Judge Taylor of federal court ruled the NSA’s unwarranted wiretaps of U.S. citizens’ international calls violated the 4th Amendment and another law from 1978 . Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has vowed that the administration will continue its practice of covert, unwarranted wire tapping of U.S. citizens. Was Judge Talylor’s decision an advisory opinion? Does any of this matter, or do U.S. government organizations violate the the simplest of citizens’ rights whenever they choose?
If the present administration and the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. couldn’t handle the information they had preceding the 11th of September, what makes them think they can handle the information they are getting from these wire-taps? There are thousands of hours of recordings yet to be reviewed by anyone. The administration seems like a child complaining that he can’t do something because he doesn’t have the ‘right’ equipment, when the truth is he hasn’t put the time and practice into the task at hand. But the Bush administration often seems childish.
The NSA wasn’t even acknowledged by our government as existant for many years after it’s birth. Like a secret child of an affair our government had with its dark mistress, it was kept secret. What makes us think there is not already a new NSA, one we won’t hear about until years to come? Our government will do what it wants to do, no matter what. While it is good to see a judge calling the administration on its lies, there are other areas to focus our attention. We cannot idealize a form that is inherently deceptive and in favor of it’s own power. The authors’ of the constitution tried to create a system that would balance the power in a way that prevented the usual corruptions of power. Individually, they had systems of belief of their own with which they governed their own lives. They were human and had flaws just like everybody else does, but, at best, some of them had an invisible influence guiding them through their lives, one that needs no authority to be inside everyone’s heart and soul and spirit.
You may feel I am proposing a religious solution to our problems. Whether that is true or not depends on your definition of religious. If you define it according to its root "religio," from the Old French or Latin, meaning reverence, then the answer is yes. To have reverence for the great mystery of life and death, to not reduce the world to what fits into our little minds, to behold all mankind and the nature of which we are a part and a whole, means to govern ourselves by the invisible standard presented to everyone of us by our hearts. Listen, there is no overturning the heart’s verdict.
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