What to do about BDS

The Wall St. Journal's reaction to Judge Taylor's 44 page opinion enjoining the NSA wiretap program is searing:

In our current era of polarized politics, it was probably inevitable that some judge somewhere would strike down the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretaps as unconstitutional. The temptations to be hailed as Civil Libertarian of the Year are just too great.

So we suppose a kind of congratulations are due to federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, who won her 10 minutes of fame yesterday for declaring that President Bush had taken upon himself "the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself." Oh, and by the way, the Jimmy Carter appointee also avers that "there are no hereditary Kings in America." In case you hadn't heard.

With that little homage to the current liberal BDS hyperbole, Judge Taylor shows that she too has lost her critical thinking faculties and is reduced to silly slogans.

The first question I thought of, upon hearing about her ruling, was "Why Detroit?" Well, it's obvious, isn't it? The ACLU had searched out the federal judge most likely to ignore the law and rule in its favor, and she did.

After the London airline plot was disclosed, Democrats' main reaction wasn't relief and appreciation, but totally political: "Bush is politicizing the terror threat." I'm starting to believe that these people would sell us all to Al Qaeda just to get back into power. One hopes that they'll snap out of it and like a person coming out of a sleepwalk, look around and ask, "Where am I?" But I've lost that hope as their rhetoric becomes ever more deranged and shrill. They seem to be shrieking: "Ignore that man in the White House! Forget the sight of airliners full of people flying into the WTC and the Pentagon!" When we should be remembering and strengthening our resolve, they want us to forget, or, like scared cattle, to stampede toward the cliff.

The Republican majority in Congress has not covered itself in glory. It has gone on a binge of pork barrel overspending on things President Bush did not ask for, thinking that rewarding its constituents would seal its incumbency. But Democrats have done their share of earmarking, even as they whimper about the mounting deficits, and then go on to talk about impeaching the president, just to get even, repealing the Bush tax cuts and pulling our troops out of Iraq before its government is secure. We are in a war, but our media seem to be on the other side, feeding us propaganda that would make Tokyo Rose blush, telling us we're losing, telling us that our weapons are unconstitutional and spreading lies about our Commander in Chief. They may not admit a desire to lose this war, but their words and actions evince one.

James Earl Carter, whose failure as a president is second only to Richard Nixon's in current memory and who, more than anyone else can be blamed for the current regime in Iran, is trotting around the world telling anyone who will listen that America is The Real Evil Empire.

And, even as Bush works to reform the judiciary to bring back its proper functioning, the landmines laid by Carter and Clinton are going off, trying to prevent efforts to monitor terrorist communications, just when we really need them.