WEBVTT NOTE Civil Liberties in Wartime 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.680 So I'm on the bench for about two or three weeks and I'm assigned small claims. 2 00:00:03.680 --> 00:00:07.440 You walk out into the courtroom, there's maybe two or three hundred people in the courtroom, 3 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:12.560 not unlike this room, and your job is to resolve all of their cases before lunchtime because you're 4 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:18.240 going to have this many cases back at 1 30. The typical case is, well, the dry cleaner ruined 5 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:24.080 my dress but he also tried to pick up my sister. So this lawyer says to me, Judge, we're going to 6 00:00:24.080 --> 00:00:29.920 need a translator for my case. I said, what's the language? He said, Italian. So I call the court 7 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:34.360 House Administrator to see if the Italian translator is ready. Sure enough, she was 8 00:00:34.360 --> 00:00:39.480 busy in another courtroom, so I say to the crowd of the courtroom, is there anybody here 9 00:00:39.480 --> 00:00:44.000 that speaks Italian? Little guy in the back raises his hand, he comes up, we swear on 10 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:50.680 the translator, we swear on the witness, here is exactly, literally what happens. Lawyer 11 00:00:50.680 --> 00:00:55.360 Lawyer to Translator, Give the Court Your Name 12 00:00:55.360 --> 00:01:00.360 Translator to Witness, What is your name? 13 00:01:00.360 --> 00:01:06.120 I said, all right, let me see where this is going to go. 14 00:01:06.120 --> 00:01:12.640 Second question, Lawyer to Translator, Tell the Court Your Address 15 00:01:12.640 --> 00:01:17.360 Translator to Witness, Where is your house? 16 00:01:17.360 --> 00:01:21.280 I looked at this guy, I said, I thought you told me that you could speak Italian. 17 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:26.960 He said, I can, Your Honor, but my English, she said, not as so good. 18 00:01:26.960 --> 00:01:30.400 One day I'm picking a jury in New Jersey, the judge picks the jury. 19 00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:35.040 Again, you have two or three hundred people from whom you need to extract 20 00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:41.680 twelve individuals who have no bias, no prejudice, no interest in the outcome of the case. 21 00:01:41.680 --> 00:01:44.160 This is a drug distribution case. 22 00:01:44.160 --> 00:01:50.860 So I say to the crowds, is there anybody here who has any reason why they can't participate in this particular trial? 23 00:01:50.860 --> 00:01:57.060 A lady in the back raised her hand. She said, Judge, I can't be on this case because of my occupation. 24 00:01:57.060 --> 00:02:05.160 Alright, next question. Madam, what do you do? She says, Your Honor, I'm a soothsayer. 25 00:02:05.160 --> 00:02:11.460 Oh, come on. Who calls themselves a soothsayer these days? So again, I fall for this. 26 00:02:11.460 --> 00:02:14.820 I said, all right, lady, how does that keep you from being on the jury? 27 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:17.420 She said, Judge, I already know how the case ends up. 28 00:02:20.020 --> 00:02:26.220 I should have said, tell us, lady, and save us the next three weeks in the courtroom. 29 00:02:28.020 --> 00:02:36.060 I have been harshly, harshly critical in my writings and in my broadcasts of the Bush administration. 30 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:40.380 But I have to take a little bit of blame that they're even there. 31 00:02:41.460 --> 00:02:56.460 It was the tail end of the recount, the days in November and December of 2001, at Fox News, we were working 17, 18 hours a day without a break. 32 00:02:56.460 --> 00:03:00.460 And I had to become an expert in, of all things, Florida election law. 33 00:03:00.460 --> 00:03:08.460 So I'm on one night with Brit Hume, it's ten minutes of seven, and all of a sudden you see one of those things that you see on Fox about 30 or 40 times every half hour, 34 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:28.460 The Supreme Court of Florida has just ordered that the recount resume in not only the four counties that Al Gore has challenged, but the other 68 counties of the state of Florida as well. 35 00:03:28.460 --> 00:03:37.460 And we're told that Governor Bush's lawyers are going to appeal this decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta. 36 00:03:37.460 --> 00:03:40.460 Britt says to me, what do you think about that, Judge? 37 00:03:40.460 --> 00:03:49.460 And I said, well, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta does not have jurisdiction to hear an appeal from the Supreme Court of Florida. 38 00:03:49.460 --> 00:03:51.460 He said, well, what should Bush's people do? 39 00:03:51.460 --> 00:03:57.460 I said, well, if they want to appeal this, they should go to the house of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who lives in Georgetown. 40 00:03:57.460 --> 00:04:03.420 in Georgetown, he's the circuit justice for the 11th circuit, which basically means you 41 00:04:03.420 --> 00:04:08.020 can only appeal this to the Supreme Court of the United States, go to Justice Kennedy, 42 00:04:08.020 --> 00:04:14.820 ask him if he'll stay, lawyers use the word stay when they mean stop, stop the decision, 43 00:04:14.820 --> 00:04:19.480 the effect of the decision of the Florida Supreme Court, and then he'll poll the other 44 00:04:19.480 --> 00:04:25.140 eight members of the court and they'll decide whether they want to uphold his decision. 45 00:04:25.140 --> 00:04:34.140 At this point, I go up to my office to go to sleep, because I have to be on with that character O'Reilly at 8 o'clock, and we've been going almost 24-7. 46 00:04:34.140 --> 00:04:47.140 At 7 o'clock, my very garrulous, utterly unstoppable, knows how to look a camera in the face, colleague Shepard Smith comes on, and again, another one of those swoosh, Fox Alerts. 47 00:04:47.140 --> 00:04:53.780 This alert is the following. The lawyers for Governor Bush have just been sighted in their 48 00:04:53.780 --> 00:05:01.860 cars in Georgetown trying to find the house of Justice Anthony Kennedy. Shep then looks in the 49 00:05:01.860 --> 00:05:07.860 camera as only he can. He said, you know what that means? That means that George Bush is watching 50 00:05:07.860 --> 00:05:17.460 Fox News and he's getting his advice from Judge Napolitano and the rest I am sad to say is history. 51 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:27.300 Let's talk a little bit of American history. We were colonies and we were subject to a king 52 00:05:27.300 --> 00:05:34.260 and a parliament and the king and the parliament had ingenious, some direct, some subtle ways 53 00:05:34.260 --> 00:05:37.260 of Raising Money from the Colonists. 54 00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:40.260 And one of the ways that money was raised 55 00:05:40.260 --> 00:05:44.260 was by the introduction and execution 56 00:05:44.260 --> 00:05:46.260 of something called the Stamp Act. 57 00:05:46.260 --> 00:05:50.260 And the Stamp Act required that every piece of paper in your home, 58 00:05:50.260 --> 00:05:55.260 a book, a pamphlet, a deed, a mortgage, a bank check, 59 00:05:55.260 --> 00:05:57.260 if there was such a thing at the time, in your home, 60 00:05:57.260 --> 00:06:01.260 even a poster you planned to nail to a tree, 61 00:06:01.260 --> 00:06:08.060 must bear a stamp with the King's image on it. Question. How did the King's 62 00:06:08.060 --> 00:06:14.940 government know if on every piece of paper in your home you placed a stamp 63 00:06:14.940 --> 00:06:22.420 with the King's image? Answer. Parliament enacted the Ritz of Assistance Act, an 64 00:06:22.420 --> 00:06:28.700 utter abomination which authorized British soldiers to write their own 65 00:06:28.700 --> 00:06:33.500 search warrants so British soldiers would literally show up at your front 66 00:06:33.500 --> 00:06:39.140 door and write a search warrant authorizing themselves to enter and cross 67 00:06:39.140 --> 00:06:45.700 the threshold and look for the King's stamps. Of course they might also find 68 00:06:45.700 --> 00:06:51.620 rum from the islands and it might not have a stamp. They might find furniture 69 00:06:51.620 --> 00:06:57.540 imported from another colony and it might not have a stamp, but they had free 70 00:06:57.540 --> 00:07:11.540 We reigned once inside your home to look for and seize what they wanted because Parliament authorized them to write their own search warrants. 71 00:07:11.540 --> 00:07:19.540 We all know what happened. We wrote a Declaration of Independence. We fought a revolution. We wrote a constitution. 72 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:24.540 In the Declaration of Independence, every school child knows these words. 73 00:07:24.540 --> 00:07:42.540 Wilson announced conclusively that our rights come from our Creator, and among them is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and those rights are inalienable, meaning they cannot be taken away from us. 74 00:07:42.540 --> 00:07:52.540 This was not enough for Alexander Hamilton and John Adams and the big government guys at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, 75 00:07:52.540 --> 00:08:22.540 Jefferson, who wasn't there, but through his friend, Madison, argued, freedom comes from our humanity, just as it says in the Declaration of Independence, our humanity comes from the Creator, the Creator is perfectly free, and He has given in us, as part of our essence, all the yearnings for freedom that we have, freedom to think, freedom to think, freedom to think, freedom to think. 76 00:08:22.540 --> 00:08:27.540 freedom to think, freedom to speak, freedom to develop your personality. 77 00:08:27.540 --> 00:08:31.540 I sometimes say to Bill O'Reilly, it's just too bad you have that freedom. 78 00:08:31.540 --> 00:08:38.540 But nevertheless, all these freedoms that we have, freedom of religion, the right to travel, the right to be left alone, 79 00:08:38.540 --> 00:08:44.540 Madison argued, come from our humanity, which is a gift from God. 80 00:08:44.540 --> 00:08:48.540 Adams and Hamilton argued to the contrary. 81 00:08:48.540 --> 00:08:53.140 Freedom comes because the government allows us to be free. 82 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:57.540 What is the value of freedom, they argued, if the government isn't around to enforce it? 83 00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:02.840 We have freedom of speech because we have a government that will enforce freedom of speech. 84 00:09:02.840 --> 00:09:08.040 That argument is known today as positivism. 85 00:09:08.040 --> 00:09:12.340 Again, a legal word meaning whatever law the government enacts, 86 00:09:12.340 --> 00:09:16.840 as long as the government followed its own rules when it enacted the law, 87 00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:19.680 It's a valid law. 88 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:24.000 Now, the tension between these two schools of thought, 89 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:29.600 the natural law, which says that freedom is our birthright, 90 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:34.080 and positivism, which says that freedom comes from the government, 91 00:09:34.080 --> 00:09:39.120 this is more than just an academic dispute. 92 00:09:39.120 --> 00:09:42.320 If our freedom is part of our humanity, 93 00:09:42.320 --> 00:09:46.640 who the hell is the government to take it away? 94 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:57.560 If our freedom comes from the government, there is at least a rational argument to be made that the government can take it away. 95 00:09:57.560 --> 00:10:06.360 Notwithstanding the oath that every president has taken, read the oath. It's in the Constitution. 96 00:10:06.360 --> 00:10:13.360 Is it an oath to defend real estate? No. Is it an oath to keep us secure? No. 97 00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:20.080 Is it an oath to keep us safe? No. It's an oath to uphold the Constitution. 98 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:29.760 And the Constitution, I would argue, guarantees the natural freedoms which come from our birth. 99 00:10:29.760 --> 00:10:37.680 Unfortunately, even though the American Republic, the creation of the American Republic, 100 00:10:37.680 --> 00:10:42.480 is the greatest political achievement in the history of the Western world. 101 00:10:43.760 --> 00:10:49.040 Very few of those who have been elected as president of the American Republic 102 00:10:49.600 --> 00:10:56.880 have followed through with their obligation to preserve that freedom and to mandate that 103 00:10:56.880 --> 00:11:03.520 greatness. Because almost from the very beginning, in the administration of John Adams, the government 104 00:11:03.520 --> 00:11:09.560 Human Enacted, the Alien and Sedition Acts, among other things, think about it, we just 105 00:11:09.560 --> 00:11:14.960 fought a revolution, we just broke away from the mother country because of things like 106 00:11:14.960 --> 00:11:20.760 give me liberty or give me death, because of things like freedom from the government 107 00:11:20.760 --> 00:11:27.200 is the true liberty of the people, because of things like if you sacrifice freedom for 108 00:11:27.200 --> 00:11:29.840 safety you'll end up with neither. 109 00:11:29.840 --> 00:11:35.640 But eight years after becoming a country, the Congress in Acts, the Alien and Sedition Acts, 110 00:11:35.640 --> 00:11:40.040 Jefferson was the Vice President, Adams was President. 111 00:11:40.040 --> 00:11:46.540 It makes it a crime punishable by two years in jail to criticize the Congress, 112 00:11:46.540 --> 00:11:51.040 to criticize members of the cabinet, or to criticize the President. 113 00:11:51.040 --> 00:11:56.640 Note who's missing. It was not a crime to criticize TJ, the Vice President. 114 00:11:56.640 --> 00:12:03.000 He would have nothing to do with it, and the Federalist wrote the statute conspicuously left him out. 115 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:10.880 So the country born of freedom, the country which had just passed the Bill of Rights, 116 00:12:10.880 --> 00:12:19.240 enacts a statute that permits the federal government to punish people for speech. 117 00:12:19.240 --> 00:12:24.760 During the Civil War, of course, we saw perhaps the worst transgressions of human liberty 118 00:12:24.760 --> 00:12:32.600 in the history of our country. Abe Lincoln caused the deaths of 650,000 Americans. Abe 119 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:38.680 Lincoln's troops robbed banks, burnt courthouses, raped women, all with the blessings of the 120 00:12:38.680 --> 00:12:44.440 chief executive. Abe Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Abe Lincoln locked up 121 00:12:44.440 --> 00:12:52.200 editors of newspapers from the North, not from the rebelling South, because they preached 122 00:12:52.200 --> 00:12:54.460 that he was violating the Constitution. 123 00:12:55.440 --> 00:12:57.340 But just as was the case 124 00:12:57.340 --> 00:12:59.520 when we thought the French were going to attack 125 00:12:59.520 --> 00:13:01.560 in the Adams administration, 126 00:13:01.560 --> 00:13:05.040 we allowed the government to do these things 127 00:13:05.040 --> 00:13:07.200 during the Civil War. 128 00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:09.860 Woodrow Wilson, who was the president of my alma mater 129 00:13:09.860 --> 00:13:13.720 eight years before he was president of the United States, 130 00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:15.560 presided over the Espionage Act, 131 00:13:15.560 --> 00:13:18.240 which by the way is still the law. 132 00:13:18.240 --> 00:13:26.440 The Espionage Act of 1917 makes it a crime to discourage the war effort. 133 00:13:26.440 --> 00:13:31.040 And the first person prosecuted under the Espionage Act was a fellow named Gitlo. 134 00:13:31.040 --> 00:13:32.640 Do you know what Gitlo did? 135 00:13:32.640 --> 00:13:36.640 Gitlo distributed leaflets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, 136 00:13:36.640 --> 00:13:40.440 encouraging people to strike for a day. 137 00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:43.940 The leaflets were in Yiddish. 138 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:45.440 They weren't even in English. 139 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:55.440 Mr. Gitlow spent 10 years in a federal institution as a result of the successful prosecution of him under the Espionage Act. 140 00:13:55.440 --> 00:14:00.440 World War II, we all know what FDR did. He locked people up because of their race. 141 00:14:00.440 --> 00:14:07.440 He locked up 10,000 Italian Americans and 120,000 Japanese Americans. 142 00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:13.920 Americans, no trial, no charge, no courtroom, no jury, no lawyer, just lock them up and 143 00:14:13.920 --> 00:14:19.120 forget about their families and forget about their income and forget about their property 144 00:14:19.120 --> 00:14:28.640 and forget about their businesses. In the opinion of the chief executive, they were 145 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:37.000 security risks and so they should be locked up. In the periods between these wars, when 146 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:45.400 When times were better, there was more freedom. But when the President of the United States, 147 00:14:45.400 --> 00:14:57.840 as is the case now, preaches fear rather than hope. Look, FDR was a rampant, maniacal socialist, 148 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:06.520 but at least he preached hope during World War II. This crowd preaches fear. And when 149 00:15:06.520 --> 00:15:15.920 The people are afraid, it's amazing, the satanic bargain that they will enter into. 150 00:15:15.920 --> 00:15:22.380 Here's the bargain, hey, come over here behind this tree, this is the devil so he can't really 151 00:15:22.380 --> 00:15:29.480 show his face, he can't be exposed to the sun, God forbid he should see a crucifix. 152 00:15:29.480 --> 00:15:40.980 Here's the bargain. Here's the bargain. Give me your freedom and I'll keep you safe. 153 00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:48.600 And we accept that satanic bargain. When Jimmy Carter was the President of the United States 154 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:54.840 and had huge democratic majorities in the Congress, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance 155 00:15:54.840 --> 00:16:03.440 This Act was enacted. It allowed for the first time in history search warrants to be signed 156 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:09.160 by federal judges for reasons other than probable cause. What's probable cause? Again, a legal 157 00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:15.440 phrase meaning it is more likely than not that in that pamphlet or in that computer 158 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:20.920 or in that bank account or in that barn or in that dresser drawer underneath the clean 159 00:16:20.920 --> 00:16:30.040 In Shirts is evidence of a crime. For 200 years, the Fourth Amendment, the uniquely 160 00:16:30.040 --> 00:16:37.440 American right, as Justice Brandeis called it, the right to be left alone, was honored 161 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:44.520 in this country. What saved us from becoming a banana republic was that the government 162 00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:58.520 The government could not break down the door in the middle of the night, unless it went to a judge, a neutral, life-tenured judge, and presented evidence of probable cause. 163 00:16:58.520 --> 00:17:04.520 You see, the Fourth Amendment was written to restrain the government. 164 00:17:04.520 --> 00:17:08.520 Regrettably, we've given the government a monopoly on the use of force. 165 00:17:08.520 --> 00:17:15.960 It's almost impossible, especially in this city of von Mises, to protect yourself with force. 166 00:17:15.960 --> 00:17:19.200 We give the government a monopoly on force. 167 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:21.960 The Fourth Amendment regulates that monopoly. 168 00:17:21.960 --> 00:17:27.680 It says that when the government wants a target, 169 00:17:27.680 --> 00:17:33.080 the Constitution puts a neutral magistrate between the government and its target. 170 00:17:33.080 --> 00:17:36.040 No matter how evil is the target, 171 00:17:36.040 --> 00:17:40.040 No matter how widespread is the belief in the guilt of the target, 172 00:17:40.040 --> 00:17:45.080 no matter how guilty is the target, no matter how fearsome is the target, 173 00:17:45.080 --> 00:17:48.200 no matter who the target is or what the target knows, 174 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:55.320 the government has to go to a neutral judge before it can unleash its force on the target. 175 00:17:56.600 --> 00:17:58.760 That is the Constitution. 176 00:17:59.800 --> 00:18:04.360 And the Constitution, as you know, can only be changed 177 00:18:04.360 --> 00:18:11.960 when two-thirds of each house of the Congress and three-quarters of the state legislatures agree. 178 00:18:13.400 --> 00:18:23.640 For 200 years, that was the law of the land until 1977 when under the Carter administration 179 00:18:24.280 --> 00:18:32.840 they began chipping away. We had presidents who chipped away, Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, 180 00:18:32.840 --> 00:18:40.840 But 1977 is when the Congress and the whole apparatus of the federal government begin chipping away. 181 00:18:40.840 --> 00:18:53.840 But even Carter, with his absence of concern for liberty, knew enough to realize that any evidence obtained from one of these FISA warrants, 182 00:18:53.840 --> 00:19:01.840 where all you have to do is prove that the target is an agent of a foreign government, you don't have to prove probable cause of crime. 183 00:19:01.840 --> 00:19:06.560 and Crime. That's too difficult for these federal agents. We'll make it easier. They 184 00:19:06.560 --> 00:19:11.520 only have to prove that the target is an agent of a foreign government. It could be a government 185 00:19:11.520 --> 00:19:16.400 friendly to the United States, like Great Britain or Italy, or it could be a government 186 00:19:16.400 --> 00:19:22.120 that wishes us ill, like the old Soviet Union or the old East Germany. No matter. So long 187 00:19:22.120 --> 00:19:28.060 as the target was an agent of a federal, of a foreign government, a judge was authorized 188 00:19:28.060 --> 00:19:42.060 The Federal Reserve has to sign this search warrant to listen to phone calls, but because there was no probable cause of crime, anything learned from the phone call couldn't be used at a trial. 189 00:19:42.060 --> 00:19:53.060 So example, if the feds get a warrant under FISA, and they listen to a phone call, and they find out that the janitor at the Russian embassy is really a spy who beats his wife. 190 00:19:53.060 --> 00:20:01.060 He can't be prosecuted for spying because they learned this from an unconstitutional warrant. 191 00:20:01.060 --> 00:20:07.060 He can't even be prosecuted for beating his wife because they learned about it from an unconstitutional warrant. 192 00:20:07.060 --> 00:20:10.060 He can only be deported out of the country. 193 00:20:10.060 --> 00:20:16.060 Even Jimmy Carter understood that the Fourth Amendment prohibits the government 194 00:20:16.060 --> 00:20:23.060 from using evidence obtained by less than probable cause in a criminal prosecution. 195 00:20:23.060 --> 00:20:26.060 Of course, that wasn't enough for the government. 196 00:20:26.060 --> 00:20:33.060 In 1978, just a year later, the government enacts the Rights of Financial Privacy Act. 197 00:20:33.060 --> 00:20:36.060 Now, if you know anything about the way the government works, 198 00:20:36.060 --> 00:20:44.060 if the word privacy is in the name of the statute, head for the hills and start using cash. 199 00:20:44.060 --> 00:20:51.420 It's a cinch your privacy will suffer and it will because for the first time in 200 00:20:51.420 --> 00:21:00.740 American history your government and mine authorizes its agents to write 201 00:21:00.740 --> 00:21:08.380 their own search warrants. It wasn't enough that we lowered the bar from 202 00:21:08.380 --> 00:21:17.100 From Probable Cause to Agency of a Foreign Power, we now, in 1978, allowed the feds 203 00:21:17.100 --> 00:21:23.900 to write their own search warrants, but we limited the target to a financial institution. 204 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:30.160 So an FBI agent could show up at a bank and say, I want the financial records of John 205 00:21:30.160 --> 00:21:35.540 Gotti and here's my warrant for it, I'm writing it out myself. Whether it's an evil person 206 00:21:35.540 --> 00:21:47.460 The Bank would call its customer and say, there's a guy here from the federal government. 207 00:21:47.460 --> 00:21:50.340 He just wrote out his own search warrant. 208 00:21:50.340 --> 00:21:55.260 He is showing us proof that he's from the FBI and he's demanding your bank records. 209 00:21:55.260 --> 00:21:58.660 We're going to give him your bank records in two weeks. 210 00:21:58.660 --> 00:22:05.340 You have two weeks to challenge this self-written search warrant. 211 00:22:05.340 --> 00:22:06.980 and you'd go before a judge. 212 00:22:06.980 --> 00:22:09.660 Judges don't like self-written search warrants. 213 00:22:09.660 --> 00:22:11.840 It takes power away from them. 214 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:15.700 The Constitution says only they can grant search warrants 215 00:22:15.700 --> 00:22:19.440 and the FBI would have to justify A, what it wants, 216 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:22.860 B, why it wants it, C, why it used the root 217 00:22:22.860 --> 00:22:24.380 of a self-written search warrant. 218 00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:29.380 But the target was limited to financial institutions 219 00:22:29.380 --> 00:22:32.820 and again, Carter, I don't know why, 220 00:22:32.820 --> 00:22:42.100 but in a stroke of fidelity to the Constitution, insisted that any evidence obtained from your financial institution, 221 00:22:42.100 --> 00:22:48.260 from one of these self-written search warrants, could not be used in a criminal case against you. 222 00:22:50.700 --> 00:22:54.380 Now comes September 11th, 2001. 223 00:22:54.380 --> 00:23:00.220 If you lived in this city or if you lived near Shenkville, Pennsylvania or if you lived anywhere near the District of Columbia, 224 00:23:00.220 --> 00:23:03.960 Do you know what we all went through? 225 00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:10.060 It was a horrible day, it was awful memories, it was horrific carnage, it was a government 226 00:23:10.060 --> 00:23:19.060 caught unprepared, it was evil monsters who attacked us and slaughtered, murdered 3,000 227 00:23:19.060 --> 00:23:27.780 of our fellow Americans and unfortunately changed our psyche and our government probably 228 00:23:27.780 --> 00:23:30.340 forever. 229 00:23:30.340 --> 00:23:37.420 Within two weeks of September 11th, the government proposed truly the most abominable piece of 230 00:23:37.420 --> 00:23:45.300 legislation since the Alien and Sedition Acts, the very cleverly and awfully named 231 00:23:45.300 --> 00:23:47.600 Patriot Act. 232 00:23:47.600 --> 00:23:55.060 The Patriot Act is the single most abominable, unconstitutional, unpatriotic piece of legislation 233 00:23:55.060 --> 00:23:59.940 ever passed by any free people. 234 00:23:59.940 --> 00:24:09.500 The Patriot Act authorizes federal agents, without a warrant, to break into your home, 235 00:24:09.500 --> 00:24:17.020 to plant a surveillance device under your bedpost, or under your kitchen table, or in 236 00:24:17.020 --> 00:24:20.100 your shower, or in your living room. 237 00:24:20.100 --> 00:24:24.700 Imagine this, you come home from a basketball game on a Friday night, or church on Sunday 238 00:24:24.700 --> 00:24:52.200 The Patriot Act lets FBI agents write their own search warrants for financial institutions but makes it a felony punishable by five years in jail for the financial institution to tell you that it has received one of these self-written search warrants. 239 00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:57.140 Now you may say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, the Constitution says only judges can write search warrants, 240 00:24:57.140 --> 00:25:02.200 we fought a war to break away from Great Britain because those British soldiers wrote search warrants, 241 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:06.900 now we're going to let our own FBI write their own search warrants? Yes. 242 00:25:06.900 --> 00:25:13.100 What about the First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech? 243 00:25:13.100 --> 00:25:18.200 How can Congress make it a crime for me to tell anyone 244 00:25:18.200 --> 00:25:22.720 that I have received one of these self-written search warrants. 245 00:25:22.720 --> 00:25:28.760 It's the reason you see cases like John Doe versus John Ashcroft, 246 00:25:28.760 --> 00:25:32.920 or Jane Roe versus Alberto Gonzalez, 247 00:25:32.920 --> 00:25:37.960 because it is a felony to stand in a federal court 248 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:42.080 and tell a federal judge that you have received one of these 249 00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:43.760 and you want to challenge it. 250 00:25:43.760 --> 00:25:46.680 You have to do so under cover of darkness, 251 00:25:46.680 --> 00:25:57.560 under an assumed name, because the Congress has made it a crime to speak freely. 252 00:25:57.560 --> 00:26:05.280 How much time did the House of Representatives take debating away your First Amendment and 253 00:26:05.280 --> 00:26:09.120 your Fourth Amendment rights? 254 00:26:09.120 --> 00:26:11.840 Answer zero. 255 00:26:11.840 --> 00:26:19.760 How many members of the House of Representatives have the physical opportunity to read the 256 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:23.200 Patriot Act before they voted on it? 257 00:26:23.200 --> 00:26:25.240 Answer zero. 258 00:26:25.240 --> 00:26:33.080 The Patriot Act, which is 315 pages long, but does not read like a novel because it 259 00:26:33.080 --> 00:26:39.080 amends dozens and dozens and dozens of pages of the Federal Criminal Code. 260 00:26:39.080 --> 00:26:43.400 In order to read it, you have to have the entire federal criminal code in front of you, 261 00:26:43.400 --> 00:26:48.800 and they'll change and to or, they'll change a semi-comma to a comma, they'll change a 262 00:26:48.800 --> 00:26:51.120 may to a must. 263 00:26:51.120 --> 00:26:53.640 In order to do that, you have to go in and out of the other books. 264 00:26:53.640 --> 00:26:59.240 Conservatively, it probably took me 15 or 20 hours to read the Patriot Act the first 265 00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:01.440 time I read it. 266 00:27:01.440 --> 00:27:05.000 It was posted on the House intranet. 267 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:13.160 It's the internal internet that only goes to House members and their staffs for 15 minutes 268 00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:14.800 before members had to vote on it. 269 00:27:14.800 --> 00:27:19.240 Well, John Ashcroft told them, we have to have this Patriot Act because the terrorists 270 00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:21.320 are under our beds. 271 00:27:21.320 --> 00:27:25.760 It's the FBI agents that are putting the bugs under the beds, not the terrorists, John. 272 00:27:25.760 --> 00:27:28.080 Nevertheless, the terrorists are under our beds. 273 00:27:28.080 --> 00:27:29.320 They're around the street corner. 274 00:27:29.320 --> 00:27:33.440 They're selling our newspapers, pumping our gas, driving our cabs. 275 00:27:33.440 --> 00:27:40.200 We need this Patriot Act because we have to go after them. There isn't even time to debate. 276 00:27:40.200 --> 00:27:44.480 Two members of the Senate read it and one of them is dead. Paul Wellstone read it in 277 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:50.160 its entirety, voted against it. Russ Feingold read it in its entirety, he voted against 278 00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:59.960 it. No other member of Congress has admitted publicly to having read the Patriot Act before 279 00:27:59.960 --> 00:28:09.800 voting on it and the Patriot Act says not only may information obtained from a 280 00:28:09.800 --> 00:28:16.000 self-written search warrant be used in a criminal prosecution but it shall when 281 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:20.760 lawyers say shall they really mean must lawyers have this habit of not always 282 00:28:20.760 --> 00:28:26.600 using the right word but when they say shall they mean must so the government 283 00:28:26.600 --> 00:28:36.600 must use evidence it obtains from a self written search warrant from a financial institution executed by an FBI agent 284 00:28:36.600 --> 00:28:43.600 because the FBI agent didn't have the evidence or didn't have the time to go to a federal judge. 285 00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:50.600 How many jury convictions have there been under the Patriot Act for acts of terrorism? 286 00:28:50.600 --> 00:28:54.600 Same number as that I gave you before, none. 287 00:28:54.600 --> 00:29:10.600 There have been convictions for prostitution. There have been convictions for gambling. There have been convictions for political corruption. None of these things is necessarily a good thing, but not a single jury verdict of guilt from and after the Patriot Act. 288 00:29:10.600 --> 00:29:18.400 But even the Patriot Act, for all of its faults, for all of its damnable violation 289 00:29:18.400 --> 00:29:26.680 of our natural rights, limited the target of those self-written search warrants to 290 00:29:26.680 --> 00:29:39.880 financial institutions. On December 13, 2003, a day in which everyone in this 291 00:29:39.880 --> 00:29:46.600 This room remembers where he or she was. 292 00:29:46.600 --> 00:29:53.840 The president signed into law a lengthy and innocuous sounding piece of legislation known 293 00:29:53.840 --> 00:29:59.640 as the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal 04. 294 00:29:59.640 --> 00:30:06.600 It basically appropriated funds from the general treasury to the 16 different federal intelligence 295 00:30:06.600 --> 00:30:23.440 intelligence agencies of whose existence we know. But there was a clause in this statute 296 00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:31.320 which would change federal law enforcement forever. And George W. Bush knew that by signing 297 00:30:31.320 --> 00:30:40.880 It on December 13, 2003. Because of an event that occurred that day elsewhere on the planet, 298 00:30:40.880 --> 00:30:53.080 no one would notice this clause in this statute. In a truly Orwellian masterpiece, the government 299 00:30:53.080 --> 00:31:01.080 of the United States, your government and mine, has redefined financial institution. 300 00:31:02.280 --> 00:31:11.400 Here's what financial institution means today, from and after the Intelligence Authorization Act 301 00:31:11.400 --> 00:31:21.400 of 2004. A bank, makes sense. A trust company, a private bank, a credit union, a stock broker, 302 00:31:21.400 --> 00:31:32.440 a stock dealer, an investment banker, an insurance company, a pawnbroker, a bodega, a delicatessen, 303 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:43.640 a travel agency, a car dealer, a lawyer's office, a doctor's office, a hospital, an HMO, a supermarket, 304 00:31:43.640 --> 00:31:51.980 A hotel, a restaurant, a casino, a real estate broker, and that great financial institution 305 00:31:51.980 --> 00:31:58.620 to which we would all repose our fortunes, the post office. 306 00:31:58.620 --> 00:32:07.720 So by redefining two simple words, financial institution, the government has given its 307 00:32:07.720 --> 00:32:14.920 agents, the power to read your mail before you do by signing themselves the 308 00:32:14.920 --> 00:32:21.320 power to do so, to read your file at your lawyer's office, to read your medical 309 00:32:21.320 --> 00:32:27.960 charts at a hospital or at your doctor's office, all of this without the need to 310 00:32:27.960 --> 00:32:35.080 show probable cause, all of this without an involvement of a federal judge, all of 311 00:32:35.080 --> 00:32:42.080 We call this at the whim of a single FBI agent because we are at war. 312 00:32:44.360 --> 00:32:51.360 So have we come full circle, my friends, from Americans who fought a revolution because 313 00:32:51.740 --> 00:32:58.740 the British soldiers could write their own search warrants to Americans who, like sheep, 314 00:32:58.740 --> 00:33:09.740 allow our elected officials to permit FBI agents, actually it's any federal agent, to write their own search warrants. 315 00:33:09.740 --> 00:33:18.740 Oh, in December 13, 2003, it was the day we captured Saddam Hussein. 316 00:33:18.740 --> 00:33:23.740 The government knew that by the president signing it that day, nobody would notice it. 317 00:33:23.740 --> 00:33:30.540 Notice that this thing was found in the Federal Register by a clerk on January 29th, a month 318 00:33:30.540 --> 00:33:37.260 after the government began serving self-written search warrants on anything it wanted to call 319 00:33:37.260 --> 00:33:39.780 a financial institution. 320 00:33:39.780 --> 00:33:43.380 Well, where do we go from here? 321 00:33:43.380 --> 00:33:46.780 This is not a happy tale that I tell. 322 00:33:46.780 --> 00:33:50.460 These are dark days for human liberty. 323 00:33:50.460 --> 00:33:54.260 The president says he believes in natural rights. 324 00:33:54.260 --> 00:33:55.900 He doesn't believe in natural rights. 325 00:33:55.900 --> 00:33:58.220 He believes he can take away any right that you have 326 00:33:58.220 --> 00:34:00.540 without even amending the Constitution, 327 00:34:00.540 --> 00:34:03.620 without even seeking a vote of the Congress, 328 00:34:03.620 --> 00:34:06.660 but just by the stroke of a pen. 329 00:34:06.660 --> 00:34:08.820 But when his lawyers said to him, 330 00:34:08.820 --> 00:34:12.620 take these bad guys to Cuba 331 00:34:12.620 --> 00:34:15.420 because the Constitution doesn't apply, 332 00:34:15.420 --> 00:34:17.620 the criminal laws of the country don't apply, 333 00:34:17.620 --> 00:34:24.580 No treaties apply, and best of all, Mr. President, those pesky federal judges can't reach you. 334 00:34:24.580 --> 00:34:28.060 The Supreme Court rejected that argument by 8 to 1. 335 00:34:28.060 --> 00:34:33.860 Then the President said, I'm going to declare people enemy combatants, deny them a judge, a jury, a trial, 336 00:34:33.860 --> 00:34:38.820 don't even charge them with a crime, lock them up for as long as I want. 337 00:34:38.820 --> 00:34:41.980 And the Supreme Court said no, 6 to 3. 338 00:34:41.980 --> 00:34:46.700 And the President said, well, I can torture all I want by redefining the word torture 339 00:34:46.700 --> 00:34:51.500 Because I'm the Commander-in-Chief and I have the inherent power to do so. 340 00:34:51.500 --> 00:34:59.700 And the Supreme Court said that Geneva Conventions apply by a vote of 6 to 3. 341 00:34:59.700 --> 00:35:12.300 It's hard to believe, but my former colleagues in black robes have been the last line in the sand with this administration. 342 00:35:12.300 --> 00:35:15.700 And there are more battles to come. 343 00:35:15.700 --> 00:35:24.220 Where are those battles to be waged? They're to be waged in the hearts of freedom-loving 344 00:35:24.220 --> 00:35:36.540 people. Because freedom lies in our hearts. When it dies there, no speech, no judge, no 345 00:35:36.540 --> 00:35:45.020 von Mises, no Lew Rockwell, no Murray Sabrin, no Ron Paul is going to bring it back. But 346 00:35:45.020 --> 00:35:54.900 But when it lives and reigns in our hearts, no government for long can take it away. 347 00:35:54.900 --> 00:35:55.540 God bless you.