Blowhard Bostonite Bloviates, Blasts Bush, Bores Bipeds With Bombast
The Honorable (cough, cough) Ted Kennedy:
The President is not above the law; he is not King George. Yet, with sorrow, we are now learning that in this great land we have an administration that has refused to follow well-crafted, longstanding procedures that require the president to get a court order before spying on people within the United States. With outrage, we learn that this administration believes that it does not have to follow the law of the land.
Not just above the law, this administration seems to be saying that it IS the law. It contends that it can decide on its own what the law is, how to interpret it, and whether or not it has to follow it. I believe that such an arrogant and expansive view of executive power would have sent chills down the spines of our Founding Fathers — as it does for every American hearing these startling revelations today.
Puh-leeze…”with sorrow”…”with outrage”…”chills down the spine” of “every American”?
This is just the sort of overkill that makes most Americans rightly contemptuous of the Senate. I keep referring back to Mickey Kaus, I realize, but he really nailed this issue, particularly with this observation:
Explicit legalization seems the obvious solution because the “privacy” interest involved–the danger that government has “listened in on some people who turned out not to pose a threat”–is, if not trivial, several orders of magnitude lower than the threat itself. Privacy interests have always been overblown in the American civil libertarian scheme of things, and they’re becoming more overblown now that email communications are routinely introduced in court, while cell phone conversations get picked up by amateur scanners.
Contrast that commonsense approach to national security with Kennedy’s grandiose visions of a Constitution in tatters….
You used up all the ‘b’ words so I will go with comtemptuously contemptible.
As we know, in part from your posts and links, the legal status of the Bush program is not settled. I can’t find the article right now, but read an analysis the other day that focused on the fact that our government, based as it is on the three co-equal branches of President, Congress, and Judiciary, will oftentimes operate (perhaps always does) in an adversarial way. With the foundation being the Constitution, which all three branches swear to uphold, protect, and defend, there is lots of room for conflict and disagreement – especially when talking about the specific yet broad notion of “National Security” – which creates uncertainty about the legality.
Senator Kennedy is an unserious person who is also a partisan political hack. How do I know this? Because he uses the aforementioned gratuitous words and phrases: “with sorrow”, “with outrage”, and “chills down to the spine” rather then make a cogent, fact-based argument, that’s how.
Unfortunately, Mary Joe Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
Old news to us Bostonites but the Boston Globe did a sickeningly glowing profile of the Senator Blowhard a few years ago. It included this quote, which I kept simply because it was so unbelievable callous:
“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.”
– Charles Pierce in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine article.
I do remember that story, Too Many – there goes my lunch.
My God – you can’t be serious!…the nerve, to say that of all things!…
Does anyone else think it’s ironic that Kennedy, who owes everything he’s got to the name he was born with rather than to any independent achievement on his part, chides Bush for thinking that he’s “King George?”
AE, surely you’re not suggesting Teddy Boy receives preferential treatment because his last name is Kennedy? For shame…
Actually, AE, that was my immediate thought when I saw Teddy using those words. We’ve had plenty of upper-crust families in national politics–the Bushes, for instance–but the Kennedys are the closest thing to royalty we’ve ever had. If this blubbersack (hey, Mark already used all the less unlikely “b” words) had been named Edward Moore, his political career would have been over in 1969.
Kudos, I guess, to Too Many Steves for finding a quote I’ll never be able to forget. I give that a solid 10.0 in the international moral gymnastics competition.
Kudos accepted but simultaneously disdained: I wish it weren’t so.
[...] Well, popularity doesn’t mean legality, but a scandal without a scandalized public is pretty hard to pursue to impeachment. Recently, we noted how the lesser Kennedy blew hard and windy on Snoopgate: …[W]ith sorrow, we are now learning that in this great land we have an administration that has refused to follow well-crafted, longstanding procedures that require the president to get a court order before spying on people within the United States. With outrage, we learn that this administration believes that it does not have to follow the law of the land. [...]