Disgraceful Republicans OK with illegal spying

By Larry Klayman

"It is clear that 9/11 could have been prevented if we had known about the communications (through NSA metadata collection)." – Sen. John McCain

"The solution is not to get rid of a program at a time when we know that the risk of homegrown violent extremism is the highest it's ever been." – Sen. Marco Rubio

"It would be pretty hard to diminish this program right now based on a court ruling that's not binding." – Sen. Lindsey Graham

"I believe there can be appropriate oversight by Congress and people in the Justice Department who can oversee whether the law is being followed or whether the law is being violated. I'm not one of those folks who believe we should bring down our guard, especially during this really dangerous time." – Gov. Chris Christie

[CNN (Washington) "Court Ruling on NSA Spying Splits 2016 Field"]

Sixteen months after the Honorable Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a historic preliminary injunction, on Dec. 16, 2013, finding that NSA spying violated the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which order was stayed in deference to President Barack Hussein Obama, the National Security Agency (NSA) and a host of other government defendants to give them the opportunity to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit before the injunction would go into effect, another federal appellate court – acting more aggressively than the D.C. Circuit – issued its decision in a related case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU had lost at the lower court level in trying to enjoin this unconstitutional spying on nearly all Americans' telephonic communications, without regard to whether there is reason to believe that they are in contact with terrorists or in the act of committing crimes, and thus the leftist public interest group appealed to the higher court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.

Yesterday, beating the D.C. Circuit to the punch, the 2nd Circuit issued a decision that validated nearly all Judge Leon had ruled, but, bowing to politics rather than the rights of "We the People," it predictably stopped short of issuing a preliminary injunction that would go into effect immediately! Finding that defendants wholesale collection of telephonic metadata is illegal as violative of section 215 of the Patriot Act, since it grabs the communications of everyone without regard to terrorist connections, the 2nd Circuit sidestepped the constitutional issues Leon found illegal as well under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment was designed to protect Americans from the unreasonable searches and seizures that outrageously result from wholesale spying on the citizenry. However, the 2nd Circuit, while failing to reach this important issue as Judge Leon had done, did concede in effect that if it had made such findings, the First Amendment would also be implicated in the defendants' illegal conduct. That is because intruding upon the telephonic communications of all Americans chills and violates their rights of freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment.

All in all, the 2nd Circuit decision advanced the ball in the quest to stop the NSA's illegal spying on all Americans. It now falls on our case before the D.C. Circuit and probably ultimately the Supreme Court to put a stop to this unconstitutional illegal surveillance that amounts to a Big Brother over all of us – in effect enslaving the citizenry to a police state. As I have said many times, if King George III had had an NSA at his disposal, as Obama and other establishment government leaders do now, our Founding Fathers would not have made it to my native city of Philadelphia to debate and ultimately sign the Declaration of Independence. They would have been picked up, arrested and executed for daring to challenge the British crown and then found a new free nation, one governed by the rule of law, not the heavy-handed tyranny of monarchs.

It is thus clear that the problem today is not just the self-described Emperor Obama, who like King George III, governs by executive fiat and not the will of the people, but also those establishment Republican leaders, like McCain, Graham, Rubio, Christie and other lackies of omni-powerful government who believe in the words of their now-deceased soul brother, Alexander Hamilton, that the people are a great beast. These disgraceful and compromised politicians think that they can decide for the rest of us what is necessary and right – in this case wholesale violation of privacy rights in what Judge Leon calls in his 2013 order "almost Orwellian." (See www.freedomwatchusa.org.)

Well, I have news for McCain and the establishment wing of the Republican Party: If he thinks that what the NSA (and also the CIA) have been doing is peachy keen, then perhaps he has more kinship to Ho Chi Minh and the senator's dictatorial former North Vietnamese jailers at the Hanoi Hilton than our Founding Fathers.

As just one of many examples of the absurdity of McCain's and the rest of the Republican establishment's statements, the NSA's unconstitutional and illegal surveillance has not stopped one terrorist attack, as observed by Judge Leon in his decision ordering the spy agency to stop its police state actions. One need only look at what occurred in Garland, Texas, just a few days ago. Despite the two ISIS terrorists being on a so-called FBI watch list, the spy agencies' surveillance failed miserably to head off the attack, which could have killed scores of Americans who simply wanted to draw cartoons of the degenerate prophet of Islam, Muhammad.

The bottom line is this – as has been my mantra for several years! The American people will likely have to rise up themselves to take back their freedoms and privacy in particular. The Republican establishment has been for six long years bowing down, Shariah-style, to the likes of the Muslim in Chief. They cannot be counted on to lead our people out of bondage to the "promised land."

© Larry Klayman