The Shrinking of the National-Security Right

Under his other shingle, Andy McCarthy has a thoughtful piece on why the national-security Right is losing the NSA debate. He writes:

Most of the national-security right’s case has been devoted to the legal propriety of the program. After all, that is the part we know best, the ground on which we are most solid. A person has no Fourth Amendment protection regarding communications records that are the property of phone companies and other service providers. A non-American outside the U.S. has no constitutional protections at all. Therefore, the argument goes, what we’re doing is legal, so don’t worry about why (since why is too hard to discuss – see above).
This is very unsatisfying. First, the state of the law is widely unpopular, so being on the right side of it doesn’t help much.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354847/shrinking-national-security-right-mark-steyn