Cloak and Dagger

The Tribune ran an Ivins anti-Bush screed today. (It can be found online here.) This piece, though, is startlingly unfactual, even for Ivins. She rants about a "constitutional crisis" and how Bush "is not above the law."

Ivins is not nearly as stupid as she sounds in her columns, so one can only assume that she is deliberately misrepresenting the facts in order to make her point.

That the president [sic] of the United States unconstitutionally usurped power
is not in dispute. He and his attorney general [sic], Alberto Gonzales,
both claim he has the right to do so on account of [sic] he is the president."

See, Molly, that's simply not true, and I'm pretty sure you know it. There is actually plenty of authority for what the President is doing. So the issue is, as I am sure you know, most definitely in dispute. And neither President Bush nor Attorney General Gonzales has ever claimed he can spy on people just because he's our Commander in Chief. I think you know that, too.

Readers might enjoy this piece by Ann Coulter who is a lawyer and who argues the issue factually, and also with a nice little poke at the NYT.

Fundamentally, this whole little dust-up simply proves that the left is unserious about fighting terror, but is very serious about trying to win political power. How about this quote from Ivins: "[T]he 9/11 Commission just finished giving this administration grades of D and F in terms of preventing another terrorist attack -- and it has jack-all to do with wiretapping."

Gosh, Molly, am I missing something? I'm pretty sure there hasn't been another attack on our soil since 9/11. For that I would give the President at least an A. I guess you and the Commission are looking for some extra-credit work? ("Let's see, if he prevents all terrorist attacks, and appoints a pro-choice justice, and goes after Halliburton like Clinton did Microsoft, and doubles the estate tax, and saves Tookie, then we'll give him a C+ on terrorism prevention.)

It's nice to argue that innocent Americans will be caught up in the surveillance net, but where's the evidence that it's happened and has caused harm? You know what? Sometimes the police arrest the wrong person, too. No more arrests!

There is a group of people living in and around the civilized world. These people believe that their religion gives them the duty to attack and kill all those who believe differently. The left does not want to single them out, because that will be racist. The left does not want to attack them in their part of the world because that will just make them madder. The left does not want to spy on them when they are in our country (I guess we should only be in the business of preventing attacks in France?). The left does not want to use harsh methods to interrogate them. The left does not want to hold them in prisons so they cannot attack again.

The left wants to talk to them. The left wants to give them civil rights. The left wants to give them court hearings.

The left is out of ideas and out of their collective minds.