Who is Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Anyway?

            The Wall Street Journal doesn’t have comics pages, but it doesn’t need them.  It has the Editorial Page.

            In an editorial on February 10, the Journal rants about an article in the Washington Post disclosing that Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the Chief Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, will not allow information gained by a warrantless wiretap to be used in obtaining a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to tap the domestic communications of U.S. citizens. 

            Regarding the decision whether or not to issue a warrant, the Journal asks, “[W]hy is an unelected judge such as Ms. Kollar-Kotelly making these decisions? Under the Constitution, those calls ought to be made by the President, who swears to defend the U.S. and can be held accountable by the voters if he fails. Under the current FISA court process, Judge Kollar-Kotelly answers essentially to no one.” 

            Let’s keep it simple, so the Journal can understand.  Under Article III, section 1, of the United States Constitution, the judicial power of the United States is “vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as from time to time the Congress may ordain and establish.”  Congress (of whom the Journal disapproves except at such times as it may ordain and establish tax cuts for the rich) ordained and established district courts.  Judge Kollar-Kotelly was appointed a district court judge by (dare we speak the name?) Bill Clinton.  Congress also established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  Judge Kollar-Kotelly was appointed chief judge of that court by the late bomb-throwing, stripe-wearing Chief Justice of the United States, William Rehnquist.  Under Article III, section 1 of the United States Constitution, judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.”  (Later on, it becomes clear that impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate is the means for determining good Behavior.)  So, the reason why there is such a thing as a Judge Kollar-Kotelly is that the Constitution said there could be and the and the Congress said there should be and the President said there would be.  The reason why she is answerable to no one is that the Constitution says so.  If the Journal doesn’t like it, it should amend the Constitution or move to North Korea.

            But where does this Judge Kollar-Kotelly get off making decisions about who should be wiretapped?  Amendment IV of the Constitution says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”  Now, when the Constitution speaks of a Warrant, it means a warrant issued by a judge.  Don’t take my word for it, ask Judge Scalia, who doesn’t believe any book written after 1787.  So the reason why a judge, rather than a president, gets to decide whether a warrant should issue authorizing a wiretap is because the Constitution says so.  If the Journal doesn’t like it, it should amend the Constitution or move to North Korea.

            Aside from the fact that district court judges are allowed to exist, and that they are allowed to decide whether or not to issue warrants, the Journal is shocked--shocked!--that Judge Kollar-Kotelly will not allow information obtained from the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program to be used to obtain warrants in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 

            Let’s see if we can make this simple enough for even Journal editorial writers to grasp.  We’ll use a somewhat exaggerated example.  President Bush, who, as the Journal points out, is sworn to defend the United States, thinks that Joe Blow is a terrorist and has papers in his house that will help prove it.  So he sends the FBI out to grab Joe Blow and beat a confession out of Joe.  President Bush takes this confession to a judge and asks for a warrant to search Joe’s house for the papers in question.  The reaction of the judge (who answers to no one) is, “If we allow you to support a warrant application with evidence that was obtained in violation of the people’s right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, then we are allowing and encouraging you to violate the people’s right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, and we are not doing our job.”  To use our example, if a court allows the FBI to use Joe Blow’s confession to get a warrant, then when the FBI wants a warrant to search Jane Doe’s house, they will know that all they need to do is grab Jane and beat the bejeezus out of her.   

            Even the Journal would probably say that the President should not be able to send the FBI out to beat up Joe Blow (unless Joe is a union member--then it’s OK).  But, the Journal would say, the example is not fair for that very reason.  Everyone agrees that beating up Joe is illegal (unless he’s a union member), but everyone knows that anyone who communicates in any way with a foreigner is undoubtedly suspicious and probably seditious, and should be at least wiretapped, if not horsewhipped.  Or, to put it more simply, if it’s not illegal to, without a warrant, wiretap communications with foreigners, why can the results of those wiretaps not be used  in support of applications for warrants to wiretap purely domestic communications? 

            That’s the real question, isn’t it?  Now, we understand that editorials must be brief, in part because they take up space that otherwise could be devoted to advertising and in part because the attention span of editorial writers is brief.  So we can understand why the Journal editorial writers might have either failed to read or failed to mention certain parts of the Washington Post story upon which they were commenting.  In fairness, let’s mention them here.

            For one thing, the Journal apparently missed the part where the Post said that not only Judge Kollar-Kotelly (the, pardon the expression, Clinton appointee), but also her predecessor as Chief Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, questioned the legality of the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretap program.  Lamberth was appointed a district court judge by that well-known Red sympathizer, Ronald Reagan, and, like Kollar-Kotelly, was appointed Chief Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by the bomb-throwing, etc., Chief Judge William Rehnquist. 

            Still, the Journal may ask, how bad can the warrantless wiretap program be if only two judges objected to it?  Well, as the Post article points out, they are the only two judges who were told about it, and they were told about it only on condition that they tell no one else.

            It gets worse.  The judges were not the only ones to express doubts about the legality of the warrantless wiretap program. As the Post reported (and the Journal omitted), James A. Baker, the counsel for intelligence policy in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review--the Justice Department’s guy in charge of FISA applications--also expressed doubts about the legality of the warrantless wiretap program.  Attorney General Ashcroft--that well-known terrorist sympathizer and breast-coverer--could have transferred Baker, or, if he felt strongly enough, fired him, but he didn’t.  Attorney General Gonzales, that well-known terrorist sympathizer and breast-barer, could have transferred Baker, or, if he felt strongly enough, fired him, but he didn’t.

            It gets still worse.  Believe it or not, as the Post reported, the terrorist sympathizers in the Bush Justice Department agreed not to use, in support of an application for a FISA warrant, any information from the warrantless wiretap program.  It is indeed difficult to see how the Journal missed this part of the massive conspiracy to allow terrorists a free hand to destroy life as we know it in the United States.

            There is only one solution, and the Journal sagely advanced that solution in its editorial.  The Journal pointed out that the President “swears to defend the U.S. and can be held accountable by the voters if he fails.”  So the solution, according to the Journal, is for the voters not to re-elect Bush in 2008. 

            The Wall Street Journal, not having made it to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, probably has never read the 22d Amendment.  That’s the one that says you can’t serve more than two terms as President.  The Journal editorial does not explain how, given this prohibition, a second-term President is any more answerable to the voters that the despised Judge Kollar-Kotelly.

            Post Script:

            Some Bush supporters might say that I misunderestimate the Journal, and that Bush really is answerable to the voters in 2008.  A close look at the 22d Amendment and at the facts may bear this out.  The 22d Amendment says, in part, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once . . . .”  Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 by more than a half million votes.  Furthermore, the five-person majority on the Supreme Court that said he got to be President didn’t actually say he won Florida, they just said that it would be downright wrong to count all of the votes.  So, obviously, in terms of the 22d Amendment, the 2000 election doesn’t count. 

The real problem as far as the 22d Amendment is concerned is the part that says if you’ve held office for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected, then you can only be elected once.  If Bush wasn’t elected President in 2000, then who was?  Al Gore?    If we ignore for the moment the fact that the Wall Street Journal would never accept the proposition that Al Gore was elected President, we still face the problem of Bush having served as President for more than two years of a term to which Gore was elected.  This would make Bush ineligible to run in 2008. 

But there is a way around this.  The Wall Street Journal points out that Bush swore to defend the United States.  But where was Bush in the summer of 2001 when Richard Clark was running around with his hair on fire, warning that terrorists were about to attack?  On vacation in Texas, of course.  Where was Bush when Hurricane Katrina was approaching? On vacation in Texas, of course.  Where was Bush--well, you get the point.  If we subtract the time that Bush has been on vacation from either of his first terms, we can probably get him down under the two-year limit imposed by the 22d Amendment. 

Besides, there is a strong and justified suspicion that He Who Must Not Be Seen, who has spent much of the Bush administration in a Secure, Undisclosed Location, is the one who has really been serving as President, and that Bush has not. 

Comments

[Art]

stupid and dangerous - the liberal brain dead mind.

[Collateralman]

So let me understand this, this cunt judge believes in the 4th amendment but not the 2nd? She is stupid and dangerous, in that she has endangered thousands of lives by rescinding concealed carry in parks. The revolution is coming and these liberal judges who want to violate the Constitution shall be held liable for their actions on the bench.

[Collin]

In March 2009 the National Park Service, which manages land that belongs to us. Got the Brady people to sue and have this judge preside over the case (interesting isn't it), in turn she trough in an injunction to keep a new law that stipulates that current NPS rules were a violation of US citizens 2nd amendments rights. Now the Brady campaign is supposed to curb gun violence but rather make criminals out of law abiding citizens, so who's to protect us from a predatory animal? There is in no way that there is enough armed rangers to protect us at any given time, they are all college pussies anymore anyway who worry more about the damn animal.
This bill was being sponsored by 47 state senators, she is not a judge for or about the people, just another private interest pawn.
Judge it is my park, not the governments.

[IPGAG]

This woman or c---t is a pure whore,
She has like Obama put our country at risk,
Get rid of this d--bag and send her to Iran,
I cannot believe that we put Morons like this in office, anyone ever heard of Impeach,
She was the one that spit on me when I returned from Nam, a Hippie that had sex with anyone she could find,
What a slut and her mind is MUSLIM She must GO NOW