They are a terrorist organization so we must give them money for spying on them??

This really should be filed under "I couldn't make this up."

The government in 2004 was intercepting the telephone communications of lawyers Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor. They were counsel to a Saudi charity, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which the government has declared a terror organization.

The lawyers are seeking $204,000 each, in addition to $204,000 for the charity, whose U.S. assets are frozen because of its terror designation. Judge Walker did not immediately rule on the request.

So we now have a claim on the purse of the people to give money to an organization that has been declared a terrorist organization.

Something about this seems totally distorted. If the organization is a terrorist organization we, as a country and a society, would be totally stupid to give it anything.

And while the lawyers involved, apparently, were involved in the designation litigation only, it would appear to me that their claim is moot because:

Under Bush’s so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, which The New York Times disclosed in December 2005, the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans’ telephone calls without warrants if the government believed the person on the other line was overseas and associated with terrorism. Congress, with the vote of Barack Obama — who was a U.S. senator from Illinois at the time — subsequently authorized such warrantless spying in the summer of 2008.

So if the government forgave itself and the telephone companies, how can it be guilty of anything?

Now I realize that I am not a lawyer and I am not arguing law and undoubtedly can be shown to be legally incorrect in numerous ways.

But common sense has to come into play sooner or later. And things like this is the root cause of Tea Parties and the sudden rise of citizens saying, "Not only NO, but HELL NO!"

I mean enough is enough is enough.

And of course we have a Democrat and the New York Times (What else?) to blame.

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency's new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

NYT Link

Hat tip to TalkLeft where I partially posted the above.



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