{"id":2219,"date":"2008-07-04T16:48:54","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T16:48:54","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T16:48:54","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2219","title":{"rendered":"“How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary: How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment?<\/a>, by Joseph L. Galloway in McClatchy Newspapers, on the coming FISA bill:<\/p>\n

Early next week the U.S. Senate will vote on an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love. <\/p>\n

That such a gutting of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution even made it out of committee is yet another stain on the gutless and seemingly powerless Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n

That a majority on both sides of the aisle \u2014 not least of them the presumptive nominees for president of both political parties \u2014 intend to vote for such a violation of Americans’ right to privacy and of the sanctity of their personal communications is a stunning surrender to those who want us to live in fear forever. <\/p>\n

We are living in a time when the right of habeas corpus \u2014 which simply put is your right to be brought before a proper court of law where the government is made to prove that there is good and legal reason to detain you \u2014 recently survived by a margin of only one vote at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Now these bad actors are prepared to set aside your right to privacy \u2014 written into the Constitution as a key part of our Bill of Rights \u2014 with hardly a nod in the direction of the true patriots who rebelled against an English king and his army to guarantee those rights.<\/p>\n

That they will do this while the last empty phrases of the political windbags at the Fourth of July celebrations are still echoing across a thousand city parks and the bright red, white and blue bunting and blizzard of American flags still flap in the breeze is little short of breath-taking.<\/p>\n

How dare they?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just the first fourth of the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}