Good Point, Ron

In Ron Paul's April 7, 2008 weekly column about the amended the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the congressman states,

We have been told that this power to listen in on communications is legal and only targets terrorists. But if what these companies are being compelled to do is legal, why is it necessary to grant them immunity? If what they did in the past was legal and proper, why is it necessary to grant them retroactive immunity?

Why is he one of the few to use commonsense?

It is like the fact that we needed a constitutional amendment to take away drink, but not to take away someone's nickle bag (are they still called "nickle bags?") If you are reading this from prison and are righteously indignant because you are spending valuable time as a state guest because of some nasal ingestion, don't bother calling your lawyer. Nothing is going to happen.

Oh, and the law Ron Paul opposes, it is going to probably pass. Ronnie is one of the few who reads the laws and he is also one of the fewer who even understands them.

That is why the voice of humility proposed The Second Grand Reform based on the words of Jonathan Swift

No Law of that Country must exceed in Words the Number of Letters in their Alphabet, which consists only of two and twenty. But, indeed, few of them extend even to that Length. They are expressed in the most plain and simple Terms, wherein those People are not mercurial enough to discover above one Interpretation: And to write a Comment upon any Law is a capital Crime. As to the Decision of civil Causes, or Proceedings against Criminals, their Precedents are so few, that they have little Reason to boast of any extraordinary Skill in either.

Like our friends in prison, let us not hold our collective breath. Of course, if it ever did become law, it would not mean our solons understood the legislation they voted on. They would, however, lose the excuse that they had not read it.