The government's spy program is back in court (it never left, actually). This is the National Security Agency's Vacuum-Clean-the-Skies program in which your conversations and mine are monitored to see whether, when we mention Osama Bin Laden, we're for him or against.
For the record, I'm against. Whaddabout you, pal? Whose side are you on? Amurrica's or the Devil's?
From what I gather in the NYT article by Adam Liptak, below, the government's position that the president has the power to do all sorts of things without legal restraint by the Constitution, the Congress, or even uncommon sense, is going down the toilet. The program got flushed a few weeks ago by federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit, in ACLU v. NSA, which we noted here.
When a judge asks you, as a government attorney, whether you think Julius Caesar could bring his army into Rome against the wishes of the Senate, or whether you think the president has the power to burglarize the office of a psychiatrist to find out what a patient of interest, like Daniel Ellsberg, or an alleged Al Qaeda supporter, for example, was thinking, you cannot expect to go back to the office and say, "Nothing to worry about, Boss, this one's in the bag." No, you cannot do that, because you are swirling in the judicial bowl.
"Well, how about can the police strip-search Yankee fans before they go into Yankee Stadium," asked the New Yawk judge. "Can they do that?"
"I dunno," said the prosecutor, the poor guy delegated to uphold the government's spy program against you and me in case we criticize Donald Rumsfeld.
If Al Qaeda doesn't admire Donald Rumsfeld and I don't admire Donald Rumsfeld, does that make me, thinking geometrically for a moment, an Al Qaeda?
Rumsfeld may think so.
My conservative brother-in-law may think so.
But do I think so?
I never met an Al Qaeda in my life.
Or a Communist, either.
I came close once. To meeting a Commie, that is, but was protected by a Conservative Republican who, thus, saved my soul.
It was in a Comparative Economics class at Wagner College, Staten Island, U.S.A.
StatNisland is a little island off the mainland of America, prevented from floating away by several bridges to New Joisey. This is before the Italian Bridge (1964) to Brooklyn that my father, Leo Sheridan, built. He ran the batch plant for the StatNisland anchorage, this big concrete block that holds down one end of Da Bridge. Used to pee in the batch. We're a part of that bridge to nowhere. Brooklyn is nowhere to a StatNislander.
Charlie Kramer was the professor and he was teaching us how bad Communism really was, which I already knew because one of my fellow lifeguards in the lifeguard shack had taken to stealing my sandwiches, placed in the communal refrigerator, which I'd contributed.
His theory was that since we all placed our sandwiches in the communal refrigerator, he could take any one he wanted. The problem was that his contribution was either non-existent, or a piece of crap, while mine was a work of art involving considerable effort in locating and assembling the ingredients of a wondrous Italian hero.
StatNisland was big on Italian heroes.
Giuseppe Garibaldi himself lived in Stapleton before going back to unite the Italians, to the extent that you can unite Italians.
So we had this big trial among our lifeguard peers and the principle of non-fungibility of hero sandwiches was, I'm pleased to report, upheld. I saw Jerry at the lifeguard reunion 45 years later and made sure he didn't sit within reaching distance of my plate.
So I knew Communism, to each according to what he can grab.
But I was in class with Prof. Charlie Kramer and the light went on. Why am I listening to Kramer tell me how bad Communism was, I wondered. The people who lived under godless Communism probably thought it was good. Why don't we get one of those bastards into the classroom and we could ask him questions about why he thought it was so good. We could decide for ourselves if it was so bad and we were so hot.
Where were we going to find a Communist on StatNisland, I wondered.
S.I. was a conservative place.
How conservative?
Congressman Ray, of S.I., voted against the admission into the Union of Alaska and Hawaii.
All those off-white folks, you know.
StatNisland was pretty white.
Oh, there were a few laborers and maids and people who got drunk on Saturday night and carried razors with which they carved each other up regularly, living in a few very localized spots, but the general population was hard-hats, white.
Protestants, Catholics and Jews.
Irish, Italian, and a mixed bag of northern European stock going back to the Dutch.
No Puerto Ricans, perish forbid.
You know about them, right? You don't? You don' wanna know!
Man, the stories. You know those shiny, pointy-toed, black oxford shoes they all seemed to wear, the guys?
"Puerto Rican fence climbers," said da cops I knew. I knew a lotta cops.
But I digress.
We had fewer Commies on StatNisland than Puerto Ricans.
But Manhattan, that was a different story. The place was running-over with Commies, not to mention the Puerto Ricans.
In fact they had the United Nations in Manhattan and that place was a beehive of Communists.
Why couldn't we call the U.N. and ask them to send over a Commie to talk to a class at Wagnah College on StatNisland?
UP shot my hand.
"Prof. Kramer, why can't we invite a Communist from the United Nations to take a ferry ride over and address the class. We could find out all about Soviet Communism, Yugoslav mixed-economy, etc., straight from the horses mouth, so to speak."
Wagner was a conservative college, founded by Lutheran ministers, and you know about those bastards, right? Their big argument is over whether they're Missouri Synod or United Synod. You don't know what a synod is? Neither did I. We didn't have synods on StatNisland. We had beaches. I worked at the beach, not a synod. No water at a synod. No blankets on the sand. No girls. So I stayed away from synods.
Charlie Kramer didn't think my idea was very good. I could see him brace himself, composing an answer.
"I'm not sure we really want to bring a Communist onto the Wager campus, now that I think of it," I believe he said.
Perhaps he was thinking of the trustees who hired him, and the publicity in the S.I. Advance, the Newhouse flagship publication.
"Wagner Professor Goes Commie" was the likely headline.
I could have gotten fired the most interesting professor on the campus. If the blonde on the ferryboat smiled at him, we didn't get a pop-quiz on last night's homework. Sometimes she smiled at him and sometimes she didn't.
We never saw the Commie.
That was the last, best chance StatNisland ever had to see a real Commie, not that the place wasn't mobilized against one ever appearing.
S.I. was the native home of the Hard Hats, made famous by Pres. Nixon.
The construction workers cheered Richard "I am not a crook" (he was) Nixon, in Manhattan one day, during the Vietnam war, while the peace-loving, dope-smoking, shiftless, VW-van with peace symbol driving, freako, acid-rock loving hippies were demonstrating against his surpassing crookedness and the war. How was I supposed to know that they were right and he was wrong. I didn't know my crooks, yet, at that point in time, as John Dean used to say when they had him on the hot-seat before the Watergate Investigating Committee which was trying to figure out whether Nixon wore a mask and gloves when he burglarized the place.
Hard-hats hated hippies.
That's all you need to know.
So we have this Noo Yawk judge telling George W's hapless servant that his case is in trouble over simple things like who is running the store, the chief executive or the board of directors.
Maybe you could tell me.