General Defends Domestic Spying

This week, the Bush Administration hopes to make the American people passive enough to allow continued illegal domestic spying. He didn't mention that we don't have war powers in the constitution. We don't have emergency powers in the constitution either. What we do have is the fourth amendment, protecting us from unnecessary search and seizure (which brings up the patriot act, but that’s another story.) If any law were passed making domestic spying legal, it would be unconstitutional, and therefore illegal, no matter who defends it (which is why we can't let Alito on the Supreme Court, considering this moderate/right court did nothing about the Patriot Act). So what do you do to get the American people to forget about the constitution? 9/11, 9/11, 9/11. Take it away, general!

"Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States and we would have identified them as such," said Hayden, who now serves as principal deputy director of national intelligence.

First of all, you could have spied on Americans before 9/11 with the FISA courts. You just need a warrant. You can even spy without a warrant if it is an immediate concern. You just need a warrant within 72 hours. With these flexible laws, clearly a judge would allow spying on suspected terrorists! The only excuse is that we aren't spying only on terrorist suspects, or we're spying on so many damn people that threes no time for the courts (which means tons of non-terrorist).

More on Bush's defense tommorow.