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Senate Passes Patriot Act Renewal
IAmTheDave writes "The Senate has passed a renewal of the Patriot act, 89-10, after two extensions caused by months of negotiations. The only thing standing in the way of a full renewal is a House vote, expected to pass next week. The renewal comes with some privacy protections attached, however, some worry they are only cosmetic. Some lawmakers who voted for the package acknowledged deep reservations about the power it would grant to any president. "Our support for the Patriot Act does not mean a blank check for the president," said Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who voted to pass the bill package. Certain lawmakers supported passing the bill even though they were still wary about it - Arlen Specter urged his colleagues to pass it even as he promised to introduce a new measure and hold hearings on how to fix it. Terrorism aside, the bill also includes new legislation that has almost nothing to do with terrorism, like one measure, which would make it harder for illicit labs to obtain ingredients for methamphetamine by requiring pharmacies to sell nonprescription cold medicines only from behind the counter. I know that people like Arlen Specter promise further hearings - but why pass what you know is flawed?"
All of the crap when purchasing certain cold meds makes me want to start a methlab just out of spite.
I like how the patriot act gets renewed virtually without any coverage, cause Dick Cheney accidently shooting some guy is a much better story than covering an act that restricts our civil liberties. This isn't a troll, i'm just pissed off.
This is already the case in Australia, although its a good idea a lot of pharmacists love to treat you like a criminal when you go in with a head cold to buy a pack of cold and flue tablets. Last year one of them refused to hand my drivers license back and I had to go to collect it from the police station after a few questions, turns out another guy with a name similar to mine had bought a few packets recently from that same chemist. All I wanted was bloody cold and flue tabs!!!!
You know what this means? This is muuch worse than I originally thought. At first I thought the lawmakers were just incompetent last time for not reading the bill, but now I know that the majority of them are downright fucking evil for renewing it.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
I doubt 10% of Americans understand the Constitution in any depth. This is why our elected officials can take away our freedoms and usurp power.
Sadly, it's more like 0.1% (although most citizens seem to be pretty familiar with the Simpsons).
That's exactly what the Republicans are aiming for. In recent years, the ruling party has enacted the Clean Skies act, Healthy Forests Initiative, No Child Left Behind, and the PATRIOT act - all of which are (a) ironically named - the skies are not cleaner, forests are less healthy, children are left behind, and eradicating civil liberties is hardly "patriotic" - yet (b) difficult if not impossible to vote against. Even though it's only a front for the deregulation of the logging industry, what politician is going to vote against the "Healthy Forests Initiative"?
Check out the senate roll call [www.senate.gov] for the vote breakdown. Here's the only 10 senators with enough guts to stand up for america's civil liberties: Akaka (D-HI) Bingaman (D-NM) Byrd (D-WV) Feingold (D-WI) Harkin (D-IA) Jeffords (I-VT) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Murray (D-WA) Wyden (D-OR) I realize some other senators were trying to compromise and we don't live in a perfect society and blah blah blah. But this was just too important of a vote to play political games. If you're against the Patriot Act, these 10 people are the only incumbents who deserve your vote this November!
Overall, both the US and Candian systems are very good conceptually -- they just both fail dismally in practice.
Both suffer from serious shortcomings in proportional representation. A party squeaks into power with barely 50% of parliament / congress / etc, and they can run the country like there is no opposition at all.
Both also suffer from serious shortcomings in letting the meritous reach the top. Both countries are starting to foster dynasties -- the law says anyone can become president / prime-minister, and while its true that any one can run -- increasingly only members from certain powerful families ever actually manage it.
And that's increasingly serving those families more and more and the citizens of either country less and less.
Its not enough for democracy that everyone can vote, and anyone can win by law, it actually has to work. Specific protections are required to ensure that everyone's vote is actually represented in the resulting government, and that being rich and connected are not the biggest factors in who forms that government.
Just as a free market doesn't work when power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of corporations who can erect barriers to entry, create cartels, and price fix -- a free country stops working when the power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of parties.
I'm not sure which country is less screwed up. The US is a 2 party system that simply flips power back and forth. Canada has several parties but most of them are irrelevant and many are the fragments of the shattered Progressive Conservative party -- fragments which are coalescing back together. And the BQ is hardly a postive force in Canadian politics -- the constant focus on Quebec is like the annoying pandering to the 'Swing states', only 10x worse.
Overall I guess Canada seems to be preserving its 'instability' better, the American balance seems very precarious -- if one party ever manages to polarize the issues enough to capture a solid 55% of the vote the US would become little more than a monarchy that is legally required to crown a new king (chosen by the party) every 8 years.
Hopefully it never comes to that, but while Orwell's 1984 didn't happen... it may just be late... it still seems to be coming.
Sure I do. Have a got at these features, taken from http://www.omnicenter.org/warpeacecollection/faci
Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
Disdain for the importance of human rights.
Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
Rampant sexism.
A controlled mass media.
Obsession with national security.
Religion and ruling elite tied together.
Power of corporations protected.
Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
Obsession with crime and punishment.
Rampant cronyism and corruption
Fraudulent elections.
Sounds like America to me.
Oh bullshit! I'm not hysterical. I'm just pointing out that your country is fucked up. Deal with it without namecalling.
I think this might apply to you before me. As for standing next to fascists, I tried to when Emperor Dubya came to Canberra, but the fucking police wouldn't let me get anywhere near him. Next time
Protect your country by giving up the civil liberties that the US stood for, once upon a time. Uh. Do you realize that the hypocrisis of the PATRIOT act is one of the reasons why US politics are now so despised in the world, when they were used to be a role model for a free society?
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
It's attitudes like that which terrify me for the future of society. Two world wars and other more local ones were fought with many millions killed from many countries and the one saving grace, that many of us are immensely proud of and justifies that many deaths, is that these people fought and died to protect our rights and way of life.
Now 3000 people are killed on American soil and everyone is running scared saying "Here take my rights away! What do I care if the government monitors me, I'm not doing anything wrong. They can do anything they want and take away any freedoms that I'm not really using regularly; just please don't let any more people die."
I've never seen such a bunch of self-centered scared wimps. It's a disgrace and disrespectful to those who died in the past to protect these rights and freedoms. The American Founding Fathers would have a fit. Ben Franklin too would probably just hang his head in shame:
We have a new police force, this for the homeland security department. They have the power to arrest and detain anyone seen as a threat to the United States of America. That's an awfull lot of power, don't you think?
Scanning the comments, and seeing READ THE BILL, I thought you were propping the Read The Bills Act. Might be the only thing to slow down this avalanche of legislature. Unlike other proposed bills, this one means just what the title says: Every bill must be read, out loud, and every congressional voter must sign her name that she has read or heard every word of it.
The lobby behind this last ditch effort to stop the toboggan-to-hell is http://downsizedc.org/. Give them a minute of your eyeballs, and maybe everyone's blood pressure will come down around here.
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
Perhaps some of you don't remember 9/11. But don't you remember the March 11th train bombing in Madrid or the attacks just this last summer in London?
If you fear terrorism, you are a coward plain and simple. You are more likley to die because of a drunk driver. Even if 9/11 happened every day for a year more people would have died to car accidents, yet we don't see more laws being passed in the name of public saftey for the "War on Drunk Driving"
Secondly, you are just plain ignorant to think it requires new powers to government.
9/11 happened because the pilots didn't lock their doors like they do is Israel.
To prevent 9/11 again, we simply have to require more common sense on the airlines. We do not... I repeat... We do not need to pass more laws in order to prevent more terrorism. Killing people and conspiring to kill people is illegal right? There ya go. Go catch those terrorists. You don't need to trample on the Constitution in order to do so.
Lastly, laws will not prevent terrorism. I'm more right wing than probaly you, but I know the reason why we haven't caught Bin Laden is not because we haven't passed another Patriot act but it is our leaders or incompentant or cowards.
Or perhaps there is a reason Pakistan hasn't caught him yet. Maybe we are paying them too much money to find him and they wouldn't want a good deal to go away. Maybe they have nukes and we don't have the balls to stop terrorism once and for all.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)