“INVASION OF PRIMACY”

Or, The constitution of the Constitution is in pretty frail health

Apparently 2/3rds of Americans think it’s perfectly okay in time of “war,” even undeclared wars about which absolutely everything is automatically declared super secret from the public, for the Republicans in charge to monitor all phone calls of all Americans without judicial or congressional oversight or even minimal probable cause. Someone should remind those who don’t seem to care that if it’s okay to do that, then it would also be perfectly okay to open their mail, to access their bank accounts, to hack their computers, to wiretap their confessionals, to invade their doctor’s offices, to videotape their bedrooms, to search their homes. There is really no significant difference of degree between such intrusions as far as the wording of the Constitution is concerned. If one is legal, then there is no boundary.

Someone should remind those who don’t seem to care that if it’s okay for the Republicans in charge to do any of those particular invasions, then it must be okay as well to jail opponents, without trial, without counsel, without visitors, without end and even to torture them. The Republicans have already declared that they think they have the right to do so if they feel like it.

Those who don’t seem to care respond that no one should worry because such violations of privacy don’t happen to good people. They also argue the Republicans in charge would never even think of using such tactics for partisan political purposes.

As Rumsfeld so accurately stated though, “Stuff happens.”