I just received a quick email request from Jay to throw something up over at Stop the ACLU, so I thought I’d pull it over here and cross post it.

I’m getting bloody sick of this business, and I’ll tell you why. I was just writing a piece about CREW, which is one of the George Soros-funded organizations that he’s using as a leftwing hit squad against Republicans and Christians, no joke. And I came across a number of organizations that his Open Society Institute throws money at. Guess what. The ACLU got a whopping $250,000 “grant” from the Open Society Institute after 9/11, and is throwing obscene amounts of money at anti-war efforts. I guess he wants to help the terrorists.

Anyway, CREW, Human Rights Watch, D21, and a number of others are a part of the organizations that he’s funding in order to morph America into his idea of an ‘open society’ with completely ‘open borders’.

One of the initiatives that the left, democrats, CREW and the ACLU support is to object to the NSA’s “spying” of terror suspects. Because, you know, we’re concerned about their rights over those of law abiding citizens. This is a release from the ACLU’s website, the title of which is the title of this post,“ACLU Demands Update on Status of NSA Surveillance Program as Re-Authorization Deadline Passes (4/11/2007)”:

WASHINGTON - Following a crucial deadline for the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program, the American Civil Liberties Union today called on the administration to explain the status of the operation and urged Congress to fully investigate violations of the law.

Riiight. Like members of Congress, like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and others are law abiding citizens who are concerned with ‘violations of the law’. As I recall, Obama had a tidy little land deal with Rezko exposed by the Chicago Suntimes recently, and the carefully manufactured scandals of his republican opponents were what thrust this wet-behind the ears politician into the limelight. He says the land deal was a “mistake”, but his relationship with Axelrod and the part Axelrod has played in his rise to stardom remains to be fully explained. Hillary has her own “Chappaquidik”, among other things. Clinton submitted a false report with the FEC – for a fourth time – which hid Peter Frank Paul’s personal donation of a multi-million dollar Hollywood gala and fund-raiser that helped put her in office. So, neither one of these George Soros’-backed candidates are squeaky clean, and they are members of a tiny handful of George-Soros-picked politicos involved now in Washington politics, and both of them are running for President.

“Attorney General Gonzales needs to tell Congress and the public whether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has renewed orders authorizing NSA spying, and precisely what those orders authorize,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “We urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to demand the truth from Gonzales when he appears before that panel next Tuesday. Congress should insist that he release this information so Americans can know whether or not their phone conversations are private.”

Why do these people have such a problem with Gonzalez? First, he fires 8 US Attorneys and comes under criticism for it, when Janet Reno under Clinton fired all 93. I don’t remember this kind of kneejerk responses to their doing that, and that was a sweeping draconian move. They want to know precisely what those orders authorize so they can find something wrong with it, obviously. This is a case of the ACLU breathing down the necks of people who are just trying to do the next right thing, IMO. HRW and the rest of Soro’s lackies are not doing us any favors by flipping the laws around to protect the people we’re better off watching, putting in jail, or holding in prison. I like that. “Demand the truth from Gonzalez” as if he’s a liar. Notice that?

On January 17, 2007, the Justice Department announced that it had obtained approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in orders issued January 10, for the NSA’s wiretapping program. While it remains unclear whether this order was a programmatic, or wholesale approval, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, such orders are subject to review, or re-authorization, every 90 days. The orders were scheduled to expire on April 10, 2007.

As far as I can tell, every time these things are reauthorized, as is necessary to do, and which follows procedure completely, there is an automatic suspicion by the human rights groups and the ACLU that there’s something afoot, and that the republicans are lying.

The FISC has not released its January 10 orders despite a direct request from the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Justice Department has also refused to confirm whether the orders generally authorize the program as opposed to authorizing surveillance of individual persons based on probable cause. The ACLU said that generalized program warrants are unconstitutional and violate FISA.

We’d have to see what the documentation says, but of course the ACLU wants to proclaim that what the government is doing is ‘unconstitutional’! Being that they ignore our laws and try to incorporate International Law - which doesn’t recognize our right to defend ourselves, the ACLU’s claims should be held under close scrutiny as well.

The status of the FISA court orders is also at issue in the ACLU’s legal challenge to the NSA spying program, which is currently pending before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. A district court in Michigan declared the program unconstitutional in August 2006, and the government appealed that ruling.

As far as I know, and Jon Jay or ArrMatey could probably set me straight on this, the NSA wiretapping program is aimed at capturing communications by potential terrorists. I would assume that if you’re a 75-year-old swedish grandma in a wheelchair, you’ve got nothing to worry about. So whose rights is the ACLU propping here, and are they really looking to defend ‘civil rights’ and make America safer, like when they rush to the defense of NAMBLA? It would seem to me that the Judge who struck down the constitutionality of the program in 2006 was playing right into the hands of the ACLU with some judicial activism.

This reminds me of the examples Keith Timmerman gave on this at Frontpage Magazine. I’ll change it a bit to fit this scenario:

Two Arabic-speakers are discussing an imminent terrorist attack, as an NSA tape-recorder captures their conversation.

“All is now prepared,” says the first.

“Is everything in place?

“It is done. When do we attack?

“Be prompt. Plant the bomb at—“

The screen goes blank, and the narrator delivers the come-on: “This terrorist wiretap has been disconnected by THE ACLU.”

It really should be a no-brainer; when someone living outside the US and is a known terrorist suspect calls a number in the US, President Bush ordered the NSA to listen. It’s not just the ACLU that objects, but democrats like Alcee Hastings and Nancy Pelosi. They’ve all promised to put an end to it, and instead, require the NSA to get a warrant for each and every phone call or email or other communication they want to intercept.

Now think about the bureaucratic red tape they’re putting on something that could take just minutes before there’s a big BOOM! As Timmerman points out,

To get those warrants, the NSA will need to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court and prove “probable cause.” Hard to do, when the subject, as Dick Morris points out, is “the bridge in the Godzilla movie.”

How do you go to a judge and say, we think this gentleman in Brooklyn is potentially conspiring to commit at terrorist act because we heard him talking about “the bridge in the Godzilla movie”?

As it turns out, that is a real case. The terrorists were referring to the Brooklyn bridge. When the NSA figured that out, they phoned the NYPD, who flooded the bridge with cops.

“Then they picked up in their intercept it’s too hot to work on the Brooklyn Bridge,” Morris said. Because of the intercept, and the quick reaction by the NYPD, the terrorists were forced to abandon the plot.

The world of real-time intelligence moves almost as fast as the electrons that convey messages over phone lines. The problem is not so much that the FISA court won’t approve terrorist-suspect wiretaps, but the incredible amount of time it takes to pull together the application.

FBI agents just roll their eyes when asked about FISA applications. They can take weeks, even months to compile. “The last thing you want is to go to the court and have your application turned down,” one FBI special agent told me.

But instead, we’ve got…

ACLU attorneys today are filing papers with the Sixth Circuit to seek the unsealing of classified submissions by the government in the case last week. Because the submissions coincide with the expiration of the January FISA orders, the ACLU assumes the filings pertain to the status of those orders. The government has previously relied on the new FISA orders to urge the court to dismiss the case.

More time wasted in bureaucratic bumbling. This reminds me of the keystone cops, and it can only help our enemies move around with greater confidence inside the United States.

“If the factual basis for the government’s argument for dismissal has now changed, the government has an obligation to make any relevant new facts and arguments available to the plaintiffs and the public,” said Ann Beeson, ACLU Associate Legal Director.

Because the president is still claiming the “inherent authority” to engage in warrantless eavesdropping, the ACLU said, there is an urgent need for the court to rule so that the President cannot continue to violate the law.

Back in 2006, Bernie Saunders, the self-described Democratic Socialist from Vermont, vowed he would put an end to the NSA spying program. He was joined by the ACLU and the *Center for Constitutional Rights who together filed an amicus brief in two federal courts reviewing challenges to the warrantless wiretapping program in Detroit and New York.

Keith Timmerman points out in his article from November of 2006 that both lawsuits demanded the NSA terrorist surveillance program be ended. Leading the charge was John Conyers, who now heads up the House Judiciary committee. You can bet we haven’t seen the end of this. And I don’t think we need to wonder very long how this is going to affect our ability to pursue terrorists on our own soil.

I don’t think the American people were looking for changes like this that would affect their safety at home when they voted for a ‘new direction in Iraq’ and got the democrats a majority.

This is just a taste of things to come.

It’s been pointed out that John Conyer’s role in impeaching Bush as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee will become more apparent as time rolls on. This is nasty business, and they’re playing to take the President down.

Timmerman reminded us back in 2006 that …[t]he Democrat plan – such as it is – will gut this and other programs needed to fight terrorists, capture terrorists, and interrogate terrorists, to prevent attacks against Americans and on American soil.

Boom!

* Founded by pro-Castro radicals
Opposes post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) was co-founded in November 1966 by the radical attorneys Morton Stavis, Ben Smith, Arthur Kinoy, and William Kunstler, longtime members of the Communist and radical left. (Kinoy and Kuntsler were well known for their pro-Castro politics.) CCR characterizes itself as an organization that “uses litigation proactively to advance the law in a positive direction, to guarantee the rights of those with the fewest protections and least access to legal resources.”