As the House prepares to vote on a Farm Bill this week, there’s been an interesting development in American sugar policy. Check out this joint letter spearheaded by the American Conservative Union promoting a zero-for-zero sugar policy. Under the proposal, America will target the foreign subsidies distorting the world market while simultaneously targeting our protectionist policies. It may be the best chance in decades to actually get rid of U.S. sugar tariffs and quotas.

_________________________________________________________________

June 19, 2013

Dear Member of Congress:

For years, we have advocated the need for a free market in sugar and believe that reform proposals put forth must not dismantle U.S. policy without first addressing the foreign subsidies that are grossly distorting world sugar prices.  Unilateral disarmament and increased dependence on foreign sugar suppliers cannot be the first step to achieving a fair and open market.

We urge Congress to consider a zero-for-zero strategy where U.S. trade officials aggressively target foreign market-distorting policies.  Once these subsidies are removed, U.S. sugar producers have agreed to eliminate the U.S. sugar program, which consists of non-recourse loans, marketing quotas and tariffs.

Subsidies from all major sugar exporters, including Thailand, India, the European Union and Central America, should be addressed.  But immediate priority should be placed on eradicating policies in Brazil and Mexico, which are the biggest hurdles to free trade in U.S. sugar.

Brazil’s three decades of subsidies—ranging from sugar ethanol usage mandates to direct subsidy checks, special bailout packages, soft loans, preferential tax breaks and debt forgiveness—have helped the nation grab a market-monopolizing 50 percent share of global sugar exports.  And, the country is currently expanding its subsidization in hopes of growing this unprecedented price manipulating power.

Mexico enjoys direct government ownership of 20 percent of the country’s sugar industry.  The government produces 1 million tons of sugar a year, and a loophole in NAFTA allows Mexico to slip more than 1 million tons of sugar into the U.S. market.  This scheme enables Mexico to artificially inflate its domestic prices and keep an inefficient industry afloat while artificially depressing U.S. prices to harm its main North American competitor.

In order to advance a true free-market solution, we ask you to focus on reforming sugar subsidies abroad before putting America’s economic and food security priorities at risk.

Sincerely,

We all remember the Obamaphone video from the 2012 presidential elections.  In it an enthusiastic Obama supporter urged everyone to vote for Obama and get their free Obamaphone.  “Everybody in Cleveland, every minority, got an Obamaphone. Keep Obama as president. He gave us a phone. He gonna’ do more.”

At the time it was seen as naked vote buying through a government program, but it may be even more sinister than that.

The Lifeline Program is the name of the program used to give out “Obamaphones.”  It was created in 1984 to provide landline service to low-income households.  It was meant to help poor people have a phone number to list on job applications and applications to other programs.  In 2008 the program was expanded to include providing mobile phones.  In 2008 it was a $143 million program.  By 2012, much like every other government program, it had grown exponentially and totaled $2.19 billion.

In light of the video, this program received increased scrutiny, and now Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas has introduced a bill to eliminate the program in 2012.  He decried the waste and abuse inherent in the program:

“’This program is rife with waste and abuse,’ Griffin said. ‘It’s set up in a way where people can receive multiple phones for free.’ Griffin said he has seen cases in which single individuals obtained dozens of the phones, and said under the lax requirements, more than 80 million Americans are eligible.”

While there is incredible waste and abuse in the program, the program is also a lucrative scheme for a top Obama donor.

One of the largest beneficiaries of the program is Tracfone with 3.8 million subscribers as a result of the Lifeline program as of 2011.  The owner of Tracfone is Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man-valued at $70 billion.  The CEO of TracFone is Frederick Pollack, a top Obama contributor:

“Pollak has donated at least $156,500 to Democratic candidates and committees this cycle, including at least $50,000 to the Obama campaign. His wife, Abigail, is a campaign bundler for Obama and has raised more than $632,000 for the president this cycle, and more than $1.5 million since 2007. She has personally contributed more than $200,000 to Democratic candidates and committees since 2008.

“The Pollaks hosted Obama at their Miami Beach home in June for a $40,000-per-plate fundraising dinner, and hosted a similar event with Michelle Obama in July 2008. The couple personally donated a combined $66,200 to Obama’s re-election effort that year.”

It would seem that by drastically increasing the spending on the program over his first term, President Obama is helping the rich get richer and rewarding a top contributor.

Recently Sen. David Vitter also took up the fight to end the program, and those with a financial interest retaliated.  In March, Vitter first introduced his legislation as an amendment to the Senate budget resolution. The amendment failed 46-to-53.  Vitter also introduced the legislation as an amendment to the Farm Bill recently, but a vote was blocked by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid.

In response, those with a financial interest vilified him.  TracFone, the largest beneficiary of the free cell phones, receiving more than $1.5 billion and $440 million in 2012 from the free cell phone program, recently ran attack ads against Vitter due to his efforts to eliminate the fraudulent program.  A TracFone subsidiary, SafeLink Wireless, was sending text messages to cell phone recipients that read: “Save Lifeline! Call Sen. Landrieu at 202-224-3121. Due to Sen. Vitter program is in jeopardy.”

A recent undercover video by James O’Keefe reveals the depth of the corruption in the program.  When an undercover actor told the provider that he was going to turn around a sell the phone to get money for his heroin addiction, the phone provider barely batted an eyelash and proceeded to give him the phone.

This video has redoubled Sen. Vitter’s resolve to eliminate the subsidy for mobile phones and return the program to its original goal of providing land lines to those who are truly in need.

The Lifeline Program is yet another example of a bloated government program.  At a time when it seems every federal agency is politicized, one has to wonder if the growth in this program is due to a desire to help those who have raised money for Obama.  President Obama has worked hard to help the unions after they helped his election efforts, why wouldn’t the same be happening for other donors?  It’s time for this program to be eliminated and further scrutiny placed on other government spending.

Willie Deutsch is Editor-in-Chief for NetRightDaily.com, and Social Media Director for Americans for Limited Government.  You can follow Willie on twitter. 

In 2012, the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee were fond of noting that “Since President Obama took office, the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased from 31.9 million to 46.7 million, a record 46 percent increase.”

In a Sept. 2012 Fox News interview, Republican nominee Mitt Romney repeated, “When the president took office, 32 million people were on food stamps. And now that number is 15 million higher, almost 50 percent higher. Now, 47 million people on food stamps.”

Generally, when it suited them politically, Republicans had few qualms about attributing the sharp increase in food stamps to the Obama Administration.

But how many remember the May 21, 2008 vote by 100 House Republicans to override then-President George W. Bush’s veto of the 2008 Farm Bill? You know, the legislation that dramatically expanded the eligibility of the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program — i.e. food stamps?

This was the bill that “[made] it easier for households with income from combat pay, retirement accounts or education savings to be eligible,” according to a USA Today Report by Wendy Koch in 2008.

If an increase in eligibility primarily explained the sharp increase in program participation, as a 2012 study by the Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth showed, then surely those 100 House Republicans who helped pass the 2008 Farm Bill were instrumental in that effort.

Certainly, maximum benefits under food stamps were expanded in the Obama “stimulus,” but as far as qualifications for participating in the program being expanded? That was in 2008.

So, who were these House Republicans that helped put an additional 15 million on food stamps?

They included House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Fred Upton, who has been called House Speaker John Boehner’s top adviser. Rep. David Camp, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman. Rep. Hal Rogers, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Critically, they also included Rep. Frank Lucas, Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee — who is responsible for the current 2013 Farm Bill. Now, the legislation proposes to spend about $750 billion on food stamps over the next ten years.

That is 80 percent of the cost of the entire $939 billion bill — and the most that has ever been spent on food stamps over a ten year period.

Oh, Republicans have been bragging about their proposed $2 billion a year cut to food stamps as some sort of reform, but the fact is the program cost $82 billion in 2013 alone. This is no significant reform of eligibility for the program. It is window dressing to make the House legislation appear to be ever so slightly, comparatively “better” than the Senate version.

But is it any wonder? It’s because there simply are not the votes to go back to pre-2008 eligibility for the food stamps program.

Heck, back in 2008, when the veto came up, only 94 members, a minority of Republicans in the House voted to maintain the Bush veto.

Yet another example of where Democrats and Republicans together vote to keep the spending machine going in Washington, D.C., something that has continued under House Speaker John Boehner. Need more examples?

A majority of House Republicans who voted against the tax bill that raised taxes on those making $400,000 and above, including many small businesses. Despite that, the legislation passed with a handful of Republicans and Democrats.

A majority voted against so-called hurricane “disaster relief” because it was unpaid for and was stuffed with billions in unrelated pork even as it passed with Democrat support.

House leaders needed Democrats to help to pass the most recent continuing resolution.

And a majority of Republicans voted to suspend the debt ceiling until May 19 — but they needed Democrats for that vote, too, in order for it to pass.

Just like in the vote on the continuing resolution that came before that. Or when the House increased the debt ceiling in 2011.

See a pattern? The House Republican majority is largely a fiction. It cannot pass significant legislation without Democrat support, but more importantly, it has been unable to keep its promises to rein in the government welfare programs they said they would.

All of which means the 2010 tea party push to help Republicans reclaim the House majority was predicated on a lie.

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.

While some Democrats are trying to push the IRS scandal under the rug by declaring it solved, Americans everywhere know that this abuse of authority is far from solved.  This is why Tea Party organizations are rallying to demand that the IRS be audited.

This is a powerful reminder of how the IRS scandal has united and reenergized the Tea Party.

If you are able, join Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party in speaking out against the Internal Revenue Service’s political targeting.

Willie Deutsch is Editor-in-Chief for NetRightDaily.com, and Social Media Director for Americans for Limited Government. You can follow him on twitter @williedeutsch.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) Director Christine Lagarde has called on Congress to “repeal the sequester” because she says “the effect of the sequester and deficit reduction more generally are already affecting the economy.”

Lagarde claimed that the budget cuts would “shave 1.25 to 1.75 percentage points of growth.”

She left out the most important part, however. The reason is because government spending is included in the measure of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Nathan Mehrens called Lagarde’s comment “simultaneously accurate and yet misleading.”

The fact is, if one excludes government spending from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ first quarter GDP estimate of 2.4 percent annualized real growth, the growth of the private sector — i.e. the real economy — jumps to a 4.1 percent rate of increase.

“This is a bias of the first order in favor of government spending, because when government grows faster than the private sector, it appears to boost GDP and when spending is reduced, GDP appears to slow down. This is an illusion,” Mehrens explained.

A broader ALG study has found little correlation between government spending and nominal private sector growth, particularly immediately after World War II, when spending dramatically decreased.

In 1945, government spending at all levels contracted nominally by 11.7 percent, but the private sector increased by 13.4 percent.

In 1946, as the war ended, spending dropped 57.4 percent, yet the private sector grew 40.5 percent.

Same thing in 1947. Spending dropped by 8.3 percent, and yet the private sector grew nominally by 13.8 percent.

More recently, in 2011, government expenditures only grew 0.08 percent, but the private sector grew nominally by 5.02 percent in 2011, faster than the prior year’s 3.9 percent. In 2012, spending only grew 0.1 percent, but the private sector nominally expanded by 5.04 percent.

Makes one wonder why government ever included government spending as a component of GDP in the first place. Simon Kuznets, who in his 1934 report “Report on National Income” to Congress developed the framework for measuring GDP, justified the approach by writing “purely governmental functions are of real value in the economic life of the nation, and that they give rise to income which should be taken into account.”

But now we know that while rising government employee incomes is measurable, there appears to be little evidence it boosts the real economy.

Yet, by this flawed measure, the IMF’s Lagarde would presume to know the proper level of fiscal adjustment in the U.S. She has no idea, precisely because she has failed to observe any causal relationship between government spending cuts on the real economy.

The only thing she has proven is that by cutting government spending, a measure of government spending — in this case, GDP — decreases. Whoop-tee-doo.

In the meantime, this is not the first time the IMF has chosen to interfere with U.S. politics. Recently, it called on the U.S., its largest contributor, to levy a $500 billion a year carbon tax on consumers to offset what it called “underpriced” oil, coal, and other energy products.

This “mispricing” is supposedly leading to “excessive energy consumption,” which is “accelerating the depletion of natural resources” and contributing to climate change.

The Jan. 28 IMF study stated, “Consumer subsidies include two components: a pre-tax subsidy (if the price paid by firms and households is below supply and distribution costs) and a tax subsidy (if taxes are below their efficient level).”

The study justifies these taxes as preventing climate change: “The efficient taxation of energy further requires corrective taxes to capture negative environmental and other externalities due to energy use (such as global warming and local pollution).”

In a March 27 interview, the IMF’s head of fiscal affairs, Carlo Cottarelli said, “Even where countries impose taxes on energy, they’re rarely high enough to account for all of the adverse effects of excessive energy consumption, including on the environment.”

Cottarelli claimed that not taxing carbon emissions in the U.S. by $500 billion a year “crowd[s] out public spending that can boost growth, including on infrastructure, education, and health care. Cheap energy can also lead to overconsumption of energy, which aggravates environmental problems, such as pollution and climate change.”

The IMF’s interference with sovereignty does not end there, as even a casual look at the recent European sovereign debt crisis shows. Countries currently implementing IMF programs, like Greece, have done so not for their own benefit, but to prop up the Euro currency.

Meanwhile, Greece’s surrender to international fiscal authorities has all but destroyed its economy — with 27.4 percent unemployment and GDP shrinking by more than 5 percent. The nation would have been unquestionably better off simply leaving the Euro and working out a new payment plan with its creditors on its own.

Something to remember as the nation considers any more “helpful” advice from the IMF, which wants the U.S. to double its quota subscription with the international agency by $65 billion. As ALG’s Mehrens noted, “If anything, this is just one more reason the U.S. should defund the IMF in full.”

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.

James Ware, a candidate for Controller in the state of California in 1978, was frustrated by the mail in voter registration system and decided to publicize the potential for abuse.  Ware proceeded to register his cat to vote, and let the media in on the secret.

State authorities proceeded to threaten Ware with prosecution due to his abuse of the system, but his point was made, anyone or anything could be registered to vote, and with mail in voting, there was no way for the government to prevent voter fraud.

Incredibly, 35 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an attempt by Arizona to at least ensure that only legal citizens of the United States were registering to vote by requiring basic proof of eligibility to be provided with a registration.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz summarized the ruling on his Facebook page on Monday writing, “The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that the federal ‘motor voter’ law preempts Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for voter registration.” Cruz continued by concluding, “This hole in federal statutory law allows non-citizens to register and thereby encourages voter fraud.”

To close the loophole, Cruz is promising to offer an amendment to the immigration bill currently in the Senate that would allow states, like Arizona, to include proof of citizenship requirements before someone could become a registered voter.

Fair and honest elections are foundational to the American concept of government by the consent of the governed.

This concept differentiates the United States from a country like Mexico, where a young Mexican tour guide once told me that rather than spending money on elections, it would be better to give it to the farmers.  You see, he knew the election results had been fixed, and the system was corrupt.

The Supreme Court decision may have been the right one under the law, but it points to a larger problem in our current voting system — mail fraud.

A person, or an organization purporting to be a number of persons, can register to vote and vote and vote using mail-in systems without any actual, real live person confirming the voter’s existence.

While this system may be convenient, it is obviously fraught with the potential for fraud.  In 2008, the far left advocacy group ACORN exploited these loopholes so egregiously, that Congress attempted to cut off any federal funds, compelling them to reconstitute into newly named entities run by the same fraudsters.

The group True the Vote was formed to root out this and other voter fraud around the country with the specific intent of trying to defend and restore faith in our nation’s election system without which the very legitimacy of the government is in doubt.

The result of True the Vote’s resolve has been well documented in the media through the IRS scandal where the founder of the group Catherine Engelbrecht found herself subjected to unprecedented IRS and other government harassment from a laundry list of alphabet agencies.

It is now 35 years since James Ware’s cat became a registered voter in California.  It is past the time for our nation to have voting laws that both protect legal voters’ right to vote, but also protect the integrity of the electoral process.

Failure to do so will further rip the deeply frayed fabric of our nation’s social compact that holds us together.

Rick Manning (rmanning957) is the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for Americans for Limited Government. 

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For the UN climate conference in Bonn the bear to worry about was not Polar, but Russian.

In the final minutes of COP 18, the UN climate talks in Doha, Qatari vice prime minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah brought down the gavel — ending the COP and snubbing delegates of nations waiting to speak. Among them was the Russian delegation which was frantically waving papers in the air demanding to be recognized.

Russia has neither forgiven, nor forgotten.

When the UN climate talks opened in Bonn last week, Russia, joined by Ukraine and Belarus, blocked adoption of the agenda of the “Subsidiary Body for Implementation” (SBI). The SBI is the key negotiating track towards signing a UN climate treaty in Paris in 2015. The SBI has been unable to conduct any business in Bonn and has announced that it has suspended its business.  This has prevented the UN from considering, among other items, advancing the loss and damage mechanism (see CFACT’s report) that was perhaps the most significant outcome agreed to in Doha.

Many developing nations are not happy at seeing “loss and damage” blocked, as it is a key pathway for those seeking a global warming route to wealth redistribution.

Russia has raised a much needed question as to whether there is a fundamental lack of fairness and due process at the UN climate talks. The Doha outcome, for example, was “agreed to,” but was it ever properly voted upon? Is it proper for the UNFCCC to allow major portions of the outcome of the climate talks to be drafted behind closed doors, present them at the 11^th hour and then proceed based on a “consensus” rather than a recorded vote? Can the UN lawfully slam the gavel on any nation, such as Russia, and refuse to recognize them? Reuters reports that ‘Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, said a consensus was reached,’ but Oleg Shamanov, Russia’s head of delegation, called it an “absolutely obvious violation of the procedure.”

Reuters further reports that, ‘in 2010, Bolivian chief negotiator Pablo Solon claimed that security had blocked him from attending the talks, while a year later Venezuela’s envoy had to stand on a chair to voice her objections. Jayanthi Natarajan, India’s minister of forests and environment, said she was threatened and told not to object to any text at talks in Durban in 2011. “In the past we have very negative examples where procedures were not followed … and the culmination point was Doha. It’s unacceptable,” Shamanov said.’

If the UNFCCC successfully gets its climate treaty in Paris in 2015, the treaty will govern a tremendous portion of the economic activity of all mankind. Not billions, but trillions of dollars will be at stake. Nations will subordinate major portions of their sovereignty to the United Nations. Aside from whether the climate treaty is wise (it is not), can such a thing be created without due process? Without a vote? This would seem to contravene the principles upon which the UN was founded.

Those who stand for individual freedom and the due process which protects it owe Russia their thanks. Russia’s actions, however, appear to be largely self motivated. When al-Attiyah gaveled Russia down in Doha he wounded Russian pride — something Russia is historically willing to fight for.

A larger Russian motivation, however, appears to be what is being called in Bonn the “hot air” issue. Russia was not at all pleased when the UN COP pulled the plug in Doha on all the emissions credits Russia had acquired under the first Kyoto treaty and told Russia it couldn’t carry them forward.  Russia, which has announced that it will not be part of a second commitment period for the Kyoto protocol and has signaled a reluctance to sign on in Paris, wants to keep its credits anyway. Russia would like to sell its old credits to the countries which do sign aboard and would be paid effectively for nothing but hot air.

European carbon markets have recently collapsed with the price of carbon hitting record lows. The UNFCCC believes that allowing Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other former Soviet bloc nations to retain the huge stockpile of carbon credits they picked up under Kyoto would relentlessly flood and depress the carbon market in perpetuity. The irony is that in effect, the former Eastern bloc nations are claiming credit and demanding compensation for Communism, which depressed their economic development. Many of the former Eastern bloc’s carbon credits accrued during their painful transition from Communism which temporarily depressed their economies still further.  If any compensation is due for the harms caused by Communism, Russia should be paying, not receiving.

Poland, which will host UN COP 19 in November, has approximately 500m tons of carbon credits which it refuses to part with. Poland generates much of its power from coal and would like to use those credits both to offset the emissions from its use of coal and to continue to sell to other nations. Poland is estimated to have sold €190 million in credits to nations including Japan, Ireland and Spain.

Poland was a victim of Communism. Should Russia and the other nations of the former Soviet Union truly be compensated for the economic destruction wreaked by Communism? The absurdity of how money changes hands through UN processes apparently knows no bounds.

The good news is that the treaty negotiating track at the UN climate talks in Bonn is temporarily suspended, although Ms. Figueres vows to be back on track by Warsaw. The bad news is that there are very few “good guys” involved. The UN climate talks have become a place where radical ideology trumps science, consensus is gaveled into policy with little regard for due process and the nations of the world are bribed to go along with handouts of other people’s money.

Who do you suppose worked for the money that everyone at the UN is so anxious to redistribute?

Craig Rucker is the executive director and co-founder of CFACT. 

Let’s give the government the benefit of the doubt. For a moment, let’s assume what they say is true. That, only foreign communications are being collected and stored in full by the National Security Agency (NSA), and that, the only part of purely domestic communications being collected and stored are their metadata: the number, time, location, and duration of phone calls.

Further, let us assume that the same applies to the so-called PRISM program, including emails, web browsing sessions, search results, chat sessions, and financial transactions. Only foreign communications are captured, and only the metadata of purely domestic ones are taken in.

This of course does not comport with the allegations of numerous whistleblowers, including former AT&T technician Mark Klein, former NSA official William Binney, and now ex-CIA agent Edward Snowden, and others, such as former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente. Each has stated otherwise.

And each of them has offered varying degrees of evidence that not only is the U.S. collecting domestically, but is also storing that information for later use.

But let’s leave aside the allegations and stick with the government’s explanation. That only foreign communications are subject to surveillance, and only domestic metadata is stored.

First, let us question what the government actually means by “foreign”. Under 50 U.S.C. Section 1881b, the government can target for “electronic surveillance or the acquisition of stored electronic communications or stored electronic data” on U.S. persons on U.S. soil, but only under very limited circumstances upon request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court.

To do so, the government must assert that the U.S. person in question is “again reasonably believed to be located outside the United States while an order issued … is in effect.” If a U.S. person targeted for surveillance travels into the country, the surveillance is generally supposed to cease.

That does not cover what the allegations are saying is occurring.

In addition, under 50 U.S.C. Section 1861, the FBI can, with a court order from a U.S. magistrate  judge designated by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, obtain “tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.”

“[F]oreign intelligence information” can necessarily include an “investigation of a United States person” as long as the purpose is “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.”

The government is then required to show that the “tangible things” to be obtained pertain to “a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power,” “the activities of a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation,” or “an individual in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power who is the subject of such authorized investigation.”

Further, under section 2.3 of Executive Order 12333, the intelligence community is “authorized to collect, retain, or disseminate information concerning United States persons.” And, “Collection within the United States of foreign intelligence not otherwise obtainable shall be undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or, when significant foreign intelligence is sought, by other authorized elements of the Intelligence Community.”

These provisions make the FBI not just a law enforcement entity, but a de facto intelligence agency. Bear in mind that the purpose of collecting and retaining these records are not to advance a prosecution per se, but to gather intelligence information.

Significantly, it was the FBI, and not the NSA, that requested the FISA Court to furnish the phone records metadata. And the records were obtained as “tangible things” under 50 USC 1861.

Under the law, the FISA Court can approve such an order if there are “reasonable grounds” that the information is relevant to foreign intelligence gathering. This is less of a standard than probable cause. FBI director Robert Mueller has testified that “these types of records are not covered by the Fourth Amendment,” citing Supreme Court precedents. He is likely referring to Smith v. Maryland (1979) that allowed a caller identification system to be installed on a woman’s phone by police to monitor incoming calls by a threatening man without a warrant.

Here, the government is acknowledging that there is no probable cause in harvesting phone call metadata was on all U.S. persons on U.S. soil.

Thus it is irreconcilable with the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. Yet, the government states domestic communications being pulled into the system are only “inadvertent” and “not wittingly.” And that it is all lawful. Poppycock.

This raises the question of what other domestic surveillance has the FISA Court authorized? Has it issued any orders allowing the collection and retention of the contents of domestic communications upon the request of the NSA or the FBI?

NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander testified on June 12 that “once we identify a person of interest, it goes to the FBI.” If so, then it is the FBI that is accessing these communications. Alexander noted that “if you want to get the content, you’d have to get a court order.” In other words, presumably probable cause is needed to listen to the call. But then, again maybe not. Requests for “tangible things” under 50 U.S.C. Section 1861 only need to be “reasonably relevant,” again, not the same standard as probable cause.

The American people can only hope Alexander means the content of future communications after a valid court order has been issued. Not that those communications have already been recorded by the agency, as has been alleged by the NSA whistleblowers.

But even if it’s only metadata of phone calls, emails, search engine requests, chat sessions, and financial transactions being accessed, it is still the constitutional equivalent of kicking in the doors of U.S. citizens. Either way, rights are being violated.

All of which means we have a problem. Intelligence gathering on U.S. soil is simply not compatible with constitutional protections. You can have one, or the other, but you cannot have both.

While many well-meaning individuals might imagine there is a balance to be struck between security and the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches, based on what we now know, there may be no such balance. And to those who still contend there is, the burden of proof is on them.

Robert Romano is the Senior Editor of Americans for Limited Government.