights, such as gay rights, or abortion should not be stretched from our Constitution that never granted them. If new rights like these are to be given, then the people should have some say in that. There is a process set in place by the founders to do just this. They should be granted through law or a constitutional amendment. They should not be granted via judicial fiat. Besides the issues within our own judicial system and its decay, the ACLU is also turning to international sources to undermine our nation's sovereignty and national security.
For instance, the ACLU filed a formal complaint with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention against the United States, stating that the United States violated international law when it detained 765 Arab Americans and Muslims for security reasons after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on our nation. Eventually, 478 were deported. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said, "With today's action, we are sending a strong message of solidarity to advocates in other countries who have decried the impact of U.S. policies on the human rights of their citizens. We are filing this complaint before the United Nations to ensure that U.S. policies and practices reflect not just domestic constitutional standards, but accepted international human rights principles regarding liberty and its deprivations." Source
Romero, of course, makes the United States sound like some rogue nation with no regard for human rights, not the beacon of liberty that so many have come to escaping from tyranny and the bonds of oppression. Right now, Britain is practically banning freedom of speech and the Bible in the name of gay rights and tolerance.
"Inciting homophobic hatred will become illegal, the justice secretary, Jack Straw, announced last night, following a campaign by gay rights groups. The introduction of an offence of rallying hatred against gays and lesbians follows similar measures to tackle religious hate crime, which were passed earlier this year after lengthy rows over freedom of speech. "It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last 10 years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality. It is time for the law to recognise this," said Mr Straw, introducing the second reading of the criminal justice and immigration bill.
If you can't imagine the ACLU helping make the same thing happen here, you need to wake up. All of this should concern you. You may think that it doesn't directly affect you in your everyday life, but it will eventually. The ACLU's embrace of international law seeks to hypocritically do the opposite of what the ACLU claim to protect, and the Constitution forbids; prohibit the free exercise of religion.
In spring 2003, a group from the United Nations Human Rights Commission, of which former ACLU officials Paul Hoffman and John Shattuck are a part, met and discussed a resolution to add "sexual orientation" to the UNHRC's discrimination list. Homosexual activists at the meeting called for a "showdown with religion," clearly intending to use international law to silence religious speech that does not affirm homosexual behavior. Source
After the first amenendment, the next thing you can kiss goodbye with international law is the second amendment. It is a direct threat to our very freedom of speech, and religious exercise. In some countries, laws are being pushed, and in some cases, enacted that essentially criminalize forms of religious speech and activity that does not affirm homosexual behavior. Another rant from Kender:
The ACLU, the NYT and other groups and organizations that fight against our government on the GWOT are basically attacking freedom and the safety and security of this nation, putting Americans in harms way in their misguided attacks on our governments attempt to track and deal with terrorists. What I want to know is this; When the islamists get control and impose sharia law, will the ACLU have the balls to stand up and say "no way achmed", or do you think it more likely that they will realize that speaking against the caliphate is a death sentence? I am betting they will shut up and become good little dhimmis.
If we are going to turn the interpretation of our laws to international jurisprudence, and decisions of foreign courts, judges, and legislatures, the question begs...why did we fight a war of independence? If the ACLU are successful in their agenda for international law, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution will eventually become irrelevant documents. More and more of America's freedoms, and our very sovereignty will be sacrificed for international law. Our freedoms will vanish. The ACLU's vision of freedom that includes the public sale of child pornography, the silencing of churchs and ministries, and unlimited abortion and euthanasia will replace them. Get involved. Donate and support organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund and the ACLJ that are out there fighting the ACLU's agenda. Contact your representatives and Senators and tell them to support Constitution Restoration Act that would put an end to the use of foreign law in our courts. Tell them to support the The Public Expression of Religion Act which would put a stop to taxpayer funding of the ACLU in establishment clause case. Sign Our Petition To Stop Taxpayer Funding Of The ACLU. Pray that America wakes up before its too late.

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