Professor David Bromwich’s One Liner Excoriates the American Stalinist Wannabes — Who Support the Obama Administration’s Elimination of the First and Fourth Amendments

07 June 2013

Background — if you missed it

A couple of days ago, former constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, revealed that:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

The disclosure is likely to reignite longstanding debates in the US over the proper extent of the government's domestic spying powers.

“Tell me Dianne, when did you lose your feeble power of reason?”

While the overwhelming majority of Americans snooze their freedoms away, Congress is out busily supporting King Obama’s assault on the First and Fourth Amendments.

In response to Mr. Greenwald’s revelation, two U.S. Senators — who pretty much reflect the pea-brained attitude that has come to repesent virtually the entire Congress — downplayed the issue:

The top two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee said today that the widespread monitoring of phone records revealed by Wednesday’s Guardian report has been going on for years and that Congress is regularly briefed about it.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss also defended the National Security Agency’s request to Verizon for all the metadata about phone calls made within the U.S. and from the U.S. to other countries.

They said the information gathered by intelligence on the phone communications is “meta data” used to connect phone lines to terrorists and that it did not contain the content of the phone calls or messages.

“As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years,” Feinstein said.

“This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress.

Senator Rand Paul was virtually alone in expressing his opposition

Though Senator Paul often acts like a Libertarian extremist — meaning a “kook” — he got the magnitude of America’s current anti-Liberty trend correct, when he wrote:

Under this administration, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has targeted political dissidents, the Department of Justice has seized reporters' phone records, and now we've learned the NSA seized an unlimited amount of Verizon's client data.

Just when you think it can't get any worse under this president, it does.

This is an all-out assault on the constitution.

Professor David Bromwich summed it up

After quoting the quoting the Fourth Amendment, he said:

[T]o the comfort offered by senators Chambliss, Graham, and Feinstein, who ask us to sleep well and sleep long, there is a simple reply.

In what country do they think they are living, and under what constitution?

Even more to the point

As a lawyer, I would point out that, just because Congress says some intrusions are okay, does not mean that they are Constitutional. Senators Feinstein and Chambliss are missing the point, when they point to the alleged legality of the phone record seizures.

Congress did not have the power to do a lot of what it did under the auspices of the USA Patriot Act of 2001. Nor, arguably, does the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have the Constitutional authority to grant the seizure of telephone records that Greenwald says it did.

The moral? — We bury our Freedom deep, when we use pretended legalities to justify overturning the Constitution

Cowardice has motivated the abandonment of the First and Fourth Amendments. Politicians see more to gain in pretending to make us safe, than they do in standing up against Autocracy.

We have become, for the most part, a public of quivering sheep, afraid to go out into Freedom’s vast pasture.

PeteFree.com

Professor David Bromwich’s One Liner Excoriates the American Stalinist Wannabes — Who Support the Obama Administration’s Elimination of the First and Fourth Amendments