For example, it is well-known that the Ku Klux Klan would deny liberty to blacks, Jews, and Catholics, among others. Yet in rallying people to their cause, they speak of defending their freedoms. Now any who would defend liberty can be discounted as fellow travelers, tarred by association.

This rhetorical identification allows those who would expand their power at the expense of liberty greater discretion. You don’t really want to be like them, do you?

Take, for example, Michelle Malkin, who has been a vocal and enthusiastic proponent of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act but is now, finally, concerned that her liberty might be at risk. I’m not alone in seeing the irony in this.

It would, however, be a crying shame if the people whose party was until recently the token opposition conveniently forgot their defense of liberty now that they are in power.

“Well, I believe there is somebody out there who watches over us.”

“Unfortunately it’s the government.”

I feel a note from an enraged parent coming on.

In what I hope is not a quixotic exercise, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has brought suit, Jewel v. National Security Agency, et al.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today [September 18, 2008] on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance.

Oh, wait, those aren’t current movies.

In an otherwise interesting post, Jeff Jarvis writes

“It so happens that I agree with Obama on this issue (and I know my view is as unpopular as his). When government forces you do to something then that force must come with immunity. The problem is not the telcos going along but the government making the demand and there being no check on that. But that’s a different debate.”

There was no force. There was willing participation without a warrant. Contrast with Qwest, which refused. The remaining telecommunication providers went along because it was their Patriotic Duty, even though their participation was illegal without a warrant. If there was force, it was a kind peculiar to regulatory regimes: trading dirty deeds for FCC merger approval.

There was a check, even if a pathetic one of Top Secret paperwork known only by handful of amenable judges. The administration ignored it.

The revisions supplant that paperwork check with an even flimsier one, the ipse dixit clause, which lets the Executive do anything as long as the Executive says the Executive says it is ok.

That’s not a check. That’s a blank check.

Thank you for your thoughtful and considered response to the concerns expressed in my mail of February 15th this year. Unfortunately, I read this evening that the House passed a compromise bill (H.R. 6304) that contained language permitting the Executive and abetting telecommunication firms to escape responsibility for their actions over the past seven years, as well as granting permission to this and future Executives to peak into our bedroom windows, listen to our most intimate conversations, and learn far to much of our habits without the simple pleasure of a warrant.

Thank you for voting against this bill. I do wish that your fellow members of Congress would show the intestinal fortitude necessary to defend Liberty from Power these days. Perhaps your party’s presumptive nominee for President might remind the Senate that these additional powers are unnecessary and undesirable — and that the citizens of this great Nation do not desire that the Executive enjoy them.

Regards,

C. William Cox, Jr.

Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government’s way of showing “fairness,” of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? … All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday.

She also has a suggestion for Barack Obama.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court. “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”

I’m not sure what interest the State has in compelling schooling, but I am sure that I have an interest in not being compelled.