[Clips] The Wisdom in Wiretaps
Steve Schear
s.schear at comcast.net
Sun Jan 8 13:46:15 PST 2006
At 02:50 PM 1/7/2006, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> The upside of the coming Congressional hearings, we guess, is that
> Americans will get a lesson in the Constitution's separation of powers.
> We're confident they'll come away believing the Founders were right to the
> give the President broad war-fighting -- including surveillance -- powers.
Non-sense. Surveillance was almost unknown. Postal and physical searches
rare and anyone desiring private conversations could just walk out into a
field with the other party(s).
The Founders desired that Congress have the most authority and the
President be essentially a manager. From the Washington's first term
presidents have sought to broaden their powers. Until Lincoln they were
mainly rebuffed by Congress, the courts and (indirectly) the
states. Lincoln you should recall illegally suspended habeas corpus,
threatened to jail the Chief Justice, shut down newspapers and jailed
editors that in almost any way criticized Abe. It was the illegal passage
of the 14th Amendments that helped put an end to whatever degree of state
autonomy which had been recognized and ushered in a vastly more power
federal government, including the President.
Steve
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