Thursday, January 26, 2006

Sen. Kennedy - Confirm this!

From the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito, Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts added: "The record demonstrates that we cannot count on Judge Alito to blow the whistle when the president is out of bounds. He is a long-standing advocate for expanding executive power, even at the expense of core individual liberties."
Assuming the President is, in fact “out-of-bounds” and assuming that Sen. Kennedy prefers the records of sitting Supreme Court judges such as; Ginsberg, Bryer and particularly O’Conner, why have those justices not yet blown the whistle on Bush? And, why is Sen. Kennedy not calling on them to do so?
Of course, Sen. Kennedy is alluding to the NSA phone intercept program and the President’s decision to bypass the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. If this were Dec. 8, 1941 would anyone, much less the senior Senator form Massachusetts, question our need to monitor in-coming or out-going shortwave radio signals being sent by known and/or suspected enemies? Are not cellular telephones the 21rst Century equivalent of 1940’s shortwave radios? Yes, except that today’s cell phones are universal, re-programmable and disposable thereby superseding the parameters of the FISA legislation from over 25 years ago. It seem to me that Pres. Bush is not expanding executive power, rather he’s just trying to keep up with the expansion of individual liberties as exemplified here by the enormous technological advancements in international communications.
The only thing that we can count on here is Sen. Kennedy ‘s questioning being way “out-of-bounds” and that instead of blowing any whistles, he’s just blowing hot air.