We sue, you bow down

That seems to be the tactic that the left takes with its lawsuits against the government.

Remember a couple of years ago, when the Partial-Birth Abortion ban (oops, that should be the "so-called" Partial-Birth Abortion ban) passed? Planned Parenthood and a group of abortion doctors sued to stop the ban, claiming it lacked an exception for the "health" of the mother. They also claimed that they had experiences where such a "health" exception was necessary.

OK, the Justice Department said: prove it. As the defendant in the case, the Justice Department asked the doctors to provide specific examples -- without any identifying information -- that documented their claims.

No way, said the doctors said -- that violates the privacy of our patients. Never mind that the government specifically asked for any identifying information to be blocked out. Never mind that it was responding to specific claims in a lawsuit brought against the government. Never mind that if the government were hiding information in such a fashion, the ACLU would be all over it like white on rice. The right to privacy is paramount to the right to a fair trial, among other things, so the big bad government is out of luck. And the courts played right along with this game.

Now comes word of a new chapter in this game. The Congress and president passed the Child Online Protection Act, which was intended to keep children away from online pornography. Predictably, the ACLU sued, claiming it was an infringement of free speech, and the lower courts agreed. It went to the Supreme Court, and the court -- while expressing concern about the law -- invited the government to prove its case with more information.

So, the government asked the largest internet search engines -- Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Google -- to provide a week's worth of searches. Any week. Without any identifying information. Sound familiar?

All but Google complied with the request. Google -- which comprises almost half of all internet searches -- is now the champion of the ACLU crowd because it stood up to the big bad government. Granted, this is different. It's not like Google sued the government and is now refusing to provide information relevant to the case. But Google's stance in this case comes across less as pertaining to privacy and more as "We're going to make life difficult for George W. Bush at every opportunity."

Jonah Goldberg, writing on this topic in today's National Review, notes that much of the left's response to this topic seems to stem from a newly-discovered disease related to hatred for Vice President Dick Cheney, who is presumed to be leading the charge against our online privacy rights:

...the heretofore-unknown disease of Cheneyphobia seems to be reaching epidemic proportions. It seems to cause some people to believe that the vice president of the United States has superhuman powers and that he is capable of personally reading hundreds of millions of e-mails while listening to thousands of hours of phone conversations and — simultaneously — scanning trillions of web searches.

He also notes that the left has been, um, inconsistent in its protests against privacy invasions:

But the same crowd celebrating Google's decision has generally been quiet about, for example, public health surveys that ask doctors to report all sorts of really private information (anonymous, of course) for epidemiological purposes. If you're going to consider it a grotesque infringement on personal liberty for the government to find out that some anonymous person Google-searched "lesbian love goats," you'd think you'd also be upset by the National Institutes of Health cataloging how many people fitting your description have had prostate exams in the last year. The intrusion is at least as serious, but because no one imagines that Dick Cheney cares about your prostate — yet! — the First Amendment thumpers don't offer a peep.

Goldberg then moves into a discussion of where technology is taking us, noting the "article of faith that technology is always on the side of liberty." However, he said, it also requires a constant reevaluation of how technology interacts with our lives. He concludes:

Technology brings change and requires adaptation — by the state and the individual alike. It's not obvious how we should view Google searches, for example. Are they like letters or diary entries or something else entirely? It's revealing that no sane person would condone local libraries giving stacks of hardcore porn to little kids. But some Internet voluptuaries see nothing wrong with pretty much the exact same thing over the web.

This is a subject worth arguing about. But it's difficult to take people seriously when their core argument is, "If Dick Cheney's for it, I'm against it."

That seems to be the driving force among the left in America -- focused mainly on Cheney's boss -- but it holds little water if you're looking for a healthy debate and instead end up facing the ideological equivalent of holding your hands to your ears, screaming "I'm not listening!"

UPDATE: From KRT News via Pajamas Media:

Google announced that it is officially launching its services in China, a move that will require the Internet firm to subject itself to self-censorship.

Nice set of principles. We stick it to GWB, but bow down to China because it might make us some money.