The NSA and Unfortunate Americans

i want to take a stab at this NSA "scandal" that has been in the media for the past few weeks because i heard a great analogy today about the circumstances.

a caller into the Sean Hannity show made the point that even if the persons on one end of a terrorist phone call tapped by the NSA was an american citizen, that person is not the one being spied on--it is the terrorist on the other end. so, the NSA is not maliciously looking for American citizens (or citizens at all, just persons residing either in the U.S. and placing terrorist calls overseas or terrorist calls coming into the United States. this is the point that frustrates me the most about the Democrats is they constantly harp that this program was "spying on American citizens" and that is CATEGORICALLY FALSE. They are the one's LYING on that, shouldn't they be impeaced?) but none-the-less, these phone calls that were intecepted were not tapped because a malicious intent, they were tapped so the NSA could gather information from the terrorist calling to either spread information or confirm plans or something relating to terrorist operations. THAT is the reason the phone calls were intercepted and IF, and that is a big if, IF some, poor unfortunate, innocent American citizen was heard through that action in defense of the country, then they have nothing to worry about if they were innocent, because the action taken was not to listen to the American--it was to listen to the terrorist and the American or other person on the line happened to be just another victim of the terrorist and not an "imperial presidency."

i had the very fortunate opportunity as a freshman in college to talk to a CIA employee five months after the attacks on 9-11 and a person in my group asked the question: "Has the United States stopped other terrorist attacks from occuring in the country?" The briefer simply replied: "Yes." and moved onto another question. that to me is reassuring, and honestly, i don't really care how the United States stopped them, all i know, and i believe all the American people want to know is that their government is doing everything that it can to stop the terrorists. and if Bush did go through the very public debates of changing the law, then it would most certainly become public much sooner and the terrorists could adapt that much quicker.

another point on this wiretap issues stems from the Alito conirmation hearings. some Democrat was asking the question yesterday about this particular issue and Alito went into this elloquent description of the evolution "property law" and the protection of "personal property" and how before the expectation was that one had a reasonable expectation to be secure in their property (home, etc.) and this was the standard for giving warrants--that there had to be reasonable expectation about event occuring on that property. but as technology has advanced that definition has been expanded from being secure in one's property but being secure in one's person.

hypothetical situation:

suppose you are a policeman patrolling a steet and you see a person break into a house. the lights instantaneuosly come on and you see sillouhettes struggling in the window. in order to protect and preserve the peace, as an officer of the law, you are going to rush into that house and first off, defend the person(s) whose house is being broken into. secondly, you are going to attempt to apprehend the subject. yet, if the subject has a gun it might be necessary for you to either draw to defend yourself and the person's home but to also, possibly shoot the suspect. now, is the person whose home was just broken into going to sue for invasion of privacy? they might, anything is certainly possible, but more often than not, the are going to thank you for saving their life and their family and offer you a beer.

now also, as this officer you are not going to see the person break into the house and then call in on the radio and request that they wake a judge to sign a search warrant so you can set foot on this person's property to pursue the bandit. the police have an obligation to protect "life and limb" and my do so without search warrants.

so does the President of the United States. he has the obligation, as it is in his oath of office, to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America." the Constitution gives Congress the power to provide for Militia's in defense of the United States and to protect her from "invaders." Article II then provides that the President is the Commander-in-Cheif of the Militia. So clearly, he can use any means necessary to defend the United States.

Case solved. The American people see this. Bush's poll numbers are 46%!!