More fun with Rick Santorum!

Santorum's private double standard
MIKE ARGENTO

May 18, 2006 —

Last week, when news broke that the National Security Agency was collecting records of phone calls made by millions of Americans, a lot of people were pretty upset.

They were concerned that the government had overstepped its bounds and that the Dubya administration had once again run roughshod over the Constitution and that the government was violating their privacy.

And it was. With no probable cause, no court order, no judicial review, the NSA was collecting our phone records. If that's not a violation of your rights, I don't know what is. This is not a liberal vs. conservative issue. Even Newt Gingrich had a problem with it. Newt Gingrich, a man named after a poisonous salamander, even declined to defend it.

Still, there are some people who think it's just peachy that the government is collecting your phone records with no provocation or for no apparent reason.

In addition to the small band of dead-enders - the ever-dwindling number of people who blindly swear allegiance to Dubya - there is one notable person who has no problem at all with the government collecting our phone calls.

Our own Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Virginia. Yes, technically, Santorum is the junior senator from Pennsylvania, but he lives in Virginia.

Santorum was speaking about the NSA fishing expedition into our phone records when he said, "I don't think it's an invasion of privacy."

The government collecting records of every call you make not a violation of privacy?

My guess is they haven't invented a urine test to detect whatever it is Santorum's been smoking.

It shouldn't have come as any surprise. Santorum has some odd views about privacy - mostly that people have no right to it.

Which, when you think about it, is an awfully weird thing for a person who calls himself a conservative to believe.

Santorum has said, in the past, that Americans have no right to privacy, usually in the context of discussing sex. He believes that if you grant consenting adults permission to do whatever they wish in the privacy of their own homes, it will result in man-on-dog sex.

Really. I wish I were making this up because it's hard to accept that a member of the Senate - one of the leaders of the Republican Senate, in fact - spends as much time as Santorum does thinking about dogs in that context.

Actually, maybe he doesn't. Santorum's more obsessed with gays and thinks that the claim of privacy lets gays do whatever it is they do. Most of us, well, we'd rather not think about it, and we don't really care what other people do as long as they draw their shades.

To sum up, Santorum thinks people do not have a right to privacy. And he thinks that the government collecting our phone records is not a violation of whatever privacy we can expect to have, which is none, as far as he's concerned.

It's kind of confusing.

So I called Santorum's office. I thought someone there could try to straighten this out.

But then, I figured, if Santorum doesn't think the government collecting all of our phone records violates our privacy, he certainly wouldn't mind giving me all of his phone records so I could analyze them and put them in the paper. I'm sure his phone records are a lot more interesting than mine. I only call for pizza now and then. He's probably calling lobbyists and fundraisers and, maybe, 1-900 numbers to phone lines where you can talk dirty to Rin Tin Tin.

I got his communications director, Robert Traynham, on the phone. Traynham offered a clarification. He said he thought his boss was speaking in the context of the government asking the phone companies to hand over records of every phone call made in America.

OK, but he did say it wasn't violation of privacy. So I asked Traynham if I could have records of all of his boss's phone calls.

He didn't understand the question.

I tried explaining, saying that since Santorum doesn't think it's an invasion of privacy, he wouldn't mind releasing records of his phone calls.

Traynham said, "Not at this time."

And then he said it was "a trick question," asking whether Santorum was planning to let everybody see his phone records.

I didn't think it was a trick question.

He did.

And he thought it was a "leading question."

And then he said he wouldn't "dignify" my questions with answers.

That happens to me a lot.

So from this, we can conclude a few things.

Either Santorum doesn't really understand the meaning of the word "privacy."

Or he thinks he's entitled to it, while you're not.