Superiority Reflex

Over the course of the Bush years, the Democrats have stepped on so many rakes that it's a miracle they haven't systematically decapitated themselves. The pattern is always the same: the slightest thing transpires in their favor and they gallop off in wild celebration like Jim O'Brien kicking the winning field goal for the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl V. They react as though they've finally vanquished George Bush once and for all and the 230-year political tug o' war known as America is finally over. They vastly overplay whatever hand they've actually been handed, the slight favorable event reverses itself, and it's off to the next rake as though none of its predecessors, and their pulped collective face, ever existed.

Such is the case with the Left's Game 7-of-the-World-Series-esque dogpile after the brain-dead, sulfurically Bushophobic ruling from Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor yesterday unconstitutionally declaring the NSA terrorist surveillance program unconstitutional. I won't bother going through the gleefully dishonest crowing from Enemy Media drones, as their esteem in the eyes of the public is already lower than the solid matter in my hasn't-been-pumped-in-eight-years septic tank.

But elected Donks? You just gotta marvel at the oblivious, ignorant, knee-jerk indiscretion of 'em all.

House Minority Scarecrow "Crazy Nancy" Pelosi:

"The decision by a federal judge that the President's electronic surveillance program is unconstitutional is a repudiation of Mr. Bush's dangerous assertion that he has unlimited authority to conduct wiretapping activities in the United States."

1) The terrorist electronic surveillance program, Madame Speaker-in-your-dreams. Funny how you people always leave that part out of your descriptions of it.

2) The President has never made any assertion of "unlimited authority" to conduct "wiretapping activities in the United States," such as those undertaken by such past Democrat presidents as FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Bill Clinton (remember his "Echelon" economic espionage program?). The TSP is scrupulously limited to international communications with suspected al Qaeda and other Islamist operatives, and it has thwarted numerous terrorist attacks over the past five years - attacks the blame for which Democrats would have torn hamstrings in their frenzied lunges to throw the blame at George Bush.

That said, Pelosi's was the more lucid statement of the two congressional minority leaders, lacking in rhetorical ambition and delusional partisan fantasizing. Maybe she just had an off day. But Senator "Dirty Harry" Reid sounded like he was phoning in his comments from a parallel dimension:

"Today's ruling is the latest example of how the Bush Administration has jeopardized our efforts in the war on terror. The Administration's decision to ignore the Constitution and the Congress has come at the expense of the security of the American people."

"Instead of being five years into an effective strategy, we're back at square one. We now have the opportunity to take a new direction. It's time for the Administration to work with the Congress to develop effective tools to defeat terrorists. Senate Democrats stand ready to work with the Administration and congressional Republicans toward that goal." [emphases added]

The man is insane. You can't take a word he says seriously because not a single syllable has any connection to our quantum reality. What in the blue hell is he talking about?

Let me try to illustrate how convoluted Reid's dishonesty really is (without, hopefully, driving myself as loony as he is). According to Dirty Harry:

1) The Bush Administration's efforts to gather intelligence on terrorist activities via electronic surveillance in order to prevent terrorist attacks has "jeopardized our efforts in the war on terror," not this NeoBolshevik hack judge's amateurish attempt to thwart the President's efforts.

2) The President, whose office for over two centuries has had the power to surveil enemy communications in wartime under his specifically enumerated Article II powers as commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, is "ignoring the Constitution" by exercising this power, not this NeoBolshevik hack judge, whose ruling also ignored an avalanche of judicial precedent.

3) Dubya "ignored Congress" in the implementation and operation of the TSP by regularly briefing congressional leaders of both parties - including Reid and Pelosi - with the latter two never, not once in over four f'ing years, uttering one public complaint about it.

4) The TSP, which has been pivotal in preventing another mass terrorist attack since 9/11, has come "at the expense of the security of the American people," not this NeoBolshevik hack judge's ruling seeking to outlaw it.

5) "Instead of being five years into an effective strategy" instead of the one that has been 100% effective, "We're back at stage one." Wait, that one would almost make sense, but only if Judge Taylor's ruling wasn't destined to be overturned faster than the tables and chairs between Michael Moore and a free buffet.

6) "It's time for the Administration to work with Congress to develop effective tools to defeat terrorists," in place of the ones, like the TSP, that have actually been effective in defeating terrorists.

Bizarro had nothing on Harry Reid.

Russ Feingold - he of the embarrassing attempts to drum up a Bush impeachment movement that was about as well populated as a Ted Kennedy Memorial Temperance Roast, and the fresh-faced, empty-headed little dweeb who is being spoken of in the post-Ned Lamont ether as the new 2008 Democrat frontrunner - kept the rakes a flopping:

"Today's district court ruling is a strong rebuke of this Administration's illegal wiretapping program. The President must return to the Constitution and follow the statutes passed by Congress. We all want our government to...[Limbaugh didn't finish this sentence. Can't say as I blame him. Do feel free to fill in the blank. That'd make an interesting comment thread, come to think of it]

"The Administration went too far with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. Today's federal court decision is an important step toward checking the President's power grab."

1) The TSP is not illegal. This isn't a matter of conjecture. IT. IS. NOT. ILLEGAL.

2) The President stands squarely within his constitutional powers. Any attempt by Congress to take away those powers would be a departure from the Constitution.

3) "The Administration went too far..." is a meaningless non sequitur because Feingold himself does not qualify the TSP's alleged "illegality". Something cannot be partially illegal; either it is or it isn't. And it isn't.

4) The President has made no "power grab." Judge Taylor, however, did, and the Democrats are happily endorsing it.

And still the woofing went on. Here's Jay Rockefeller, the wannabe next Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"The decision shows the executive branch needs more external reviews. The Administration's wrongly convinced it can run the country without Congress or oversight. This is their tragic failure, and the courts understand it."

The senator from West Virginia who doesn't own monogrammed "KKK" bedsheets is obviously confusing the Bush Administration with the Clinton administration, which really did try to bypass Congress and rule by executive decree after the GOP captured Congress in 1994. He is also neglecting to mention that Bush put and kept congressional leaders, including Rockefeller, in the loop on the TSP from day one. And also that Rocky, if you'll recall, wrote a letter expressing "reservations" about the TSP that he kept to himself until AFTER the program's cover was blown last December.

Such a litany of roaring ignorance wouldn't be complete without a contribution from Pat "Leaky" Leahy:

"This has become another unfortunate example of how White House misdirection, arrogance, and mismanagement have needlessly complicated our goals of protecting the American people."

"I have always believed the Bush-Cheney warrantless domestic spying program violated our laws. The problem has been the Bush-Cheney Administration's insistence on doing it illegally without checks and balances to prevent the abuse of the rights of Americans."

1) "Misdirection"? What the hell does that mean? I guess that the TSP was kept secret, which is kind of the point when conducting enemy surveillance. If Leahy thought it shouldn't be, why didn't he just leak it himself? Wouldn't be the first time he'd publicly vomited classified information, after all. And maybe he did, although the betting money is still on Rockefeller, last I checked.

2) "Arrogance" means "won't do what we tell him." Or maybe it's just rhetorical hissing. Try as I might, I still make the mistake of giving these assholes too much intellectual credit.

3) "Mismanagement" that has prevented another terrorist attack for five years. I'd love to give Leahy a tongue-kiss for every serious, constructive suggestion his party has made toward "protecting the American people."

Think about it....

4) Leahy has always believed that the TSP is something it is not and does something it does not. Which goes to show that his faith is blinder than an eyeless man suffering rectal-cranial impaction.

5) "Checks & balances" are, constitutionally, between the three branches of government, not the two parties that compete for them. If Dems want to "check and balance" the President, let them winning a frakking election. Until then, let them shut the hell up.

6) No Americans' rights have been abused. The most likely grounds on which Judge Taylor's abusive, unconstitutional misruling will be round-filed is precisely that the neoBolshevik/pro-jihadi plaintiffs did not have the standing to sue because they provided no proof that they had been legitimately damaged by the TSP in any way. And, in the case of ACLU shysters like Noel Saleh, Mohammed Abdrabboh, and Nabih Ayad, whose bailiwick is defending Islamist terrorist financiers in the States, they're precisely the ilk whose international communications should be monitored.

Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is kind of the den mother for the lunatic asylum:

"The court ruling upholds the basic principle that even the President is not outside the law and that he has exceeded his constitutional authority by implementing a warrantless domestic surveillance program."

It's a good thing for these fools that Rod Serling is dead, or he'd be able to take a ton of royalties out of their asses for all this gimmick infringement.

It falls, remarkably, to the editors of none other than the Washington Post to try and stop this latest, greatest rake-smashfest before their allies' political faces are reduced to chunky salsa:

"Unfortunately, the decision yesterday by a federal district court in Detroit striking down the NSA's program is neither careful nor scholarly, and it is hard hitting only in the sense that a bludgeon is hard hitting. The angry rhetoric of US district judge Anna Diggs Taylor will no doubt grab headlines; but as a piece of judicial work, that is, as a guide to what the law requires and how it either restraints or permits the NSA program, her opinion will not be helpful."

Translation: "SHUT UP, you morons. This ruling is crap, it'll never stand, and in the meantime you're burying yourselves on your weakest issue less than three months before an election you'll have no excuse for blowing."

Again.

But I guess they can't help it. Liberals are angry. They've been angry for five and a half years. And we're getting a front-row education in the psychological damage wrought by half a decade of unrequitted rage. A lesson that must be pretty powerful if even the WaPo is forced to admit it.

That's almost Twilight Zone-ish itself.