Justice Birch, I Presume
Doing work at work?!? Garbage. If you were more of a lefty you could join a union and take a stand against that sort of occupational tyranny.
Boaz is absolutely correct--there is nothing divinely ordained about the balance of the court. But honestly, Bush supporters have no place criticizing the media at this junction in history. Conservatives have internalized the idea of "liberal" media bias, and no amount of factual deconstruction seems adequate to dislodge this faulty sense of victimization.
The two towering boogeymen haunting the collective subconscious of William F. Buckley's intellectual progeny--the New York Times and the Washington Post--couldn't do a better job of carrying water for the Bush Administration. The Times let it's star Washington bureau reporter publish an unverified stream of White House war propaganda. The Post just went to the mattresses defending the GOP's easily disproved Abrahamoff-containment talking point. And since these distortions come from "liberal" bastions like the Times and the Post, their impact is magnified many times over.
Besides, you should be grateful that the media's only anti-Alito focus is that he would disrupt the balance of the court, and not on more legitimate concerns--like the fact that he's an extremist wacko. The country is roughly 70% pro-choice, but for some reason (probably the liberal media), this man is being portrayed as a mainstream bulwark against "activist" judges. You're pro-choice, why do you support Alito?
Besides, the man is either crazy, or he's a liar. Alito is on record saying that the unitary executive theory "best captures the essence" of the Constitution. Right, and
The Family Guy best captures the essence of life in Rhode Island. "Unitary executive theory" is just a fancy way of saying that the President is above the law so long as he doesn't get his dick sucked. And don't get me wrong, Alito is fully entitled to believe that the President should be granted dictatorial power for the duration of his time in office. But he cannot do so and still pretend to be an "originalist". While we can't ever be sure exactly what the intent of the Framers' was, we can be sure that the unitary executive theory is roughly antithetical to it.
The fact that he's brilliant is irrelevant. Can you honestly tell me that you can't think of one person at Swarthmore who was fully decent at heart and chock full of intellectual firepower, but who you wouldn't want within 100 miles of the Supreme Court? I can think of a handful who were way too far left for my taste. Is there no potential for reciprocity?
"No man is above the law" -- Rep. Henry Hyde (1998)
Interesting. Where you see "tactical stupidity", I see mountains of circumstantial evidence. The President is up to no good, and I can prove it. At the end of the day, we really don't have to get into a technical debate on the 4th Amendment to know that what Bush is doing is wrong. Why? Because every single one of his explanations fails miserably.
The "NSA Program" has not made us any safer. "But we haven't been attacked since 9/11." Great, and this rock keeps tigers away. Besides, we have been attacked. If you don't consider what happened in London an attack on us, and on some level a failure of American leadership, you don't understand the nature of the war we're fighting. We're fighting a new kind of war.
Exposing this program has not, in any way shape or form, made the US less safe. Everyone worth their salt in a terrorist organization assumes they are being monitored. And anybody who's so stupid he needs a front page story on the NY Times to put two and two together wouldn't be worth monitoring in the first place. And on the off chance someone that stupid was worth monitoring, there was a 100% chance that the necessary warrants would have been approved.
It's also patently ridiculous to equate the Plame leak with this one. And forget about the disclosure of her identity for a minute. Dismantling a CIA front operation is serious business. The government can't exactly setup energy consultancies with offices in strategic countries around the world on a moment's notice. Especially ones which specialize in intercepting WMD on the black market. How many of those do you think we had before Novak sold what was left of his soul? Brewster Jennings was lost to an act of Benedict Rosenberg-magnitude treason.
Now, before we muddy the debate any further acknowledging the GOP's welcome embrace of moral relativism, I would like to clarify, as fact, that this NSA business
very obviously violates the "original intent" of the 4th Amendment. I mean, just read it...
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'
We both know I don't have your legal training, but I simply fail to see how the fact that they're not using the fruits of their "total information" campaign as evidence in criminal proceedings is the issue at hand. The current Republican interpretation of the 4th Amendment--that in the good old days a government acting in good faith could practice unfettered law enforcement until Earl Warren rode roughshod over the country on the back of a forked tongued dragon while smoking pot and drinking babies' blood--is a delusion with no roots whatsoever in the Constitution.
