Slashdot Mirror
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.
The president needs a line-item veto. Bush Sr. wanted it. Didn't get it. Clinton wanted it. Didn't get it. Until the president has the ability to veto the individual components of a piece of legislation, we'll always have this type of pork.
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.
MSNBC has a good article up about this"
A last-minute addition to a proposal for a Department of Homeland Security bill would punish malicious computer hackers with life in prison.
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....
Yes. Adding ridiculous provisions to a bill is another way to stop it from passage. Add enough crap and when it comes up for final passage, it will be voted down because instead of a $200 million dollar bill its turned into a $2 Billion dollar bill.
The legislative system has many places like this where it is possible to destroy a bill. Remove it, and you give the majority more power in Congress.
The immediate problem with the line-item veto is that it is unconstitutional. Sometimes the Supremes get it right (6-3). :)
So of course it could be enacted as a constitutional amendment. This would be a grave error IMHO, as law-making authority belongs with the lawmakers, in Congress, not the White House, which has the veto as final sanity check on Congress (and over which the Framers pointedly permitted a 2/3 vote of Congress to override). A line-item veto would wreak havoc: the President would be able to "pass" a statute other than Congress intended (there's no reason the President would be limited to so-called pork -- why not dissect the statute's principal topic?). Why would anyone have this great faith in a single person to do the right thing -- Presidents engage in pork barrel politics, too, and surely we can all think of at least one President on the last thirty years we wouldn't have trusted with this.
If you have a problem with the lawmaking process, don't increase the power of a lone executive with whatever agenda; focus on the 535-member Congress, as the Framers intended. They did not want a monarch, or even an imitation one.
In fairness the debate on this is long and complex. I won't pretend to present or be able to present a full balanced picture. But grant that the issue is much more complex than a magic bullet for pork-barrel abuses, and look into it more than sound bites permit.
While the Homeland Security Bill is most certainly assured to pass now that the Republicans will control all of the 108th Congress (don't forget, its still the 107th, and the Dems still control the Senate) that doesn't mean all of the items being tacked on by the Senate will actually make it into law.
The House of Representatives already passed HR5005, the Homeland Security Bill, and did so with such tight rules that there was no chance for riders to be added. As such, when the conferees from the two houses to sit down and rectify the differences in the bill, the House will not have the pork that the Senate has... and I would go so far as to say that much of the pork will be stricken.
The computer hacking bill, on the other hand, has already passed the House. I was actually in the gallery at the time and watched the bill pass without a single objection. Even the floor leader managing the opposing side was in support of the bill. I don't know where "our" lobbyist was on this issue, but it was already decided long ago.
During the last few weeks of Congress there is a "great sucking sound". In other words, all of the bills that have been stuck in committee are suddenly tacked on to popular bills. Its been going on for years, and it is actually one of the few things that diminishes the power of the committee system, which in itself has some highly undemocratic practices. But that doesn't mean those items make it pass the conference committee.
Oh, and one last thing, about the line-item veto. Its not that the President's want it and didn't get it... Congress granted the power but the Courts ruled in unconstitutional because the President is not supposed to be vested with such power. If he did have that power, what would stop him from taking off items that would help members of the opposing party while keeping on items that help his own party? No, the power of the purse needs to stay in the hands of Congress. But we as voters need to stop rewarding Congressmen just because they send $50,000,000 toward our district.
Only 120 characters... who can summarize their entire world understanding in 120 characters?!
SLASHDOTIA - The community known as Slashdot has announced today it's decision to secede from the United States of America. President and Commander(Taco)-In-Chief Rob Malda made the announcement shortly after new announcements came of ridiculous "rider" bills being tacked onto popular legislation.
Mr. Malda was quoted as saying, "with a Republican controled [sic] house and senate, we are loosing [sic] our RIGHTS as Americans! Well, those of us from Slashdot that live in America, that is. Therefore we are announcing the immediate secesion [sic] of Slashdot from the United States of America. We are drafting our Declaration of Independance [sic] as I speak. Thousands of my fellow Slashdotians are currently modding proposed wording for the decleration [sic] up and down, right now." He added, "Of course, I will be in charge of the final proofreading."
Fellow Slashdotian staffer Roblimo was quoted as saying, "Yes, we are hoping for a declaration that is +5 Insightful, but I fear we could end up with +5 Funny. It really depends on who happens to be participating in the conversation for the 1 hour it will take us to draft the document."
When asked how Slashdot -- devoid of a military -- figures to fair any better than the South did during the Civil War, Mr. Malda simply responded, "Two words: Slashdot Affect. [sic]"
Back to you, Dan.
"And like that
But then after complaining about Liberal being equated with a host of slurs, you insinuate a few of your own about the Conservative label.
Conservatism
Please, if you're going to gripe about labels, at least don't engage in the behaviour yourself.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
Lets see in the US gov't we have the following agencies to "protect" the citizens
CIA
NSA
FBI
ATF
DEA
And probably a few others. All of these agencies are empires in their own right and the interface between them is largely opaque and there is lots of redundancies and external friction.
Why do we need another empire!
BTW, Canada has one the RCMP.
WADR,
The thread is about un-checked power. I find it more than ironic that the same Conservative idealoges, like Safire, who a few days ago were gloating over the so-called Democrat debacle and basking in the sunshine of pending tax cuts, now see that the Right Wing of the Republican Party and his Conservative/Libertarian instincts, are not the same thing.
If the Federal Government gets these new functions to collect information, it will be just the first step in a series of new powers that could lead to a social, political and cultural disaster in this country. Every year in the US tens of thousands of people die driving cars. It is tragic, and it has never had a direct effect on our personal freedoms and rights. Over a year ago 3,000 people parish, just a tragicly as the car deaths, from an act of terroism that has effected many other places in the world, but came here for the first time with a bang, and almost overnight our personal freedoms and rights under the Constitution are under seige. Is the Right Wing of the Republican party that opportunistic, or is this a co-ordinated attempt to re-order society to fit a venal and dangereous ideal of how humans should live their lives? It is time for men and women of good will to start asking these questions and demand answers. If we don't, forums such as this one could become a thing of a past we will be damned for not protecting.
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.
NEW HOMELAND SECURITY BILL DROPS INVESTIGATION INTO 9-11.
I guess we don't need to know what happened, just what we were told what happened by the president.
Hammer of Truth
Is there any legitimate reason for the US's current process to ammend a bill.
Of course there are - legislators need some ability to edit the legislation that is submitted to them from the committees. BUT, there are also many illegitimate uses of the ammendment process as well. Since the threshold is lower to pass an ammendment than a stand-alone bill you can abuse it in ways that have nothing to do with editting a bill to make it better. If you want something that wouldn't pass on it's own you can tack it on to a completely unrelated bill that will pass (usually something absolutely essential like the spending authority - no one is going to shut down the entire US government just to kill your little pet issue). If you don't like an otherwise popular bill you can tack on unpopular ammendments to ensure it's defeat.
This is why Presidents like the idea of a line-tem veto they can strip out all the special interest clutter without killing the entire bill. Of course that adds a lot of Legislative power to the Executive branch in a way that can also be abused. It would be better if ammendments had to at least show some degree of relatedness to the bill in question. But who would decide which ammendments were legitimate or not? You know that power would be abused. And the ammendment we are talking about here would obviously pass such a test - as wrongheaded as it is it is certainly pertinant to a homeland security bill.
It's called compromise. ["]I'm on the edge on this bill, but...if you give this to my state/pet issue you have my vote[."]
That's not called compromise, that's called bribery.
The way it should work: "I'm on the edge on your bill, but... if you agree to vote on my (different) bill, you have my vote on yours."
Unrelated bills and laws should not be tied together for any reason. If you can't get enough votes for your bill, then maybe there's something wrong with the bill, and then it should be discussed so a better solution can be found - and the better solution should not involve an unrelated issue.
There really oughtta be a constitutional amendment to outlaw or discourage bills that address more than one issue... Or something...
> Remember, both Nixon and Clinton severely abused
> the IRS' power by auditing all their enemies.
Nixon maybe, Clinton no.
Remember, our country spent almost $70 million dollars and two independent councils with unlimited subpoena power to investigate Clinton, and the only thing they came up with was some fellatio. Bill and Hillary go down as the most heavily investigated couple in the history of the U.S., so unless you've got a real court conviction to back up your accusation (which would be an impeachable offense), then don't bother lumping him in with Nixon.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
> When did the word Liberal become an epithet
.
Newt Gingrich started the game back in 1994 when Bush Sr. lost the 1992 election. They put together a plan to make the world "Liberal" worse than "Communist" and basically wage the same war on the Democratic party that they waged on Communists before that. For more enlightenment, read David Brock's Blinded by the Right
It doesn't go both ways though. I have never met a Democrat or Liberal that responds to the other side with the same visceral reaction as a conservative when you say, "Liberal"
Conservatives have learned since 1992 that if you say something enough times people will take it as conventional wisdom. For example, despite the fact that the media in general has been giving G.W. Bush a free ride since Sept 11, 2001, they still claim there's a "Liberal bias" to the media.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Umm which party was it that has had senators step down and presidents questioned over illegal campaign contributions? Yes that would be the Democrats I believe.
... sure.
/soapbox
I don't think it matters what side of the aisle you are on there are illegal corporate goings ons within the parties.
I'm tired of that same huge wide brush that gets painted over and over again, Republicans are for the rich, the corporations and right wing that want to remove abortion! (nevermind the conservative justices on the supreme court have upheld it) and the Dems are for the little guy, the average joe and the environment, think of the children! vote for the Dems! Funny how top ranking Dems *cough*Al Gore*cough* and interestingly enough the Entertainment industry use that brush the most. Hmmm they don't have an agenda at all do they? Just out for the little guy
Then when the citizens of this country (however dumb you may think they are) voted the Republicans into power, all the Dems got their panties in a tizy and Al Gore came on TV and cried how unfair it was. (Not that I'm saying the Republican's wouldn't have done the same).
The problem with politics in this country is that somewhere along the way the politians started putting Party before Country and People. Washington wonders why there is such division in the country. I say its because all the people who vote have a vested interest in one party or the other and no one else cares. If they want to see the apathy go away then both parties need to put the people back in power. Senators and Representatives need to stop listening to the special interest groups and educate themselves on the issues
Finally the Party system should go away. I don't believe the original framers wanted political parties. They wanted individuals chosen by the people. We need to get rid of this Dem/Republican crap once and for all.
The Anti-Blog
Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of bones to pick with Bob Barr, particularly when it came to the religious freedom of our Armed Forces. But I'm sad to see him go, because now we need privacy advocates more than ever before.
Finding God in a Dog
The bill also tacks on loosely worded research funding for Texas A&M. It also lets the White House decide who gets hired and fired, bypassing employment standards regulations (who's gonna be suprised when it's 99% white?). The government can now slap wiretaps whereever they think appropriate, and ISPs can divulge information without fear of reprisal. The nice people who make the smallpox vaccine are now protected from litigation, as are the nice people who make metal detectors, and the nice security guards who man them. So when the big bad man carries his briefcase of smallpox through JFK International, you won't be able to sue anyone for reading Archie Digest when he was supposed to be watching the screen, and when it turns out your smallpox vaccine was in fact a dose of really, really dilluted cherry Kool-Aid, well, sucks to be you.
In other news that undoubtedly went unreported, your faithful representatives have bitten the bullet, and given themselves another pay raise. Now your Reps, Senators, VP, and about 1000 other people (literally) make over $154,000 a year, not including kickbacks, expense budgets, under-the-table exchanges, contributions to their re-election fund...
God Bless America.
(I'm legally required to say that, now that Bush signed a bill re-emphasizing the importance of "God" in the pledge of alleigence, as well as "In god we trust" as your national motto. So much for separation of church and state, eh?)
(And before your left-wingers start running your mouth off, I'll point out that the Democrats didn't oppose any of these bills, admitting that the soon-to-be Republican majority would make the effort useless. So much for standing up for what you believe in.)
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
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."
Why send blank messages? Why not send cryptic "orders"?
The pink cow is on the grassy roof.
I repeat, the monkey has left the cornhole.
Release the reindeer. The rabbit is horny.
Eagle spies a floater. Release the corn. Emergency blow!