Another Patriot Activist Judge, and My Acts of Condemnation
“For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law — with unparalleled success. A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised.”
–U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, explaining her ruling to strike down two provisions of the Patriot Act.
The Bush admin’s response was that it “will consider all our options” in responding to the ruling.
In other words, nothing is off the table. Say your prayers, Oregon: it’s time to bust your bunkers. First legal pot, then legal suicide, now this.
By the way, this was all occasioned by some classic numbnuts intel from our friends at Fumble-Bumble-Investigation:
Aiken’s ruling came in the case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain. The FBI used its expanded powers under the Patriot Act to secretly search Mayfield’s house and law office, copy computer files and photos, tape his telephone conversations, and place surveillance bugs in his office…
Note to Congress: This is the second federal judge who has found serious constitutional flaws in your legislation. Would it be considered irrational of me to expect that you might turn your attention to fixing the numerous holes in Patriot, or are you simply too busy writing acts of condemnation on an organization of three million that buys newspaper ads? As Geoffrey Stone explains in today’s HuffPost:
As the Supreme Court has often and clearly explained, the First Amendment embodies “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” The MoveOn.org ad is well within the bounds of this fundamental constitutional protection and well within the long tradition in this nation of challenging our public officials — military as well as civilian.
That a Democratic Congress has descended to these petty and contemptible depths should open a lot of eyes to the fundamental impotence of the two-party system in the modern political world.
So guess who deserves an act of condemnation, Congress? Check the mirror, boys and girls. The acts of condemnation should be written by the citizens of the United States against Congress:
“for playing fast and loose with our Constitution, rewriting its basic protections with little or no debate (and, in the case of Patriot, without even bothering to read the goddamned thing), we the people of the USA hereby condemn and deplore Congress–Democrats and Republicans alike (and you too, Joe). Neither activist judges nor activist liberals have betrayed America–Congress has. You are a bunch of disgusting, weak, mewlish failures. We therefore condemn you.”
