Opinion

Letter: Barton off base on Protect America Act


Published: February 22, 2008

To the editor:

Where to start with this Rick Barton screed ("Tierney fails constituents with FISA stance," Feb. 19)? The piece is so full of half truths, misrepresentations and outright lies that it makes me embarrassed to be a Republican.

His very first assertion, that the expiration of the Protect America Act (heretofore referred to as the PAA) has left "our intelligence agencies with their hands tied" and the implication that the Democrats are to blame is, to say the least, problematic. First, he omits the rather relevant fact that the only reason the PAA expired was because President Bush refused to extend it. The president flat out refused the Democrats' offer to extend the law, then threatened to veto any extensions, and then directed House Republicans to vote against the extension, which they did last Wednesday (Feb. 13). One assumes that, had Mr. Barton not lost his run for the 6th District seat in the House in 2006, he would have stood with his fellow Republicans when they unanimously shot down the extension. As for the remainder of the assertion — that the expiration of the PAA would leave "our intelligence agencies with their hands tied" — this is patently false. Even with the PAA having expired, FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to which the PAA was an amendment — continues in full force. The federal government's hands are tied only in that they are barred from spying without warrants on American citizens — by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The right of the people to be secure against unreasonable searches is one of the most fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, and one for which the Founding Fathers (responding to the "writs of assistance" granted customs officers by Great Britain in 1760) fought the Revolutionary War.

Next, Barton makes the absurd and (also) patently false assertion that the Democrats who are fighting to end this subversion of the Constitution and stop illegal, warrantless spying on American citizens are doing so because it would be "a financial windfall for a favored Democratic Party constituency — the trial lawyers." This bizarre and dishonest theory has been bandied about by the sorts of talking heads who hijacked the post-Reagan Republican Party since this controversy began. It is a lie. The lead plaintiff's counsel in the telecom suits is the Electronic Frontier Foundation — a small, struggling nonprofit organization staffed by American citizens who are making great personal and financial sacrifices in order to defend the United States Constitution from those who wish to subvert it. These are the people Rick Barton smears — Americans working to protect their fellow citizens and their rights from the abuses of the federal government and the telecoms who broke the law by illegally spying on them.

This is not a conservative or liberal issue — it is a constitutional one, and the Democrats happen to be on the right side of it. President Bush broke the law when he asked telecommunications companies to spy on American citizens absent of due process. The telecommunications companies broke the law when they obliged. They need to be held accountable, because what is at stake are the very ideals upon which we as a nation are founded, and the values by which we as a people are defined. The federal government is not allowed to violate our Constitutional rights, even when they deem it necessary for our safety, for our liberties are dearer to we Americans than our safety. That is why Patrick Henry cried "Give me Liberty or give me Death," not "Give me Safety and you can have my Liberty, and I'll throw in my Privacy to sweeten the deal."

Paul Nystrom

Beverly