Preemptive Clarity

I don't want to bore you insensate with my take on the law, nor is it my goal to alienate prospective employers, but am I the only person connected with the law who thinks a little proofreading would go a long way?

How many cases would not exist if the writing of a statute were clear? Hundreds, I can assure you. Maybe thousands--I stopped counting after my eyes glazed over during first year. Here's a classic example of what I mean: If there is a sign at the front of the park that says "No vehicles allowed" does that include bicycles? You might think of what constitutes a vehicle, look at the dictionary definition, try to determine what the writer of the sign meant, what the local customs are, etc. There are any number of ways to try to determine whether it includes bicycles.

These are not morons writing these statutes, mind you. These are legislators, a number of whom are lawyers and have read extensively about the very problem I just detailed to you in Paragraph 2. So how come they write in a resolution just three days after 9/11 that the President can use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts? Here's what the effect of that action is. A guy named Dick Cheney is now running around telling people that the National Security Agency's program of domestic eavesdroppping is totally legit, "critical to the national security of the United States," and has "helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people." (TrogDigression: did we even know who was responsible for the terrorist acts three days after 9/11?)

This is exactly the kind of rhetorical spew this Administration has been putting out for five years. Why does no one insist on specifics? If it has helped, I'd like to know precisely how. When Cheney says the program "saved thousands of lives" I want to know how he derived that datum. It's my money that's funding this, so I think I'm entitled to the same inside knowledge as any other shareholder would get. We The People, Inc. has some splainin' to do.

If Congress had specificed exactly what 'necessary and appropriate force' meant, they might not have included spying on email and phonecalls of Americans to their overseas friends and families. We'll never know. But it does make me think twice about emailing my college friends who live abroad. Or at least curtailing the detail in those emails. And when I have to limit my own voice so I can go on being as threatless to my gov as I was before they snooped on that email, how is that not an infringement on my First Amendment right?

Vague=evil. You read it here first.

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretap