Vanderbilt Law School Dropout Albert A. Gore Jr., accused President Bush of breaking the law when, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the president authorized wiretapping on international phone calls of terrorist suspects.

Before making another wild accusation against the man who defeated him in the 2000 presidential election, Gore should perhaps have consulted individuals who, unlike him, actually graduated from law school and studied the laws in question. Over at Powerline, one such attorney, John Hinderaker, analyzed the president’s program and surveyed the applicable law and found “under the Constitution and all controlling precedents, the NSA intercept program is legal.” In his update to that post, he provides a link to the Justice Department rationale upon which President Bush relied. (Unlike Mr. Gore, those who wrote that opinion graduated from law school.)

And it’s not just a conservative attorney like Mr. Hinderaker who has found the president’s program to be legal. As we have reported before, John Schmidt, associate attorney general in the Clinton Administration, in which Mr. Gore also served (but in a different capacity) found that the president had the legal authority to OK the wiretaps. Another left-of-center attorney to sign off on the president’s plan was Cass Sunstein, one of the nation’s most respected constitutional scholars.

Before accusing his erstwhile adversary of breaking the law, this disgruntled Democrat should have consulted with those who actually graduated from law school. And perhaps he should also consult with graduates of another type of professional school so he might finally get over his loss to President Bush now over five years ago.

UPDATE: Back in the day when he was working for Bill Clinton, Gore didn’t claim that his boss and his appointees were violating the law when they defended similar eavesdropping. Gateway Pundit provides comments supporting such programs from law school graduates. (Via: Glenn (who thinks I’m a meanie).)

UP-UPDATE: It helps to have Glenn Reynolds accuse you of “getting mean.” His link spiked our readership, pushing us up over 500,000 Visitors.

UP-UP-UPDATE: Astute Blogger fisks Gore’s speech here (H/t: Powerline).

It is nice to see that one-by-one, trickle-by-trickle, non-Lefty Liberals are coming out of the woodwork in Hollywood. This interview with Gary Sinise is a great example and very interesting.

(click on photo for link to full video interview)

He seems to be doing a bit of mental gymnastics so as not be be labeled a “conservative”… but that’s okay. He is doing good things with his program, Operation Iraqi Children. Sinise and Laura Hillenbrand (the writer of Seabiscuit) spearheaded this effort.

Inspired by their conversations with Operation Iraqi Freedom soldiers as well as Sinise’s tour of the region in 2003, Sinise and Hillenbrand founded Operation Iraqi Children, a grass roots program to provide concerned Americans with a means to reach out to Iraqi kids and help support our soldiers’ efforts to assist the Iraqi people.

“I have seen Iraqi kids climbing on our soldiers and hugging them and kissing them,” remembers Sinise, who accompanied Army soldiers to a dilapidated school they were rebuilding. “I have seen their smiling faces and their attempts to say ‘I love you’ in broken English. The folks I saw had hope in their eyes and gratitude in their hearts for what was done for them.”

It is just nice to finally see an ‘A-List’ Hollywood type actually supporting the troops with deeds, regardless of what his politics may or may not be.

Three cheers, Gary Sinise! If only there were more like him in the entertainment industry who actually talked about their nation in a positive light. I guess it helps when you believe it first.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Because I was busy writing papers last week I did not get to watch as much of the confirmation hearings of soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito as I would have liked. The few moments I saw of Senators Schumer and Kennedy convinced me that these two Democrats weren’t interested in learning Judge Alito’s views, but on misrepresenting his record in order to portary him as out of the mainstream.

Last Wednesday, they “did their best yesterday to imply that Judge Alito was racist and sexist by linking the nominee with the views of some members of Concerned Alumni of Princeton,” views expressed in an article in that group’s magazine, Prospect that the Judge didn’t write and that its editor confirms was a “satire.” Such tactics caused the folks at Powerline to wonder if Judiciary Committee Democrats enjoyed smearing people?

And while Democrats today are quick to smear Republicans by accsuing them of engaging in McCarthyism (e.g., here and here), it is tactics of Senate Democrats that more closely ressemble McCarthyism than anything their Republican colleagues have said or done in recent years. To be sure, in the early 1950s, it was Joseph McCarthy, a Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin who, by falsely accusing a number of citizens of being Communists, first defined McCarthyism. His demagogic behavior damaged the anti-Communist cause he championed.

I’m not the first blogger to note the similarity between the Massachusetts Democrat today and the Wisconsin Republican of the 1950s. My former U-VA Federalist Society colleague Todd Zywicki finds that Kennedy’s exchange with Judge Alito sounded a lot like one between McCarthy and Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch (via Hugh).

Perhaps Senator Kennedy learned such tactics from McCarthy himself. His older brother Bobby worked as a lawyer on the that Senator’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953. Indeed, “McCarthy was reasonably close to the Kennedy family,” dating two of the Massachusetts Senator’s older sisters (65). According to Kennedy family biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the Senator’s father, “Joseph Kennedy liked him [McCarthy] most of all and invited him from time to time to Hyannis Port” (i.e., the location of the Kennedy family compound) (100). Perhaps, that Wisconsin demagogue taught the youngest Kennedy son a few tricks on those visits.

To be sure, Bobby Kennedy later admitted he was “wrong” about McCarthy (64). Unlike his idealistic older brother, however, the current Massachusetts Senator seems more interested in smearing his opponents than in examining the truth of their record. It is unfortunate that Democrats and their media allies have so convinced themselves that only Republicans can engage in McCarthyism that they ignore Democratic attempts to smear Republicans just as that Kennedy family friend once smeared his adversaries, real and imagined.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

NOTE: The numbers which follow certain sentences in this post refer to the pages containing the quotes in the books linked. As a fan of Bobby Kennedy (for his spirit and idealism — not his politics), I highly recommend both biographies cited. Schlesinger’s is more thorough and perhaps a little too forgiving of the family’s flaws. And Thomas’s, while shorter, is a great read.

One of the great things about driving in LA on Saturdays from 4 to 7PM is that you can to hear Tammy Bruce (on Talk Radio 790 KABC-AM), quite possibly the best female talk show host on the West Coast, if not the nation. This past Saturday after attending a Bar Mitzvah in the O.C. with my pal, capitalist tart Bridget Johnson (AKA GOP Vixen), I had to dash back to LA for an event of my college alumni association. Heading north on the 405, I tuned into Tammy.

And that blogress diva was on a roll. A caller named Marcus phoned in to take issue with her criticism of Iran. When Tammy pointed out just one example of the brutality of that regime — that they punished a woman who defended herself against a man who tried to rape her — Marcus demanded proof of her claim and he wondered if the news organization Tammy referenced was accurately reporting things in the Islamic Republic.

As this guy seemed dubious about the claims of misogyny in a nation whose leaders routinely seethe with hatred against the United States, our allies and Western civilization, I wondered if this man were less skeptical of less substantiated claims against the United States in general and the Bush Administration in particular. Was he one of those who jumped to the conclusion that because a few rogue guards tortured prisoners on one night at Abu Ghraib Prison that the Bush Administration was behind their efforts and sanctioned torture? Recall as well how Newsweek rushed to report the story of Americans flushing Korans down the toilet, a story that that magazine later retracted.

In her book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, Michelle Malkin, another blogress diva, describes American journalists as “predisposed to believe any criticism of our troops, no matter how unsubstantiated or ill-informed.” (p. 92).

Now, I don’t know if this Marcus who called into Tammy’s show was one of those credulous liberals who take as fact any negative allegations made against President Bush and the GOP (no matter how disreputable the source), but it struck me how this man was so skeptical of claims made against an enemy of the United States. And how so many liberals are so eager to believe any criticism of not just President Bush and his party, but also of our nation itself and the brave soldiers who defend it.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com