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Significant FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act
Noksagt writes "The Washington Post is reporting that recently discovered documents indicate serious intelligence violations by the FBI. This comes just months after the U.S. House voted to extend the Patriot Act, EPIC (the Electronic Privacy Information Center) has obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act of thirteen cases of possible misconduct in intelligence investigations. The case numbering suggests that there were at least 153 investigations of misconduct at the FBI in 2003 alone."
If you think that voting for one of the two major candidates is a waste, then vote for one of the minors. He won't win, but his viability will be increased for the next go round.
I'm a Massachusetts conservative, so I'd be hard pressed to vote for Kerry. But there was no way in hell that I was going to vote for the devil Bush, and even if I had, it wouldn't have done any good. I felt that the only way to make my vote count for anything was to vote for a third party.
Another point I'd like to make here is that corruption and incompetence come in all different shapes and sizes. If I had been living in one of the closely contested states, I'd have voted for the lesser of the two evils, namely Kerry.
The saddest thing is that America at large is waking up to the fact that the Bush administration is nfg, but it's too late. The damage has been done. Still, I can hope that he comes tumbling down with Cheney, Rove, and Libbey and that the nation learns that the Bush family cannot be trusted. They've been fucking us over for three generations.
Doing business with the Nazis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush
Pardoning criminals in the Iran-Contra scandal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush
Conflicts of interest involving media coverage of the 2000 election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Prescott_Ellis
Highly suspicious actions involving the Florida voter lists in the 2000 election.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeb_Bush
Bank scandals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Bush
Shady offshore business dealings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Bush
Yeah, that's the ticket. Vote in order to clear your conscience, not to help the country.
You were in a battleground state, asshole. Last time Gore lost Florida by what? A couple hundred votes? Probably the closest squeeze in the history of American democracy, and yet you decided to throw your vote away.
"But both political parties are the same!!!!" No, they're not. Kerry would have been a mediocre president, but he would have been a far sight better than Bush.
And then, to top it all off, you move away and wash your hands of it. "Well, I tried my best, voted for some extremist candidate who had literally zero chance of winning and he didn't win, time to expatriate."
Your vote could have literally determined the president of the United States. But instead, you thought it would be more "useful" to "encourage" Harry Brown by making sure he got 642 votes instead of 641. Well done.
Take a lesson from the Republicans. Business interests, religious conservatives, and strict constitutionalists all hang together, combining their agendas until they've got enough support to take over the entire government. Meanwhile, the other side would rather bicker and splinter, because they think the difference between a Green candidate and a Democrat is more important than the difference between a Democrat and Republican. Hopeless idealism won't get you jack shit. Hopeful pragmatism is how you make a difference.
Your welcome to reply, however make sure it is about an actual abuse of the patriot act and not one you *think* is a violation. Senator Feinstein (D-California, former mayor of San Francisco) found that many supposed violations in fact had nothing to do with the patriot act at all. They used other laws that have been on the books for decades. She couldn't find a single violation and it wasn't due to a lack of effort.