Posted on 12/16/2005 2:58:23 PM PST by smoothsailing
December 16, 2005, 5:19 p.m.
Sununu's Folly
If New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu wants to endanger our national security, shouldn't he at least know what he's talking about? Apparently that's too much to ask of the usually admirable senator, who is helping filibuster the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. Even former Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno has endorsed the Patriot Act; it is the single most important piece of counterterrorism legislation passed post-9/11.
If the status quo holds after Friday's failure to invoke cloture — Republicans got only 52 votes when they need 60 — -the 16 provisions of the law that were sun-setted and that are the most important will lapse at the end of the year.
Sununu's criticism of the reauthorization, set out in a Union Leader op-ed earlier this week, are wrongheaded and empty.
Sununu says the Patriot Act is at odds with our country's convictions that "evidence must be shown to obtain a search warrant; we have a right to face an accuser; and when wrongly prosecuted, we can appeal our case to court." Not true. The Patriot Act does nothing to change those assumptions of our legal system. The government cannot get a search warrant without showing a judge probable cause either that a crime has been committed or that the subject of the warrant is an agent of a foreign power (such as a terrorist organization).
When people are accused or wrongfully convicted, they fully maintain their rights to confrontation and appeal; but those rights come into play only after a person has been formally accused. They have always been irrelevant while the government is conducting an investigation, even of an ordinary crime. Why should things be any different in the case of a threat to national security, which is what the Patriot Act covers?
Sununu then hones in on the favorite targets of Patriot opponents: Section 215, the so-called "library records" provision, which actually doesn't mention libraries and allows the government access to a wide variety of business records and other evidence; and national-security letters (NSLs), which allow the FBI to compel information — "without the approval of a judge," Sununu darkly observes.
He neglects to note that federal prosecutors have for decades been fully empowered, in investigations of run-of-the-mill crimes like gambling and minor frauds, to issue grand-jury subpoenas, which can compel all the same evidence with absolutely no court supervision. There was no widespread abuse of these tactics prior to Patriot, just as there is no record of their being abused in the four years since Patriot sensibly extended them to national-security investigations.
Sununu claims that his problem with Section 215 and NSLs is that they can't be appealed and that recipients of government requests for information are subjected to "gag orders." That claim is misleading. The Justice Department has long taken the position that Section 215 orders can be appealed.
The proposed Patriot Act reauthorization not only formally creates a judicial-review process allowing a judge to modify or set aside flawed Section 215 orders or NSLs, but adds other protections as well: It loosens the nondisclosure requirements to facilitate court challenges; calls for "minimization procedures" that will limit the government's ability to retain and disseminate the intelligence collected; and provides for monitoring by an inspector general to make certain the authorities are being used properly.
On the basis of these misunderstandings, Sununu stands with Democrats blocking an up-or-down vote on the reauthorization. If Sununu and his Republican colleagues Larry Craig, Lisa Murkowski, and Chuck Hagel weren't giving Democrats cover, the Democrats probably wouldn't be able to maintain their near-unanimity on this politically perilous vote. What a shame.
http://www.nationalreview.com/editorial/editors200512161719.asp
Also, I am disgusted with the lock step opposition of the dems. It's delay for delays sake, meant to hurt the CIC, but possibly harming us all. That is pure vile partisanship, IMO.
BTW, I can't get the URL to work. I wanted to post a link.
Declare war. Do it right. This some of this some of that is due to having not declared war. While we are in a war because of being attacked, a lot of people don't get it because we are expected to keep acting like nothing is going on except our undeclared wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are undeclared, technically correct and by the book, but no declaration of war on our part. They should have declared war, it would have been easy at the time. Probably too late now, even though Congress keeps approving funds and the 403-3 shows intent.
That's your answer?! Yeah, that's right; me and Antonin Scalia (ever heard of him?) are just two liberal do-gooders. That's a really well thought out argument! In case you weren't aware of it, we have this little document called the Constitution - you buffoon. It's something that I swore to uphold while in the military, and if we don't like what it says, we need to change it. Was your attention span long enough to read all of my page and how I said I think we should pass a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning? Political speech, no matter how reprehesible we find it, needs to be protected. It's the speech that we find most unacceptable to our beliefs that we should fight hardest to protect, for one day, it might be our speech that's objected to. Just look at McCain-Feingold to see how the powers in DC, if given the chance, would love to shut us up. Or, people like you, who would just try to shout others down when you disagree with their opinions. But, we are not like the libs with their use of the activist courts to change the Constitution to slaughter unborn children. We are conservatives who believe that we amend the Constitution, as was designed by our Founders, when we feel it needs to be changed. Or wasn't that covered in your school by the time you obviously dropped out in the second grade? It seems that you are very much in the liberal tradition of being unable to make an argument against those with whom you disagree. You would rather just impugn a Senator's motives and race-bait while wearing your little white hood. Conservatives like you are not needed in the movement unless you have something more than attacking someone's ethnic heritage when they disagree with you on one law. I know him personally and he is a Patriot who I adamantly disagree with on this issue and have told him so face-to-face. He has done more for President Bush's agenda than the vast majority of Republican senators in Washington today. Check out his voting record, provided you have time between cross burnings.
Amen!
This was meant for you:
BTW, I see that you don't have the balls to create a page to say what you are FOR. Nope, just one of those petty little people who anonymously try to tear down those who step-up to the plate to serve their country. Nothing positive to say about yourself during the entire 3 years here on FR. Your silence on your page speaks volumes.
You are correct.
Is it always this difficult to pin you down when you lose a bet?
Exactly.
Okay. On whom should we declare it? A nation? A person or group? A concept?
Who?
yes
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Interesting. Other than Hagel, not the usual suspect RINOs.
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