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Original LTTE:
The New York Times printed the story about President Bush using wiretaps without a judges’ approval as if it was illegal.
Yet, in special cases, it is perfectly legal. Liberals say that he could have gotten a judge’s approval, but even in the Clinton and Carter administrations, these wiretaps were performed without a judge’s approval. As typical with the liberal New York Times, it is a big story now under Republican Bush, but was not a story under Clinton or Carter, both Democrats.
But what’s really interesting is a story the Times did about child molesters. It was an expose that caught these pedophiles in the act of enticing children into their sick deeds.
How does this story fit into the wiretap issue?
The New York Times wire-taped the pedophiles, got into their e-mail and phone records. All without any judge’s approval!
While very few people would sympathize with child molesters, it is a glaring example of the hypocrisy of the Times and liberals in general who squawk about President Bush and cry fowl about bogus charges, yet commit them without shame.
Liberals are great at having one set of standards for us, and live by another set themselves.
XXX XXXXXX
XXX XXXXXXXXX, XX
My Response:
Whenever I come across a letter so marred by fallacious reasoning and misguided information, I usually don’t think twice about it; after all, seeing this kind of letter in this paper's editorial section is unfortunately not a rare occurrence. However, when that letter is printed twice in the same week, as was XXX XXXXXX’s letter on alleged “liberal hypocrisy,” it is allowed to disseminate those same ill-informed opinions a second time, and I find that a little more difficult to overlook.
The Clinton/Carter talking point that XXXXXX so admirably parroted was immediately debunked by numerous sources after it was trumpeted out by the Bush administration’s satellites in the media. Either he willfully remained ignorant of the facts or he simply did not care to look them up. The Clinton/Carter executive orders that the talking point is based on were actually explanations of the existing FISA procedures that allowed the attorney general to authorize physical searches and electronic surveillance, respectively, if, and only if, he followed the certifications required by the section in question, which, surprise, surprise, state that these actions cannot involve “the premises, information, material or property of a United States person.” Of course, those are the kinds of vital details that neocon apologists tend to ignore.
On another note, why would the “liberal” New York Times sit on this domestic spying story for a year at the request of the White House when it could have published it before the 2004 election?
XXXXXX's attempted linking of this debunked talking point to the Times’ pedophilia story is just as problematic. I assume he was referring to Kurt Eichenwald’s recently published piece that detailed the story of a boy who got caught up in a child pornography ring some years ago. What XXXXXX fails to mention is that the information cited by Eichenwald was voluntarily provided to him by the victim and the incriminating evidence (files, e-mail, credit card information) that was described in the article was compiled by the FBI along with federal prosecutors. In addition to all this, nowhere in the article are wiretaps even mentioned!
So where is XXXXXX getting such misinformation? It may come as no surprise that Ann Coulter, another neocon apologist notorious for her radical positions and deliberate misrepresentation of the facts, wrote a column on Dec. 21 attempting to link the same two stories together.
It is unfortunate that the far right minority which has hijacked the Republican Party has embraced the old Goebbels technique: if you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it.
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