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HomeSec In the News
The U.S. Homeland Security bill is steamrolling through Congress, on target to be passed within a couple of days. Since its passage is guaranteed, in whatever form it finally ends up, lawmakers are attempting to tack on their own pet projects to the bill so they can ride its coattails. A CNet article mentions that a version of the Cyberspace Security Enhancement Act has been appended to the HomeSec bill. William Safire blasts the addition in the New York Times. The Times has another story on the bill that notes some of the corporate pork that is also being added to the bill.
I'm sorry for saying this. It's not constructive and rather anti-US, I suppose.
But from all the things that look stupid about US politics from this side of the ocean, this phenomenon of tacking on loads of totally unrelated stuff to some bill must be the worst.
Has any politician who did this ever defended this process in public? Is there one politician left who takes this whole democracy thing seriously?
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Don't even try to put all of the blame for this on Republicans. Democrats and Republicans are equal opportunity pigs when it comes to piggyback legislation.
Bush Jr. (or any other president) would only use the veto to kill of the other side's pork and goodies, not his own. I'd also expect it to be widely abused by whoever's in power to promote their own political agenda, rather than for the good of the people to eliminate non-germane pork.
Corporate freebies tacked onto bills in the current environment will be allowed to stay, since they paid the current President and party for them.
Wow... The same site that screams FUD when it comes to an OS will allow this kinda post every day. IT's sad.
Keep in mind that the newly elected congress hasn't started yet. Yes, this is still a democratic majority that is letting this happen.
--nw
http://www.theMediaBunker.com
It seems George Orwell was off by about twenty years....
Reminds me of the law for luddites at the turn of the century .. it was called the "life for a loom" law. Basically, destroy a loom, and you die.
Typically, when people use technology in ways unforseen or unwanted by lawmakers (I'm not arguing that cracking systems is moral, but there are cases where it isn't immoral.), the punishment isn't really meant to suit the magnitude of the crime. Its mean to scare the shit out of would-be hackers.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yes. It's a fundamental blow to the separation of powers in the Constitution. The intent is for Congress to provide legislation that the President must either accept or reject. If the President can go about completely changing the legislation, then he's dangerously intruding on the power of Congress, and throwing the balance of government off.
First of all, You will not change my mind by pointing out flaws in my language. So what if I don't express myself perfectly? I'm not claiming to be a master of the language such as Hemingway or Fitzgerald.
Secondly, this is fighting fire with fire. If the conservative pundits want to reduce it down schoolyard style bullying and name-calling, well, the people have demonstrated that they don't get it when one party tries to be above that (see the Clinton years for proof, where the location of his dick was more important than his policy). You have to speak in a language they understand.
And yes, the conservatives of today, especially the young ones and the ones that haven't been out of their $200k house in the upper-middle-class suburbs in months, are fascists, militarists, and heartless disciples of Randian social Darwinism. You can see it all over the net. People who have never been around the poor or people who have been HELPED by government programs sit in judgement.
If you went to college on a Stafford loan, you were helped by a gov't program. If you've ever been on unemployment, you were helped by a gov't program. It's not just hypocrisy, but pure ignorance. The arch-conservatives would gladly get rid of student loans because that's a way of assisting those who don't deserve it, who couldn't find a way to pay for themselves. And to these arch-conservatives, unemployment insurance is just a way for lazy fucks to leech off the system.
The extreme conservatism that's going on in the USA right now is calculating, cold, and heartless in nature, and it mixes this false patriotism with the moronic "america kicks ass" mentality and it makes me fucking ill. I won't change my mind on this point.
I'm no great Safire fan -- he is occasionally credibility impaired (he makes things up), his defense of Israel verges on blindness, he continually tries to rehabilitate his former employer Nixon, and so on. But on occasion he leaps out with the ferocity contained in the NYT column to defend civil liberties -- in the libertarian get-the-hell-out-of-my-backyard-you-government-spi es tradition -- and gets it right, in the morally correct sense. Because he has credibility with the right, his words here carry much greater political influence that a stack of Mother Jones and The Nation reaching to the Moon. And I am grateful for his courage; he could just as easily sit it out, or mouth the sonorous rah-rah rant of the police state crowd.
Ensure to us citizens a country of security -- but without devastating our own. I have seriously begun to contemplate using cash more than traceable credit, and I'm not particularly paranoid, and yes I "don't have anything to hide." I just don't like buying a bag of Fritos wondering whether it will eventually raise my health insurance premiums because I don't eat right. Don't laugh, it could happen, in a thousand ways less fritoless (er, frivolous) than my example.
Thanks.
As a concerned 11th-generation American, I'm completely aghast at this latest bit of totalitarian legislation. Evidently, the CSEA (and the USA PATRIOT Act, for that matter) won't require *any* government agency to have "probable cause" to read/acquire anyone's personal information anymore. The Executive Branch will not even have to report to the Judiciary or Legislature on its frequent-as-you-like cyber-dragnets. Just in case you Americans out there on /. weren't aware of it, the United States Constitution is supposed to protect you from this sort of unfettered tyrannical power. Here's the text of the Fourth Ammendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
("and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" - well, I guess if we don't bother with the warrants anymore, it's not really violating the Constitution, now is it?)
Granted, the Founding Fathers didn't include "emails" in the text. However, any reasonable interpretation of the intent of this Ammendment must include emails and other personal communications (as these protections had been extended to telephone conversations).
Our government now has unlimited powers. My tax collector and the Dept. of Education may get to snoop into my private life at will. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: we no longer have a Rule of LAW in this nation. We now have a Rule of POLITICS. The politicos, the senators and congressmen who may pass this anti-American rubbish into law, should they do so, will be in direct violation of their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
We are now ruled by the lawless (viz Adm. Poindexter, convicted felon). And by the time We The People give a damn, Soviet Russia will look libertine in comparrison!
I just hope I don't get arrested for saying that one day.
"Sic transeunt omnia."