Thursday, May 11, 2006

Aid and comfort

A symbiotic relationship. Nice and cozy.
Posted by at

6 comments:

Mr roT said...

This is certainly a crime, AI. But it's not treason.

5/11/2006 12:30 PM
Tecumseh said...

All right, all right -- let's not get into legalities any more (or at least for a while). Whatever you call it, I think this is awful. Of course, it got a Pulitzer Prize -- ranks right up there (but not quite) with Walter Duranty getting a Pulitzer in 1932 for singing the paeans of Stalin for creating a forced famine in the Ukraine that killed countless millions of farmers.

5/11/2006 1:04 PM
Tecumseh said...

Here is some case law:

As the text of the Fourth Amendment indicates, the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search is "reasonableness." At least in a case such as this, where there was no clear practice, either approving or disapproving the type of search at issue, at the time the constitutional provision was enacted, [n.1] whether a particular search meets the reasonableness standard " `is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.' " Skinner, supra, at 619 (quoting Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U.S. 648, 654 (1979)). Where a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, this Court has said that reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial warrant, Skinner, supra, at 619. Warrants cannot be issued, of course, without the showing of probable cause required by the Warrant Clause. But a warrant is not required to establish the reasonableness of all government searches; and when a warrant is not required (and the Warrant Clause therefore not applicable), probable cause is not invariably required either. A search unsupported by probable cause can be constitutional, we have said, "when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable cause requirement impracticable." Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873 (1987).

5/11/2006 1:21 PM
Mr roT said...

Wow! Good find AI! The angry left will shit their pants if this ever gets read out in public.

5/12/2006 10:31 AM
Tecumseh said...

Note that the opinion was written by Scalia, with Ginsburg concurring (!), yet O'Connor dissenting. Should be even more of a cinch now.

5/12/2006 12:51 PM
Tecumseh said...

A comment:

If an individual with knowledge of the Terrorist Surveillance Program thought it was wrong or illegal, he or she could have gone to the intelligence oversight committees under the procedures established by law. By going to the media, the leaker broke the law and the oath he or she swore to protect the nation's legitimate secrets.

This was a grave crime that helped Al Qaeda and its allies in the information war by providing an understanding of our defenses and vulnerabilities against terrorist attacks.

We are a nation at war. Unauthorized disclosures of classified information only help terrorists and our enemies — and put American lives at risk.

Aahhh, mais non, mais non - just free speech. As the First Amendment absolutists would have it, anything goes, since anything can be construed as "speech" -- what's a few lives (or even a few million lives) when it comes to that? Right, JJ?

5/13/2006 11:53 AM

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