And Rightly So!

Edward Kennedy needs to have his staff fast check his little pieces of gossip he spreads around, via Op/Ed in today’s Boston Globe (the newspaper of local liberals).

THE PRESIDENT is not above the law; he is not King George. Yet, with sorrow, we are now learning that in this great land we have an administration that has refused to follow well-crafted, longstanding procedures that require the president to get a court order before spying on people within the United States. With outrage, we learn that this administration believes that it does not have to follow the law of the land.

Not just above the law, this administration seems to be saying that it IS the law. It contends that it can decide on its own what the law is, how to interpret it, and whether or not it has to follow it. I believe that such an arrogant and expansive view of executive power would have sent chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers — as it does for every American hearing these startling revelations today.

The president, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the attorney general tell us that the president can order domestic spying inside this country — without judicial oversight — under his power as commander in chief. Really? Where do they find that in the Constitution? Time and time again, this president has used his express, but limited, constitutional power to command the military to justify controversial activities — after the fact.

The president is the commander in chief of the military. That doesn’t give him the power to spy on civilians at home without any judicial oversight whatsoever, without ever revealing those activities to even well-established courts that review these matters in secrecy. Otherwise, every phone and computer in America should now come with a warning label: Warning: the privacy of your communications can no longer be guaranteed, by order of President Bush.

That warning wouldn’t bother me one bit. I’ve always assumed the government has access to everything anyway.

The last couple paragraph’s of Teddy’s ranting bullshit:

Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Manifesto. Following his professor’s instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government’s watch list.

Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home — after you request a book from the library.

Then I read this and thought, Kennedy needs to verify his information, before this stuff becomes urban legend. (Maybe that is what he wants.)

Reports that a University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth student was visited by federal agents after requesting the Chinese communist manifesto through an interlibrary loan have sparked an international Internet war over freedom of speech and charges of planted stories.
The Standard-Times of New Bedford reported Saturday that a student, whom they declined to name, was visited at his New Bedford home two months ago after requesting Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Two of his UMass professors told the paper the agents told the student the tome was on a “watch list.”The story quickly became Internet fodder, sending and army of bloggers into a frenzy and prompting reporters from all over the country to try to contact school and newspaper officials.
Complicating matters has been the student, who so far has refused to talk. Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail A. Marcinkiewicz said she has been unable to find evidence that FBI agents visited the student.
“We don’t have interest in what people read,” she added.
UMass-Dartmouth is investigating and has interviewed the student but denied in a statement having any contact with federal agents. The book was requested from UMass-Amherst.