The Rage of Jane Harman
Jane Harman is rightly outraged to have learned that her conversations regarding a matter of national security were intercepted by intelligence agencies without her knowledge. While I believe Nancy Pelosi when she says that anything picked up in the Harman wiretap had nothing to do with committee assignments or anything of the sort, I also sympathize with representative Harman who definitely has her suspicions.
I mean, if you found out that the government had been spying on you, wouldn't you start to suspect that things in life that didn't quite go your way were engineered against you by powers that you have no control over and that you didn't even know are acting against you? Paranoia, the representative has learned, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, Representative Harman suffers from the opposite of paranoia. She lives under the insane delusion that people like her. Harman's outrage rings false in light of her previous support for Bush's domestic wiretapping program. Though she eventually turned against the program, when the political tides did, she was an early supporter and she lobbied The New York Times not to tell us what was going on.
Harman is now outraged because she was caught on tape. She doesn't care how many other innocents might have had their privacy violated by the government. She wants the tapes of her to be released, if they exist. But she hasn't come out and said that all of us should have the same rights that she claims for herself -- we should also be allowed to demand that the government tell us if our conversations have ever been intercepted or recorded but we should be allowed to know what, when, why and to get copies. We should probably also have the right to sue the government and to collect damages if a court finds that the government acted illegally.
But I hear nothing of the sort from Harman. Now that it turns out that she's been wiretapped, she wants to demand justice, but only for herself. Her recordings and the circumstances around them, must be revealed so that she can rebut them. Well, I agree. She should get to know why her rights were violated and she's due some recourse. As soon as all of the other victims of the government's domestic spying programs get the same opportunity.
What do you say, Harman? Does everyone tapped deserve the same treatment you want for yourself, or do you think you're just better than everyone else?
I mean, if you found out that the government had been spying on you, wouldn't you start to suspect that things in life that didn't quite go your way were engineered against you by powers that you have no control over and that you didn't even know are acting against you? Paranoia, the representative has learned, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Or maybe, as Woody Allen once said, Representative Harman suffers from the opposite of paranoia. She lives under the insane delusion that people like her. Harman's outrage rings false in light of her previous support for Bush's domestic wiretapping program. Though she eventually turned against the program, when the political tides did, she was an early supporter and she lobbied The New York Times not to tell us what was going on.
Harman is now outraged because she was caught on tape. She doesn't care how many other innocents might have had their privacy violated by the government. She wants the tapes of her to be released, if they exist. But she hasn't come out and said that all of us should have the same rights that she claims for herself -- we should also be allowed to demand that the government tell us if our conversations have ever been intercepted or recorded but we should be allowed to know what, when, why and to get copies. We should probably also have the right to sue the government and to collect damages if a court finds that the government acted illegally.
But I hear nothing of the sort from Harman. Now that it turns out that she's been wiretapped, she wants to demand justice, but only for herself. Her recordings and the circumstances around them, must be revealed so that she can rebut them. Well, I agree. She should get to know why her rights were violated and she's due some recourse. As soon as all of the other victims of the government's domestic spying programs get the same opportunity.
What do you say, Harman? Does everyone tapped deserve the same treatment you want for yourself, or do you think you're just better than everyone else?
