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Viet Dinh Defends The Patriot Act
Grrr writes "Wired News has posted an interview with Viet Dinh, who worked on the PATRIOT Act for the Justice Department. In the past he said, "Security without liberty - it's not an America I would want to live in." And also, in this interview, "I think right now at this time and this place the greatest threat to American liberty comes from al-Qaida and their sympathizers rather than from the men and women of law enforcement and national security who seek to defend America and her people against that threat." Several of his replies are (predictably / necessarily / discouragingly) less than direct."
NO, they are wrong. There is a distinct difference between liberties and safety! I don't see how people can be duped into believing that terrorist groups affect liberties!
The only reason they affect liberties is because Congress passes things like the Patriot Act. Otherwise, all they affect is safety.
Terrorists affect SAFETY, Congress affects LIBERTY. Get it straight, and we can all stop falling for this crap coming from Washington. If they said these terrorist groups were the greatest threat to our safety, then I'd buy it. But they are, however, NOT a threat to our liberty.
The Patriot Act is the threat to our liberty, effectively nullifying the Bill of Rights when it comes to searches and siezures, and the right to a FAIR and SPEEDY trial.
Government disheartens me. So do the people who buy crap like this from them and cannot draw the distinction for themselves. Just my (flaming) two cents.
This isn't supposed to be flamebait, but mod it as such if you think it is.
The Patriot Act is now being used for non terrorist cases.
Basically, what I'm saying is that neither party has been particularly good on matters of personal liberties and the right to privacy. The Republicans are just a lot more blatant about their intentions than the Democrats. And the Republicans tend to go a little farther and push a little harder than the Democrats do.
Just keeping this debate honest...
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
According to the US State Department, around 20-30 Americans are killed by foreign terrorists each year. Typically, ZERO of these attacks are on American soil. In many cases, the attackers were no doubt unaware that their victims were Americans. For example, when Chechens took over a Moscow theater, there happened to be a few Americans in the audience.
The 2001 attack was the big exception: 3000 Americans were killed that year on US soil.
However, to put this in context, about 40,000 Americans are killed every year in auto accidents.
So this is what we're sacrificing liberty for: a phenomenon that is typically less than 0.1% of the threat from auto accidents, and didn't evern break 10% in the worst year ever.
Well, the problem here is the first post said Constitution Party and you said Constitutionalist Party.
Constitution Party != Constitutionalist Party
Do a little googling on the two.