Jay Stephenson: Credibility Zero

Not sure how I missed this, but Jay Stephenson has again destroyed his credibility. Noting that the ACLU has called for stronger protection for government whistleblowers, he quotes a part of the ACLU press release and then lies outright:

Without the disclosure from that whistleblower, Congress and the public would continue to be unaware of the warrantless surveillance by the NSA.

Yes, that is because the program was “secret”! What does the ACLU not understand about the word secret?

What does Jay Stephenson not understand about the facts? The wiretapping of al Qaeda phone conversations hasn’t been secret for many months. Dubya himself spilled the beans back in 2004:

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires—a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

And, to put not too fine a point on it, Bush lied about getting court orders for wiretaps. We know that the warrantless wiretaps started long before Bush’s April 2004 speech. What does George W. Bush not understand about the word “secret”, Jay?

Jay makes the following claim about the whistleblowers who revealed the illegal nature of the NSA wiretaps:

They are criminals that need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They are traitors that have comitted treason, and jeapordized the security of America.

And again, Jay ignores the facts. Everyone, especially the terrorists, knew that the NSA was conducting wiretaps. George W. Bush himself has publicly informed the terrorists that they were being wiretapped, many times over the past several years. If Jay is claiming that revealing the fact that wiretaps were being conducted is treason, then he would have to conclude George W. Bush is a traitor. If Jay is, instead, claiming that the terason lies in revealing the fact that the wiretaps were being conducted illegally , then he’s got a tough case to make. How does revealing that the wiretaps were being conducted without the legally required warrants help the terrorists in any material way?

Jay should be asking himself why the President he supports is unwilling to obey the laws of the United States, laws which that same President has sworn to uphold. Hurling unsupportable accusations of treason at those who point out the President’s predilection for lawlessness merely illustrates how uninterested in the facts Jay Stephenson truly is. That’s why his credibility has fallen to zero — or less.