Terminate, But Do Not Tap

and whether or not either or both of these efforts violates the terms thereof. While there is much legalistic amusement to be had in so doing, it is not the purpose of this particular scribic expedition. It is worth noting that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the law that President Bush is accused of breaking, is, as we have stated here previously, itself an unConstitutional Legislative lien on the enumerated powers of the Executive.

For Uncle Sam, Every Day is Christmas

We would instead like to analyze the arrant Document errancies to which the Left rigorously adheres, whilst simultaneously picking unreasonable (search and seizure) nits with these two vitally important (as even they admit) self-defense programs. (The libertarians get an analytical pass on this, because they will agree with every one of the points to be made hereafter, and therefore their opposition to the Act and the Alexander Graham Bugs is, while incorrect, at least ideologically consistent.) The litany of unConstitutional federal activity and expenditure with which the Left is enraptured and to which they are addicted for continued electability is simply staggering. There is trillions of dollars being spent by the denizens of Washington, D.C, on things which have absolutely no bearing on the Document that they have suddenly discovered and deemed to be sacrosanct when it comes to defending ourselves, or importantly, not being allowed to do so. There are, at minimum, nine Cabinet level Departments, whose Secretarial appointments require Senate confirmation, that are completely untethered to the Constitution in any way. They are:

This does not even touch on the myriad non-Cabinet Secretary level off-Parchment expenditures. To name but a few of the more glaring:

Walk Loudly, and Carry a Big Check

(One will undoubtedly note that the lion's share of the international coin goes to nations that do most of their roaring at and against us. We are not exactly sowing goodwill with our ample fiscal seed.) The items on this list represent an unConstitutional federal outlay of $2.4 trillion in 2006 alone. We know that they are all bereft of Founding authenticity because they were not proscribed federal responsibilities whence the Document was quilled, and said Parchment was not amended via the proper delineated channels to allow for the government's involvement therein whence said Agencies were brought into budgetary being. The Left not only does not call into question any facet of this myriad and rampant UnConstitutionality, it revels in every penny of all of it, as indicated by their vitriolic reactions to the merest of reductions in any of the rates of their growth (Read: NOT cuts). Such as the $7 billion in proposed decrements spread amongst these various Departments in the President's $2.77 trillion 2007 budget, which have been excoriated as brutally and viciously penurious by these, the usual suspects.

To the Moon, Alice

The Left is somewhat more patient with the endeavor to gain new quantumary ground; they will, however, fight vociferously to keep their already secured fiscal footing. It is this inexorable expansion of federal income graft and interest group redistribution that fueled their fifty year run as the dominant Washington ideology, and remains their last, best hope for a return to lost preponderate form. But it is quite obvious that a populace conscripted to pay the confiscatory taxes necessary to fuel all of this get out the liberal vote activity has lost far more in Constitutional liberty than what has been at worst only arguably diminished by these two anti-terrorism programs put into place to protect us from enemies without and within.

The Makings of a Senator Stevens Tirade

An objective of far greater import and sounder Constitutional mooring than, say, anything to be found within the recently passed and ballyhooed $286.5 billion Transportation Equity Act. Senators Durbin, Clinton, Leahy, and every other elected official posturing A.C.L.U.-like against the Patriot Act and the NSA tapping program, but who have voted to fund every aforementioned tentacle of the federal Leviathan, including the Transportation sub-behemoth, your thoughts? Apparently, according to the Left (and to paraphrase George Orwell), all unConstitutionalities are equal, but some are more equal than others.