Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, disdains the Bill of Rights.
'In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way
of life was at risk, we’re all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a
letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from
the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make
sure they were not tipping off the enemy. If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I
don’t think it is … The First Amendment right to speak is sacrosanct, but it has
limits. In World War II, our population understood that
what we say in letters could be used against [us by] our enemies. It was
designed to protect us and ensure that we would have First Amendment
rights because under the Japanese and Nazi regime, they weren’t that big
into the First Amendment. We don’t need to censor the mail, but we do
need to find out what the enemy’s up to.'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, 10 June 2013
Unfuckingbelievable. He doesn't 'think' censoring the mail is necessary, but if it ever becomes so, then screw the Constitution.
Since he has no problem with what the United States did during World War II, presumably, he would have no problem with rounding up all American Muslims, interning them, and stealing their property.
Unfortunately, this isn't the only recent glimpse of Senator Graham's 'totalitarian temptation.' In 2011, he said:
'General Petraeus sent a statement out to all news organizations yesterday, urging our government to ban Koran burning.
Free speech probably allows that, but I don’t like that...That bothers me; I have
been one of the chief sponsors of legislation against burning the flag. I
don’t like the idea that these people picket funerals of slain
servicemen. If I had my way, that wouldn’t be free speech. So there are a
lot of things under the guise of free speech that I think are harmful
and hateful…When General Petraeus wants us to say something because our troops are
at risk, I’m glad to help. I don’t believe that killing someone is an
appropriate reaction to burning the Koran, the Bible, or anything else,
like I said Sunday; but those who believe that free speech allows you to
burn the flag, I disagree. Those who want free speech to allow you to
go to a funeral and picket a family, and giving more misery to their
lives than they have already suffered, I disagree. And if I could do
something about behavior that puts our troops at risk, I would. But in
this case, you probably can’t. It’s not about the Koran; it’s about
putting our troops at risk. And I think all of us owe the troops the
support we’re capable of giving.'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, interview with National Review, 3 April 2011
The fact that General Petraeus asked for no such thing matters not. Lindz has a totalitarian itch and the 'good' Senator has to scratch it.
As Allahpundit opined, 'Look at the way he frames the calculus on mail-censoring: It’s not a
matter of privacy rights versus security interests, it’s a matter simply
of whether censorship is necessary — yet — to protect those security
interests. It isn’t, so congrats. The government doesn’t get to read
your mail. Yet. What he’s really proposing is a permanent, gradually but perpetually
expanding surveillance state. I think maybe that’s why he seems so
unconflicted about this — he’s already accepted the end state, so why
sweat the individual incremental steps?'
And, that's just for starters...
'Nobody said anything to me when I said that you can’t burn the flag.
People say that is free speech, but I don’t agree. What I was saying is,
if I could hold people accountable, I would. But I know that we can’t. I
just don’t like the idea of free speech being used as a reason to put
our troops at risk.'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, interview with National Review, 3 April 2011
In other words, you must surrender to censorship for national security. Democrats say, 'Do it for the children!' If you refuse to cede more of your liberty and fruit of your labour, you want children to suffer. Republicans say, 'Do it for the troops!' In other words, if you refuse to give up your civil liberties, you - quite obviously, apparently - you want the terrorists to win. Both are risible.
'If you start talking about individual acts of religious intolerance,
the amendment doesn’t make any sense. It does make sense, to me, to
focus on the symbol of the country, the flag. I’m not proposing that we
propose a ban on religious disagreement. I am saying that you can
disagree with America; you can disagree with me, but don’t burn the one
symbol that holds us together. That’s not an act of speech. They say
that is symbolic speech, but I think that is a destructive act. It’s the
one thing that unites us.
Yet when it comes to regulating what individual churches may do, or
what individual citizens may do under the guise under religion, you are
not going to be able to write a constitutional amendment to ban those
practices. There is no way to do that. I wish we could hold people accountable for their actions, but under free speech, you can’t.'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, interview with National Review, 3 April 2011
He almost sounds like Obama when the latter muses about being a dictator, who can do whatever he wants. Undoubtedly, if Obama told Graham that only martial law would save the Constitution ('We have to abandon Constitutional principles in order to save the Constitution' or something) and the country, Lindz would be one of the first to say, 'Can the man get another 'AMEN!'?'
Only last week, Senator Graham said:
'I’m a Verizon customer. I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the
government if the government is going to make sure that they try to
match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States. I
don’t think you’re talking to the terrorists. I know you’re not. I know
I’m not. So we don’t have anything to worry about.'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, Politico, 6 June 2013
He sounds exactly like one of King George III's minions in the colonies. 'Look, we have a Warrant of Assistance. We can go door-to-door and search the premises whenever we like, whether we have probable cause or even a reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing. If you aren't doing or storing anything wrong, then you have nothing about which to worry!' General warrants were universally condemned by the Founders, which is why the Fourth Amendment reads thusly:
'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'
Also, from last week:
'Who is a journalist is a question we need to ask ourselves. Is any blogger out
there saying anything — do they deserve First Amendment protection?
These are the issues of our times. You can sit in your mother’s basement and chat away, I don’t care. But
when you start talking about classified programs, that’s when it gets to
be important. So, if
classified information is leaked out on a personal website or [by] some
blogger, do they have the same First Amendments rights as somebody who
gets paid [in] traditional journalism?'
- Senator Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham Isn't Sure If Bloggers Deserve 'First Amendment Protection,' National Journal, 5 June 2013
OF COURSE bloggers have First Amendment protections. Graham later attempted to clear the wreckage of his one-Clown Car Crack-Up by saying: 'Just to be clear, every blogger is entitled to constitutionally-protected Freedom of Speech.' But, even so, he continues to confuse the issue. Yes, like everyone else, bloggers have constitutionally-protected freedom of speech, but they likewise have protection under the First Amendment's freedom of the press clause.
'The
Bill of Rights changed the original Constitution into a new charter
under which no branch of government could abridge the people's freedoms
of press, speech, religion, and assembly. Yet the Solicitor General
argues and some members of the Court appear to agree that the general
powers of the Government adopted in the original Constitution should be
interpreted to limit and restrict the specific and emphatic guarantees
of the Bill of Rights adopted later. I can imagine no greater
perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First
Amendment, able men that they were, wrote in language they earnestly
believed could never
be misunderstood: 'Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the
freedom . . . of the press. . .' Both the history and language of the First Amendment
support the view that the press must be left free to publish news,
whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior
restraints...In the First Amendment,
the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to
fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve
the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the
press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to
censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare
the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and
unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And
paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to
prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people. In other words, we are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment's
emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary
can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging
freedom of the press in the name of 'national security.' The Government
does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it
makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts
should take it upon themselves to 'make' a law abridging freedom of the
press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security,
even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to
the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law. The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have [to] bare the secrets of government and inform the people.'
-- Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, in New York Times Co. v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)
The Free Press Clause protects the freedom to publish, not solely
writers and commercial publishers. The Founders intended for the
lowliest, volunteer pamphleteer have the same constitutional protections
as the Publisher of the New York Times or ‘journalists,’ who are paid
for their work. The protection is to the publication – IN ANY MANNER
– not merely to whom is doing the publishing (just as lawmakers were
not full-time and had other jobs in the ‘real world,’ the Founding
Fathers recognised that one could be both a farmer and a member of the
‘press.’) In the first case the Supreme Court dealing with the Free
Press Clause, Lovell v City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938), Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes defined
‘press’ as ‘every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of
information and opinion’ based upon the writings of the Founding
Fathers.
The ‘press’ be it someone at the NYT or a blogger has First Amendment rights and CANNOT be prosecuted for seeking and publishing information.
The exceptions, which aren’t really exceptions, would be where a member of the press turns documents or other information over to a foreign country or foreign national acting on behalf of a foreign country OR where a journalist conspires with another to gain access and sell/publish it. In other words, if Greenwald had colluded with Snowden in a plot that would involve the latter getting a job for the sole purposes of stealing information to give to the former, then, that would probably be a crime. A journalist obtaining information from a source – even seeking it out – and publishing it is NOT a crime and is protected by the First Amendment.
What is so frightening about Lindsey Graham is how very easily and nonchalantly he is willing to destroy the entire Constitution. Even if you are a 'security-over-liberty-and-privacy' person, surely, you must be uncomfortable with how little too many politicians have for your rights and the ease with which they claim 'national security' as an excuse for you to give up what the Founding Fathers would have rebelled, violently, against. Right?
The ‘press’ be it someone at the NYT or a blogger has First Amendment rights and CANNOT be prosecuted for seeking and publishing information.
The exceptions, which aren’t really exceptions, would be where a member of the press turns documents or other information over to a foreign country or foreign national acting on behalf of a foreign country OR where a journalist conspires with another to gain access and sell/publish it. In other words, if Greenwald had colluded with Snowden in a plot that would involve the latter getting a job for the sole purposes of stealing information to give to the former, then, that would probably be a crime. A journalist obtaining information from a source – even seeking it out – and publishing it is NOT a crime and is protected by the First Amendment.
What is so frightening about Lindsey Graham is how very easily and nonchalantly he is willing to destroy the entire Constitution. Even if you are a 'security-over-liberty-and-privacy' person, surely, you must be uncomfortable with how little too many politicians have for your rights and the ease with which they claim 'national security' as an excuse for you to give up what the Founding Fathers would have rebelled, violently, against. Right?
Would someone in South Carolina PLEASE PRIMARY this authoritarian asshole? Let him get his
totalitarian-temptation freak flag on somewhere other than the United
States Senate.
Senator Graham, in the unlikely event that you read this post, please pay close attention to the following words of wisdom:
‘Government is not
reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and
a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible
action.’
-- George Washington, 7
January 1790
'Guard with jealous
attention liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately,
nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force,
you are inevitably ruined.’
-- Patrick Henry, 5 June
1788
‘[W]hat country can
preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that
[the] people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…The tree of
liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and
tyrants.’
-- Thomas Jefferson,
letter to Col William S Smith, 1787
'Any people that would
give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor
safety.'
-- Benjamin Franklin
'The Constitution is not
an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument
for the people to restrain the government.'
-- Patrick Henry
'We base all our
experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.'
-- James Madison
'I know of no safe
depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if
we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform them.'
-- James Madison
'The welfare of the
people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the
further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.'
-- Albert Camus
'A function of free speech under our system of
government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purposes
when it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions
as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and
challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound
unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea.'
-- Justice William O Douglas, Terminiello v Chicago,
337 U.S. 1 (1949)
‘A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight
for, nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety,
is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept
so by the exertions of better men than himself.’
-–
John Stuart Mill, writing on the Civil War, 1862
'Since when have we Americans been expected to bow
submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who
represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the
sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the
final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as
we need not stay docile and quiet.'
-- Justice William O Douglas, Colten v Kentucky,
407 U.S. 104 (1972)
‘Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to
protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent…The greatest
dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning
but without understanding.’
-- Justice Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v United States,
277 U.S. 438 (1928)
‘Good
intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is
hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people
against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to
govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they
mean to be masters.’
-– Daniel Webster
‘The Constitution is not
neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of the people.’
-– Justice William O
Douglas, The Court years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O Douglas,
1980
'We are rapidly entering
the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times;
where there are no secrets from government ... These examples and many others
demonstrate an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens
is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually,
each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there
begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which
government may intrude into the secret regions of man's life at will.'
-- Justice William O
Douglas, Osborn v United States, 385 U.S. 341 (1966)
‘Sometimes it is said
that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be
trusted with the government of others?'
-- Thomas
Jefferson, inaugural address, 1801
‘Extremism in the defense
of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no
virtue.’
-– Senator Barry
Goldwater
‘Of all tyrannies, a
tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It
may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at
some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment
us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.’
-– C. S. Lewis
'The progress of
science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to
stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government,
without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and
by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences
of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of
exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty
of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of
much lesser intrusions than these. To Lord Camden a far slighter intrusion
seemed 'subversive of all the comforts of society.' Can it be that the
Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual
security?'
-- Justice Louis
Brandeis, Olmstead v United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928)
'The right to be let
alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms.'
-- Justice William O
Douglas, Public utilities Commission v Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952)
'We must realize that
today's Establishment is the New George III. Whether it will continue to adhere
to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition,
is also revolution ... Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful
government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records
high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and
order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.'
-- Justice William O
Douglas, Points of Rebellion (1969)
‘This country, with its
institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow
weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right
of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.’
--
Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861
'We, the people are the rightful
masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but
to overthrow men who pervert the Constitution.'
-- President Abraham Lincoln
‘The spirit of resistance
to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be
kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be
exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then.’
--
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams,
1787
'If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.'
- James Madison
‘If I know every single phone call you made I’m able to
determine every single person you talk to. I can get a pattern about your life
that is very, very intrusive. The real question here is what do they do with
this information they collect that does not have anything to do with Al-Qaeda? And
we’re going to trust the president and the vice president of the United States
that they’re doing the right thing. Don’t count me in on that.’
- Senator Joe Biden,
2006
'At the time of the Founding,
Americans despised the British use of the so-called 'general warrants'—warrants
not grounded upon a sworn oath of a specific infraction by a particular
individual, and thus no limited in scope and application… Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a
lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of
our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches. The Fourth Amendment
must prevail.’
- Justice Antoin Scalia,
dissent, Maryland v King, 2013
If
such is true about unsolved crimes, it is more than true for crimes that have
yet to take place.
http://tinyurl.com/qz4zxak
No comments:
Post a Comment