....don't you, Newt?
The Terrorism Information & Prevention System would have encouraged cable repair operators, telephone service technicians, meter readers and mail carriers to report suspicious activities to federal authorities. With loud objections by the American Civil Liberties Union and members of both parties, Congress adopted a homeland-security law that prohibited such a snitching program.
Fast forward to 2009 and the health care debate and the tables have turned. American safety isn't the issue but our health, something almost synonymous with our well being. The White House is encouraging an electronic snitching program for the entire country, asking people to report friends and neighbors to flag@whitehouse.gov if they suspect someone is spreading “fishy” information concerning health care reform.
This time, however, we don't hear a peep out of those champions of free speech, the ACLU. The current administration, which has so proudly defended the rights of terrorists and noncitizens in Guantanamo Bay, shows no remorse in how this policy may be trampling over the Bill of Rights and suppressing the free speech of our honest citizens who have a right to speak their conscience.
Because, of course, the ACLU largely isn't a stalwart defender of anything but its own left-leaning interests. Keep in mind this is the organization who says, regarding the Second Amendment, "the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty." (Never mind, of course, that the whole reason the authors of the Constitution put the Bill of Rights in the Constitution was to assuage the fears of certain state delegates who thought the document in its previous incarnation left too much room for the federales to infringe on certain inalienable rights.) And it really is just that simple.
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