Thursday, May 23, 2013

NAPOLITANO: Tyranny just around the corner - Washington Times

NAPOLITANO: Tyranny just around the corner - Washington Times
A few weeks ago, President Obama advised graduates at Ohio State University that they need not listen to voices warning about tyranny around the corner, because we have self-government in America. He argued that self-government is in and of itself an adequate safeguard against tyranny, because voters can be counted upon to elect democrats (with a lowercase “d”), not tyrants. His argument defies logic and 20th-century history. It reveals an ignorance of the tyranny of the majority, which thinks it can write any law, regulate any behavior, alter any procedure and tax any event so long as it can get away with it.
History has shown that the majority will not permit any higher law, logic or value — such as fidelity to the natural law, a belief in the primacy of the individual or an acceptance of the supremacy of the Constitution — that prevents it from doing as it wishes.
Under Mr. Obama’s watch, the majority has, by active vote or refusal to interfere, killed hundreds of innocents — including four Americans — by drone; permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants; bombed Libya into tribal lawlessness without a declaration of war so that a mob there killed our ambassador with impunity; attempted to force the Roman Catholic Church to purchase insurance policies that cover artificial birth control, euthanasia and abortion; ordered your doctor to ask you whether you own guns; used the Internal Revenue Service to intimidate outspoken conservatives; seized the telephone records of newspaper reporters without lawful authority and in violation of court rules; and obtained a search warrant against one of my Fox News Channel colleagues by misrepresenting his true status to a federal judge.
James Rosen, my colleague and friend, is a professional journalist. He covers the State Department for Fox News. In order to do his job, he has cultivated sources in the State Department — folks willing to speak from time to time off the record.
One of Mr. Rosen’s sources apparently was a former employee of a federal contractor who was on detail to the State DepartmentStephen Jin-Woo KimMr. Kim is an expert in arms control and national defense whose attorneys have stated that his job was to explain byzantine government behavior so we all can understand it. When he was indicted for communicating top-secret and sensitive information, presumably to Mr. Rosen, his attorneys replied by stating that the information he discussed was already in the public domain, and thus it wasn’t secret.


Read more: http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/23/tyranny-just-around-the-corner/#ixzz2U7qxUjOY
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