The Tea Party, Rights, and Obama (Part 1), 8-29-2010

 I read today's Indianapolis Star about Glen Beck's gathering at the Lincoln Memorial. One person quoted claimed we were losing our rights under President Obama. The article described the person as belonging to the party movement. I might have more respect for the tea party movement if they what they were talking about.

 Where were these people when Clinton and hi FBI chief wanted the ability to tap 100,000 telephone calls at the same time? I do not recall hearing them say anything when lawyers and the ACLU complained, except to dismiss them as silly liberals.

Where were these people when Bush intercepted emails and telephone calls without warrants? All I recall was a chorus against the critics as liberals who did not want to protect us against terrorists.

Where were these people as the United States Supreme Court eroded constitutional provisions against warrantless searches and seizures? I only heard the ACLU being attacked as destroying America.

I do not see Obamahaving had time to change these policies. Between the Great Recession with its possibility of having our financial sector turn into a black hole and our foreign wars and Republican delays in staffing the Executive Branch, when has Obama had time to do anything to threaten our rights?

Where do these tea party members stand on the drug war? Therein lies the cause for the erosion of our federal Fourth and Fifth Amendments. I see no one here at this federal detention center who should be in federal court or prison. What I see are an overwhelmingly young druggies who are street level criminals. Surely state agencies not so lacking they cannot adequately deal with these people. Do the tea party members find nothing wrong with federal police usurping local police forces?

I met a fellow here who got nabbed on a Patriot Act violation. Was he a terrorist? No, he was a meth dealer from Terre Haute.

Never underestimate the inventiveness of lawyers. Lawyers will take any law and find unexpected uses for that law. I know this because I once was a lawyer. Whether an innovative interpretation works depends on whether the government or the defense offers the innovation. I will always bet on a judge accepting the government's argument. What did the tea party about these government lawyers manipulated the law for a Republican administration?

What I see being the crux of the tea party's complaints is national health care. Do they worry how the Patriot Act is used for drug crimes as much as they rage against national health care? If so, when and who did the raging?

I read and heard many of the tea party crew rail about the erosion of the Tenth Amendment without mentioning the Fourteenth Amendment, or the Commerce Clause. They remind me of jailhouse lawyers who find one point that apparently answers all questions and never look any further. Here is how to read a document: read the whole thing; figure out how the whole thing works; and figure out how the particular fits into the whole. The tea party adherents fail in method and result.

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[Continued in The Tea Party, Rights, and Obama (Part 2), 8-29-2010. sch 3/16/23.]