On a recent edition of “The CBS Evening News,” Katie Couric asked the presidential candidates what book — other than the Bible — they would bring with them to the White House, if elected.
Hillary Clinton’s answer would have been appealing if it hadn’t been so characteristically disingenuous. “I would certainly bring my copy of the Constitution because there was apparently not a copy in the Bush White House, to the best I can determine,” she said.
“I would bring the Federalist Papers. I would bring the historic documents about how our country started and the conflicts of opinion and philosophy that helped to form us, because we have been going through a period of time where the president and vice president have asserted an extensive view of executive power that I think is not in keeping with American history,” she added.
But the view of the Founders, reflected in the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, is that governments inevitably expand unless they are specifically restricted and that the only way to ensure freedom is to ensure limitations on government.
When has Hillary Clinton, a founding proponent of the nanny state, ever supported limited government? For pity’s sake, she epitomizes what the Constitution and the Federalist Papers were written to preclude.
And while Clinton is right about the Bush administration asserting a view of executive power that corrupts the Founders’ intent, what about the egregious expansions of power her husband pressed for when he (or they, as she now claims) were president?
» Janet Reno was attorney general, not John Ashcroft, when the Justice Department first requested authority to secretly break into homes and offices to disable encryption software on personal computers.
» The Clinton administration proposed a national database containing each American’s medical history and that government have access to those records without the patients’ consent.
» Bill Clinton signed laws requiring telephone companies to make all of their equipment wiretap-friendly.
» The Clinton administration initiated the requirement that employers report all new hires and their salaries to the Department of Health and Human Services.
» It was the Clinton administration that ordered the installation of technology to turn cell phones into tracking devices.
Like the Bush administration’s actions, all of those measures were justified with laudable aims: To track drug traffickers, child pornographers and other criminals — including terrorists; to catch deadbeat dads, improve medical care and allow emergency workers to reach 911 callers. And each was made with assurances of strict limits on the information gathered.
Yet today, new-hire reports are sent to multiple federal agencies, such as the Department of Education. Although the Federal Communications Commission vowed that cell-phone tracking would be limited to 911 calls, how long did it take before police began using the technology to track individuals? The Department of Homeland Security now considers natural disasters its purview, implicitly tagging God as a terrorist.
Pointing to the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, which of those abuses would Hillary Clinton condemn? Twenty years ago, it was inconceivable that parents could lose custody of their children for smoking cigarettes, as can happen today.
Given that the government now considers obesity its business, it isn’t at all far-fetched to imagine computers programmed to flag high-caloric grocery purchases by citizens categorized as overweight according to driver’s license data. Some states already have databases that track all prescriptions filled for controlled substances. Where, specifically, does Ms. Clinton believe government crosses the line?
Consider executive-branch snooping. There are almost 300 million people in the United States. Five years ago, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told the Senate Intelligence Committee that probably a few hundred of those had connections to al Qaeda.
As terrorists in the United States have been rounded up and deported (or met more deserving fates), the number of them in this country undoubtedly has shrunk. Yet the federal government continues collecting information on hundreds of millions of law-abiding citizens — information being collected for no purpose … unless the government finds one for it. Is Clinton denying she would?
There is zero precedent for government functions remaining tethered to their original purposes. The authors of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers understood that. But does the author of “It Takes a Village”?
