…against political opponents.

A federal judge has ordered Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) to pay over $1 million in legal bills incurred by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a long-running battle between the two lawmakers over a leaked 1996 phone call.
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The dispute grew out of a illegally recorded December 1996 phone call between House Republican leaders looking to spin an ethics case against then Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). A Florida couple improperly taped the call, and the tape was eventually given to McDermott, then ranking member on the House ethics committee. McDermott leaked the tape to the press in order to demonstrate that Republicans were not abiding by their promise not to interfere with the Gingrich case, but the resulting media uproar led to McDermott’s decision to step down from the ethics panel.

Democrats support wiretapping for political gain, but oppose it in defense of our nation.

That would be the same Jim McDermott who was a guest of Saddam Hussein’s in Baghdad to oppose the American military prior to the war.

And then to further prove what an idiot McDermott is, check out how he spun the million dollar verdict against him:

“This has been a long and costly battle but, in the final analysis, the judgment handed down today in the U.S. District Court is a small price to pay in defense of so fundamental a principle, and freedom, as the First Amendment,” McDermott said. “Because of this protracted legal challenge, the First Amendment is stronger today, and shielded by new case law that will buttress its capacity to protect the publication of truthful information on matters of public importance long into the future. Knowing this, I am proud of my role in defense of the First Amendment.”

No, Baghdad Jim, you weren’t defending the First Amendment, you were trashing it… which is why you’re a million dollars lighter today. Logic like his means we should be thanking Ted Bundy for defending homicide laws.

Get ready, it looks like it’s time to impeach the entire Congress. At least that’s what I would expect after both chambers voted to make the NSA wiretap program law.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Afterall, Zogby told us that a majority of Americans supported impeachment for the program.

Democrat Senator Jim Webb, in March of this year, called the program a “seriously under-examined issue” and demanded we “restore simple accountability to our government.” This past week, he voted to codify the program.

Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein said of the program in May

“There is one basic in all of this. And that is that domestic surveillance of Americans, regardless of who is on one end of the phone or where they are, must be by individual warrant by a court on a showing of probable cause. That’s the exclusive standard in FISA. The Administration has chosen to disregard this law. For the life of me, I do not understand why.”

And then she voted to make the program legal.

I guess they were just mad they didn’t get any of the credit for the Bush administration’s tough stance on terrorists… so they had to act quickly before the next printing of campaign materials went out…

IMPROPER: Using wiretaps to spy on potential terrorists in an effort to obtain information that could protect innocent Americans.
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PROPER: Using wiretaps to spy on former business partners to try and catch them breaching non-compete agreements.
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Well, not when their side is doing it.

There’s an interesting underlying story to this week’s news of American intelligence agencies spying on Princess Diana.

American intelligence agencies were bugging Princess Diana’s telephone over her relationship with a US billionaire, the Mail’s sister paper has learned.

Evening Standard reports that she was even forced to abandon a planned holiday with her sons in the US with tycoon Teddy Forstmann on advice from secret services, who passed on their concerns to their British counterparts.

Sources suggest they not only bugged phones, but also planted listening devices on Forstmann’s plane… which Diana frequently used. And the NSA is saying Diana wasn’t the target.

So who is Teddy Forstmann? It just so happens he’s a Republican businessman in New York and one-time potential political opponent of then-President’s wife, Hillary Clinton. And, of course, there is zero outrage from the same liberals who carried on and on about a surveillance program designed to monitor communications with suspected terrorists.

Even the cesspool of liberal idiocy has only one thread about the story… with less than 10 responses… and none overly concerned about this “illegal invasion of privacy and first step toward fascism”…

So for those of you keeping score at home:

Intelligence agencies under Republican President monitoring communications of potential terrorists = PROBLEM

Intelligence agencies under Democrat President monitoring communications of political rivals = NO PROBLEM

Looks like the Carter-appointed judge was just a little too cozy with one of the plaintiffs.

According to her 2003 and 2004 financial disclosure statements, Judge Diggs Taylor served as Secretary and Trustee for the Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan (CFSEM). She was reelected to this position in June 2005. The official CFSEM website states that the foundation made a “recent grant” of $45,000 over two years to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan, a plaintiff in the wiretapping case.

Talk about your all-time forum-shopping success stories. Normally, plaintiffs are just looking for a judge who may rule favorably… but rarely do you get to take your case before a judge who’s granted money to your cause.

Judge Diggs Taylor sided with the ACLU of Michigan in her recent decision.

Of course she did.

From the Washington comPost:

The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.

A slightly larger majority–66 percent–said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.

These current findings are consistent with a poll taken 6 months ago. The ironic thing about this whole pretend scandal is that the same people who are voicing opposition and mock-concern over this “law breaking program” are the same idiots that came out swinging shortly after 9/11 asking “what did the President know, and when did he know it?”

By the way, the reason a majority of Americans support this type of surveillance program… is because it works.

Don’t expect to hear this story promoted throughout the world of MSM. (hat tip: Ian)

A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president’s constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
“If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now,” said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. “I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute.”

Now imagine if the panel had declared that they thought Bush acted illegally. Do you think MSM would treat the story the same?

Me neither.

Professor Joseph Knippenberg has a good analysis of the Senatorial silliness during Attorney General Gonzales’ interrogation and why the NSA program is not only legal, but why not having it might be a dereliction of duty. Here’s a portion:

You may be familiar with the Administration’s legal and Constitutional defense of its limited - I repeat, limited - warrantless surveillance program, but in case you’re not, let me summarize it briefly. In undertaking the surveillance of communications between suspected al-Qaeda operatives outside the U.S. and persons within our borders, the President relies upon the following authorities: his inherent executive power, which is extensive, albeit not unlimited, when it comes to protecting national security from credible threats; and the Authorization to Use Military Force, passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. If the President is authorized to shoot at the bad guys, he’s also authorized, by reasonable implication, to discover who and where they are.

Properly understood, the two purported restrictions on his authority - the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures - do not actually do so. As the Attorney General contends in his opening statement, FISA prohibits persons from intentionally “engag[ing] in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute.” The AUMF is such a statute, permitting, if need be, warrantless surveillance. Furthermore, a limited program of warrantless surveillance may be an effective - indeed, the only effective - means of identifying those properly called evildoers (or perhaps potential evildoers, if they belong to a sleeper cell). As such, the program amounts to a reasonable, as opposed to unreasonable, method of search and seizure; it passes the Fourth Amendment test.

How can we take Rep. Jane Harman (CA.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, seriously when she says, “In my view, failure to provide briefings to the full congressional intelligence committees is a continuing violation of the National Security Act,” when the reality is that “Congressional intelligence committees have known about this program for years“? In fact, “the program expires every 45 days and is only reauthorized upon recommendations of intelligence officials and only if they determine that Al Qaeda continues to pose a threat to America” yet “During the course of these briefings, no members of this Congress asked that this program be discontinued.”

How can we take liberal groups like the ACLU seriously when they accuse the President of “lying to the American people and breaking the law” with respect to the NSA program, when they didn’t accuse Bill Clinton of being a criminal for “Project Echelon“:

…a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched.

Kennedy argued that such a program raises the risk that terrorists go free if the evidence against them is obtained via a program not sanctioned by law.

Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S.

Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and railway stations, and the terrorists’ goal, he said, was to exceed the devastation caused by 9/11.

Italian authorities stepped up their internal surveillance programs after July’s terrorist bombings in London. Their domestic wiretaps picked up phone conversations by Algerian Yamine Bouhrama that discussed terrorist attacks in Italy and abroad.

If they don’t pay a political price for this in the Fall, we may all pay the price soon thereafter.

Since the lawsuit was filed in U.S. Federal Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, where I practice, I’ve already been contacted by concerned U.S. citizens who wish to intervene in the case as interested parties (whose interests and welfare are affected by this case) in support of the government’s activities. And we may do so. You may feel free to contact me regarding this if you are interested in adding your name.