When bin Laden calls…
February 9, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward
For several months, liberals have been raising a ruckus about the National Security Agency’s interception of enemy communications from abroad. “Civil liberties are being abused,” they cry. “It’s an abuse of executive power,” they cry. This is simply not true.
It is understandable that some Americans would be ambivalent about the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) given the factual and legal misconceptions about the program in the press, Heritage legal expert Todd Gaziano said today. Gaziano clarified the limited scope of the TSP and the legal authorities that apply to military surveillance in wartime.
“The United States is at war,” Gaziano explained. “We would be at war even if Congress did not expressly authorize the use of all necessary force to defeat our enemies in 2001.” Our current war is particularly dangerous, to our soldiers and to all our families, he said, because some our terrorist enemies are living among us and potentially targeting each of us. That means the battlefield is here as well.
“During war, it is the President’s obligation to intercept every [enemy] communication that he can reasonably make use of” to defeat the al Qaeda terrorists we are at war with, he said, though normal warrant requirements still apply to domestic criminal investigations. The NSA’s targeted Terrorist Surveillance Program falls well within the military obligation of our commander-in-chief, which is established in Article II of the Constitution.
Gaziano, the director of Heritage’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said President Bush “has shown remarkable restraint in implementing the TSP” by not intercepting every incoming foreign communication, as other wartime presidents have done.
The Congress granted the President latitude to conduct the TSP, which the President has inherent authority to undertake in any case, Gaziano said. “Congress instructed the President to use all necessary force, including military intelligence” in its Authorization for the Use of Military Force in September 2001, he explained. This authorization, he added, would override the Cold-War era Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act with regard to enemies in a real shooting war, such as the one that the United States is now fighting.
Congress, which has been briefed on the TSP by the White House, has also continued funding for the National Security Agency. Gaziano called this an implicit endorsement of the program.
Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey concurred that the President has inherent authority to conduct the surveillance. “The President’s Article II powers under the Constitution are perfectly adequate to conduct this electronic mapping” of terrorist communications, he said. “I don’t think the President needs to wait for a statute to listen to Hezbollah.”
Woolsey added that the courts are “completely unsuited to make decisions about electronic war” given the volume of information and the fact that military intelligence gathering is not the same as a criminal investigation. Gaziano elaborated on this point, arguing that it would in fact be unconstitutional for the courts to rule on individual military intelligence operations, since the President alone holds commander-in-chief powers.
Both men also agreed that the individuals who leaked the existence of the TSP to The New York Times and other news outlets should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The leakers “have done a great disservice to the country and its defenders,” Woolsey said. “The government is not doing its job if it’s not investigating this vigorously.”
A wakeup call for Europe
Radical Muslims and their multiculturalist allies have been up in arms for the past two weeks over the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Middle Easterners, stirred up by fanatical leaders, have attacked and set afire European embassies and consulates and engaged a boycott of Danish goods.
Even in Europe, Muslims are taking advantage of free speech to call for limits on free speech (including the deaths of alleged blasphemers). Blogger Michelle Malkin has compiled photos of one protest in Britain. The protest signs are telling: “Freedom, Go to Hell”; “Behead Those Who Insult Islam”; “Exterminate Those Who Slander Islam.”
“This series of events could be the wakeup call that Europe has been waiting for since September 11, when Americans found that war had been declared on this country by al Qaeda and its ilk,” Heritage’s Helle Dale wrote yesterday in The Washington Times. Political correctness, which dominates European thought, has done much to undermine free speech rights in Denmark and elsewhere—enough that calls for government censorship of the cartoons have been taken seriously.
Time to reform the UN Human Rights Commission
The UN Human Rights Commission “has devolved into a feckless organization that human rights abusers use to block criticism or action to promote human rights,” Heritage’s Brett Schaefer writes in a new analysis. The organization’s membership includes even such brutal regimes as Sudan, and blocks action even on the worst cases.
“Until the U.N. can overcome this problem,” Schaefer writes, “the U.S. and other countries that seek to advance basic human rights should establish an independent group of politically and economically free nations to supplement and encourage U.N. efforts to promote basic human rights and freedoms.”
Unfortunately, as Schaefer admits, even such a basic and urgent reform seems unlikely.
Congress revives welfare reform
The welfare reform first enacted in 1996 got a new boost when President Bush signed the budget reconciliation act earlier this week. States will now be required to reduce welfare caseloads or push recipients into the workforce. Reductions will now be gauged on a 2005 baseline, instead of a pre-reform 1995 baseline. And best of all, the new law will help promote strong families, addressing one of the root causes of poverty.
“Though far from perfect, this new welfare law is a substantial step forward,” writes Heritage’s Robert Rector. “It essentially restarts the 1996 reform over again.”
Heritage was at the forefront of the original welfare reform measure. Stuart Butler’s 1987 paper “Out of the Poverty Trap: A Conservative Strategy for Welfare Reform” laid the groundwork for eventual changes to the system, giving conservatives in Congress the ammunition they needed to deal with the broken government program.
Teaching children to behave
And here’s another success for conservatives: The Department of Health and Human Services has released new curriculum standards for abstinence education—and Heritage helped it happen.
Heritage’s Robert Rector developed the new standards, fighting the entrenched liberal HHS bureaucracy all the way, in conjunction with the National Abstinence Clearinghouse. According to Dr. Rector, these new curriculum standards will help dispel liberal myths about the effectiveness of programs like “safe sex” and “abstinence plus.”
An effective abstinence program, which would teach children to behave like adults instead of reinforcing their worst instincts, could help America diminish social ills that have plagued the nation for decades: sexually transmitted diseases; psychological injuries; and high-rates of out-of-wedlock childbirth.
In other news
- John Bolton, America’s ambassador to the UN who was recess-appointed last year after the Senate refused to confirm him, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in exposing Iran’s nuclear program. Ambassador Bolton will be the keynote speaker at Heritage’s President’s Club Meeting on May 1, 2006.
- Liberals in Congress, working with their special-interest allies, are looking to torpedo Health Savings Accounts just like they did Social Security reform last year, The Hill reports. Health Savings Accounts allow workers to save money in tax-free, portable accounts that can be used to cover medical expenses—the first real reform to health care in several years.
- Not only has the economy generated more than 600,000 jobs in the past three months and created unemployment rates that would have been unthinkably low just a decade ago, The Chicago Tribune reports, other indicators are looking up as well. Wages are higher, workers are spending less time looking for work, and the workforce participation rate is steady—but liberals still say things are terribly bad and that we need to raise taxes and social benefits.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
