[Howlin]

I think George Will and Peggy Noonan need to stop putting pen to paper.

[pissant]

George Will has been nothing short of unimpressive for many years. He bores me to tears, and his intelectualism does not translate to common sense.

[G Larry]

McCarthy shreads EVERY facet of Will's contentions!

[FairOpinion]

Andrew C. McCarthy writes excellent, factual articles.

I am glad he decided to write this one, blowing George Will's accusations out of the water completely.

[lepton]

I don't know if you want to read variants of things you wrote on, but here is one from NRO.

[jwalsh07]

And for all Will's bombast about the Constitution's plain language and structure, it is difficult to imagine anything that would have been more startling to those who crafted our fundamental law than the suggestion that the president of the United States needs a federal judge's permission to intercept the international communications of a wartime enemy that seeks, above all else, to mount a massive attack against the homeland.

Thwack!

[AZRepublican]

Some good points here, and some bad points. I'll just add that the framers considered the President as commander-in-chief to possess inferor powers of state governors during peace.

[Doe Eyes]

But he's wrong. For example, the Constitution does not empower Congress to ratify treaties. The president ratifies treaties (as well as makes them); "Congress" has no role at all

Regarding the Executive Branch, the Constitution says "He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur"

FYI, the Senate is part of our Congress.

[Buckhead]

Will's article is the work of a legal illiterate. It is a card-castle of factual and legal misrepresentations. It is Will's argument that we can kill al Qaeda, we just can't listen to their phone calls, because that would be monarchical and dictatorial, and be a constitutional crisis, yada, yada.

Well, we got a two-fer with that guy we smoked in Yemen with the Predator. We were listening to his phone call when we sent a Hellfire up his butt. Which was worse, George?

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Excellent article...surely the Supreme Court sees the constitution as described here....if not we are in a heap of trouble.

[DB]

I don't understand why anyone would think they have a absolute right to privacy on an international phone call. Particularly to a known terrorist country.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting.

Interesting, informative, educational. Great article.

[IrishMike]

Another great Andy Mc Carthy piece

[p23185]

Checked and Unbalanced - George Will’s diatribe against the NSA program is meritless.

Receieved this via e-mail this morning:

According to reports in today’s Washington Post, Congress appears ready to abandon its oversight responsibility with regard to the Executive Branch’s NSA spying program. Don’t let them fold! We wrote you yesterday about our four-point plan to secure our nation’s checks and balances, and one pillar of that plan is oversight. While a special prosecutor (demanded by the petition we launched yesterday) would support two other pillars – transparency and accountability – oversight from Congress is an absolutely essential check on presidential power. We are asking you to call some unusual targets: Republican Leadership and Committee Chairs. The bottom line is that these men, listed below, will decide whether or not Congress fulfills its constitutional duties. If they choose to duck their responsibility, they must do so with the full knowledge that they are acting against the wishes of the American people. That’s why you must call. The final pillar of our campaign, after all, is public vigilance. Whether you call members of Congress regularly or even if you’ve never called a member of Congress before, pick up the phone and dial through this short list of four members – tell them you expect the United States Congress to live up to its oversight responsibilities and conduct a thorough investigation, including in-depth hearings, about the possible illegal activity taking place in the Executive Branch. If you want other talking points, visit http://www.pfaw.org/go/NSATalkingPoints. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Pat Roberts: 202-224-4774 House Intelligence Committee Chair Peter Hoekstra: 202-225-4401 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist: 202-224-3344 Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert: 202-225-2976 Please tell us how your calls went by visiting http://pfaw.kintera.org/CallReport; we are curious to hear what these offices are telling the calling public. -- Your Allies at People For the American Way

[inquest]

Anomalously, Will finds warrantless searches in wartime of possible enemy commands to launch a strike that could kill countless thousands of Americans to be an exercise in despotism.

And of course this fool says this right after he accuses Will of engaging in "hyperbole". Will's column never condemned the idea launching warrantless searches. Here's what he actually wrote:

Immediately after Sept. 11, the president rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication. Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls -- the kind the Sept. 11 terrorists made.

Now either Andrew McCarthy is a liar or he just plain can't read.

The administration's position, and the program, is pertinent to governance in the field of foreign relations. In that field, whether Will likes it or not, the president has primacy — primacy of the same sort the Supreme Court enjoys in interpreting the Constitution and Congress in funding governmental operations.

And the obvious implication from that statement is that the President gets to decide just how far the field of "foreign policy" extends. That of course was Will's central point, and predictably enough, McCarthy completely neglected to address it.

[plain talk]

The only reason any of us ever gave Will any notice at all is because on these liberal-laced talking heads show he often seemed somewhat more coherent and reasonable than Cokie and the other liberal bozo's. I never considered Will much of a conservative.