My column this weekend is about the Protect America Act that Bush is pushing through Congress. It is an egregious piece of legislation for which both parties seem determined to make into law. As I say in the column, it should be renamed the "Use the Fourth Amendment as Toilet Paper" Act, for it just obliterates any semblance of accountability and constitutional restraint. It's a law more suited to dictatorship than democracy.
I'm sure there will be some who think this column goes to far. But frankly, there wasn't room to show just how far outside the Constitution this act really goes.
Here is one example that I didn't include:
In rejecting the Feinstein "exclusivity" amendment to the FISA revision considered on the Senate floor today -- an amendment that failed by a vote of 57 Ayes to 41 Noes, thanks to another "painless filibuster" of precisely the type we were promised would not be tolerated on this bill -- the Senate has voted to say that although they were passing a law governing surveillance, it was OK if the President decided that he really didn't like the law very much and wished to make up his own instead.
Exclusivity -- the purpose of the amendment that "failed" -- meant simply this: that the law they were passing was the law, and it was the governing authority for how surveillance could be conducted in America.
The Senate just rejected it, so that means that they're passing a law, but if a president decides later on that he thinks there's really some other controlling authority besides the law, that's OK.
For Bush, this gives him blanket amnesty for God knows what crimes he has committed in office. It's an assault on the American public that doesn't deserve to see the light of day, much less a place in the law books.
For anything you ever wanted to know about this act and government spying, there is no better source than Glenn Greewald.
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Amendments of the Constitution
I would assume by what I read in his column that Mr. Caraway is passionate about the meaning the of the Constitution as it partains to the 4th Admendment..I wonder if he is as addament about the the 1st and 2nd as well. Where is the passion when Congress is assailing the 1st with the diatribe against talk radio or the 2nd with the right to keep and bear arms? Maybe Mr. Caraway supports some of the Admendments but not all.
Yes, all the amendments
I'm assuming you are talking about some attempts to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. No, I'm not in favor of that. It was pretty stupid at the time, and nowadays wouldn't have any effect since it will only apply to airwave communications which are being phased out.
I'm a gun owner and hunter. I've also read the entire 2nd Amendment, including that part about the well-organized militia so many people seem to forget about. The unfettered right to own a gun is not spelled out by the 2nd Amendment. If you would like that right to be absolute, then I suggest calling your congressman to get him to sponsor an amendment that does make it absolute.