Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness

So It's Come To This

It appears from our intercepts that little Timmy is doing poorly in math, has a crush on Ms. Johnson, the Social Studies teacher, and has an elaborate plan to pistol-whip visiting United Nations dignitaries.

Everbody loves warrantless wiretaps done against American subjects (I presume) by government agencies who are supposed to be operating in non-domestic settings! Say, where are the Fourth Amendment strict constructionists? We'll find out in a moment.

The only thing you can say to justify this maneuver (known by media outlets a year ago, but held so as not to compromise investigations ruin the election and/or squander the President's political capital) is "Well, the Constitution is not a suicide pact," a Civil War reference. I may not have watched the Ken Burns documentary on the War Between the States all the way through, or at all, but the term "suicide" is very literal in that context. Something about hundreds of thousands of enemy troops actually parading through your territory and the capitol being potentially occupied by a hostile power. The Constitution is an authoritarian inconvenience pact.

After all, you could be relatively sure that crime would be reduced to zero if there was a nationwide curfew at sundown and anybody found outside was shot on sight. We could reduce the threat of Islamic extremism if everybody was subjected to high-tech polygraph tests concerning their religious beliefs and anybody who was found to be a Muslim was quarantined. Oh come on, like they didn't have those ideas in their heads already.

So it's time to find out where the dividing line is for Administration apologists, using the magic of Memeorandum rather than direct links:

Shorter Instapundit: This is very confusing, if not troubling, given that the secret wiretap court always seems to approve these wiretaps. This is somebody you have a scintilla of a sliver of a chance of reasoning with. In addition, Jon Henke and Q & O gives a historical breakdown using the previously attempted ECHELON project, when we were Cold Warriors and the roles were reversed (sorry I was lazy with the summary the last time, Jon).

Shorter Powerline / Hugh Hewitt: Please arrest anybody who leaked anything about this illegal activity, and revisit the Supreme Court ruling granting immunity to reporters who report leaks about illegal activity. I feel a shiver of non-safeness. Please comfort me! This is somebody who is fascist scum and an apologist for anti-Constitutional activity.

There's only one way to scare the craven apologists in Category II: remind them of the very real possibility of a Hillary Clinton presidency in 2008 with unlimited powers against perceived terrorists, foreign and domestic. You mean you believed that all of those executive orders magically expire when your anointed security sock-puppet exits the White House as the worst executive ever?

Then think about that guy you used to see at the gun show passing out literature about his plan to abolish the IRS, and how he just kind of disappeared a couple of months ago. I had a mental picture of that big fat redneck that replaced Lamont in the Sanford series, but it appears he's gone corporate and slimmed down. And another important comment thread pre-sabotaged. Rise above it.

UPDATE: Apparently, there's a cloture vote on a proposed filibuster on the sham conference committee compromise on the PATRIOT Act reauthorization, according to Senator Feingold (who may have the bipartisan votes to block, and who is outraged by the revelations in the New York Times story).

UPDATE to the UPDATE: And cloture fails (or Feingold wins).

UPDATE 2: "This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration," said [Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies at George Washington University] "It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans." Congratulations to the President on this auspicious first!