Harold Ford and the FISA apologists
I was at Netroots Nation today when Harold Ford, the DLC Chair, basically told us that the FISA vote wasn’t a big deal and that future elections would hold those responsible to account. He was partly right, elections are one way to hold people to account, but not the only way. Lawsuits work too.
His argument was that the companies who violated the law should not be held responsible. If they were told by a government official that it was ok to break the law and violate the Constitution, then there should be no problem.
Ford argued that the government officials should be held responsible instead. Well, he’s half right. Both should be held accountable.
Sometimes, we get lost in rhetoric. Certainly Mr Ford was lost today. (He routinely avoided answering questions by laying down a smokescreen of tangled clauses like an octopus squirts ink to get away from a larger predator.)
The way to not get lost is to refer to the original source. So, here for the FISA apologists, is the full text of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and affects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but on probably cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
In case of future debates, the full text of the Constitution is available online, and you can even get a nice little booklet from the ACLU as well.