FBI withdraws illegal NSL letter and gag order

Last November the FBI served a National Security Letter (NSL) on the electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)filed suit to force them to withdraw the NSL. The EFF reports that the FBI has been forced to withdraw the NSL and the gag order, permitting the EFF to describe the illegal actions of the FBI.

The gag orders accompanying such NSL's on libraries have no effective function beyond preventing the libraries and the targets of the NSL's to fight back against FBI overreaching. They are a totally administrative power given to the FBI designed to prevent negative publicity and Court challenge. The recipients of such a letter can't even discuss it with their congressional representatives.

This is just another panicky reaction to 9/11 by irrational frightened Republicans who feel powerless when someone is permitted to disagree with them. It is also a violation of the Constitution, but with the way the conservatives have packed the federal judiciary with their fellow frightened rats, it may take a generation for the courts to begin to properly enforce the Constitution. Roberts, Thomas and Scalia need to go, and the judiciary needs to be cleaned out of members of the Federalist Society. They are a special interest who represent only themselves to the detriment of the American people and the U.S. Constitution.

The failure of this NSL letter and the gag order is another victory for America and the Constitution. We need more of them.

NRO lauds Ron Paul for espousing the "Old Time Conservatism"

John Derbyshire at NRO boosts Ron Paul for his efforts to promote a conservatism that the young William F. Buckley would have very much agreed with.

Look at those policy positions! Abolish the IRS and Federal Reserve; balance the budget; go back to the gold standard; pull out of the U.N. and NATO; end the War on Drugs; overturn Roe v. Wade; repeal federal restrictions on gun ownership; fence the borders; deport illegals; stop lecturing foreign governments about human rights; let the Middle East go hang. What’s not to like?

We-e-ell. We all have nits to pick, though we wouldn’t all pick the same ones. The gold standard? Wasn’t it going off the gold standard that gave us full control over the wilder swings of the business cycle? Which was, like, a good idea? I am by no means as willing to surrender to the collective wisdom of modern economists as Bryan Caplan wants me to be, but — the gold standard? Come on. And stopping the War on Drugs? Where would that take us? — Philip Morris brands of crack cocaine available over the counter at Walgreens? You pick your own nits.

That’s not the point, though. Nits aside, the broad outlook there is conservative in a way we don’t often see from a presidential candidate. It is, in fact, conservatism of exceptional purity. Reading through those policy positions, an American conservative can hear the mystic chords of memory sounding in the distance, and hear the call of ancestral voices wafted on the breeze: Hayek, von Mises, Rothbart, Nock, Kirk, John Chamberlain... Unlike the product in that automobile commercial, this is your father’s conservatism — the Old-Time Religion. What is there among Ron Paul’s policy prescriptions that the young William F. Buckley would have disagreed with?

Go back to my earlier post showing how the Bush administration is enacting the core elements of the John Birch Society platform. The central beliefs they were pushing, and what Cheney has enacted are:

1. The abolition of the graduated income tax.

2. The repeal of social security legislation.

3. The impeachment of various high government officials,

4..The end to busing for the purpose of school integration.

5. The end to U.S. membership in the United Nations.

In other words, these are the people who want to take America back to the days of the robber Barons, segregation enforced by law and by KKK terrorism, and repression of labor. If they could, they'd go back to before the Civil War. Keep them in office and they will.