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Bill Could Restrict Freedom of the Press
WerewolfOfVulcan writes "The Washington Post is carrying an article about a disturbing Senate bill that could make it illegal to publicly disclose even the existence of US domestic spying programs (i.e. NSA wiretaps)." An aide to the bill's author assures us it's not aimed at reporters, but the language is ambiguous at best. From the article: "Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the measure is broader than any existing laws. She said, for example, the language does not specify that the information has to be harmful to national security or classified. 'The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact,' said Martin, a civil liberties advocate."
Or they could arrest people, hold them in jail for a while, charge them, and then before the courts can make a decision, drop charges and let them go with stern warnings.
That way, the courts don't get a chance to shut them down since they have to have a real dispute, but the administration can use it to silence opponents.
Now it's being used in child porn cases as well. This should come as no surprise to anybody that lived through the 80's. Back then the politicians promised us that RECO legislation was only aimed at the Drug King-Pins and international cartels.......
All the rest are cowering sycophants who place politics far, far ahead of principles. They may twist in the wind for all that I care, and for all that they care about their constituent's liberties.
Feingold, however, is the Eliot Spitzer of the halls of Congress. The guy should run for Emperor, errr Potentate, errr... what's Bush's title today?
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
First, this proposed law will get shot pretty much instantly by the courts should it pass the senate (which it wont). This proposed law pretty much pisses on the first amendment, something that should be clear to senate, and something that is certainly clear to the courts. I really am not the least bit worried.
That said, I think that this law inspires me to want a law of my own. Let's call my new law the "three strikes, now stop fucking with the constitution" law. Any congressman that votes for three laws that are later over turned on the grounds of it being unconstitutional should have their seat revoked for their absolute and utter incompetence in upholding the constitution of the United States.
These worthless fuckers have sworn an oath to the constitution, and it really fucking pisses me off when they promptly turn around and drop one of these shit for laws. Not only does it piss me off that they are so incompetent as to not see the clear violation of the constitution that they are proposing, but it also pisses me off that my tax money has to be pissed away overturning these steaming piles of shit.
Would a "three strikes, now STFU and stop messing with the constitution law" be great? Sure. It won't happen, so let's do the next best thing. STOP VOTING FOR THESE DUMB FUCKER. I am not sure who to be more pissed off at, the spineless incompetent politicians that seem to think that upholding the constitution is optional, or the worthless and lazy voters that blindly support their parties candidate and vote for these dumb fucker.
Bah. This crap will be shot down. Thankfully, the court system still mostly works and takes its responsibility to the constitution seriously. It still pisses me off though that it even needs to go that far.
How's that cliche go?
If supporters of a bill, when confronted with an egregious abuse it would permit, dismiss the concerns as purely hypothetical, they are lying. They intend to use such a law exactly that way as early and often as possible.
You see, not only is this the "land of the free", much to the surprise and horror of tyrants everywhere, it is also "land of the lawyers and civil societies" who love nothing more then a good old fashion 1st amendment smack down.
This law will not make it out of committee.
This law will not make it through the House.
This law will make it to the president's desk.
Should this law actually somehow become law, it absolutely will contested and struck down by the courts.
You make some interesting arguments and while I don't completely disagree, I'm not totally convinced GW won in 2004. Ohio still looks awfully fishy to me. When was the last time you have seen exit polls so out of line with official results? And none of it auditable? We all know about Diebold.
Yes, far too many Americans voted out of ignorance and fear, and are reaping their rewards, but the process was corrupted
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>Most of the people causing the trouble down there are trained terrorists,
Actually most of the people causing trouble are ex-military, disenfranchised civilians and those who have lost out on the regime change to the point where it is better to fight. TBH actual terrorists like AQ would make a small percentage of that.
>The civilians are the ones getting stuffed by a war they didn't want
http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html
Its a good read. Would like to see an update on it though.
I live in Ohio and I was part of the recount team there. I participated in the recounts of 3 counties. I can say that I'm convinced that there was no removing of ballots/adding ballots for Bush. I will also say that there was some gross negligence on the part of the boards of election and our good friend Ken Blackwell. There was a reason precincts that voted Democratic had less voting machines.
You cannot restrict public financing to three or any other number of "qualified" candidates - that is how they keep a lid on the candidates in Iran. Everyone that comes forward must be funded equally, or it is discriminatory. Can you imagine how it would be if three white candidates were funded and a black candidate got nothing or even just less?
A requirement that they show up with some evidence that they stand some chance of getting elected can also be discriminatory - look at what happened to the petition signing for Nader. He was kept off ballots because of petitions that were disqualified, thus again restricting the pool of candidates.
The candidate is going to give up at least a year of any sort of employment to run for election. Lately, in the US it has become almost a two-year commitment. To prevent this from being a "you gotta be rich" sort of thing, the funding for candidates have to include a healty stipend for their support and for their families.
So, why can we not have 1,000 candidates for mayor for a city, each receiving a fully-funded free ride for a couple of years? How long will it take before every citizen in the US understands all they need to do is run for every office possible (think 25,000,000 candidates for president) so as to be fully supported by the Federal Election Commission?
Come on, is that where you really want to go? Or is it that you think it would be better if the candidates were narrowed to just a few "qualified" candidates selected by the incumbents?
Which would propably be a good thing for everyone, even the US. It would make the US stop being a target for terrorism, letting you put your economy and society onto healthier ground than the current debt-taking production-outsourcing trend with constant warmongering thrown in for bad measure. But there's likely to be a lot of grief when the house of cards crashes.
A situation where a single power completely dominates the whole world is simply unmaintainable. The question is not if the US empire will come down, but how bad the collapse will be. You better hope that you get a smart president next, someone who dismantles it peacefully, before it will collapse violently. A peacefull dismantling, if combined with a sharp reduction in military budget and a large upscaling of social services, still lets you keep a good standard of living, while a violent collapse resulting from the foreign money lenders refusing to give you anymore, or all the places you've outsourced production to from nationalizing the production plants to reap the rewards themselves, or the countries currently engaged in "free trade" with you simply realizing that it is in their best interest to quit those deals and protect their domestic production with tariffs, resulting in sharp decrease in your ability to export your products, will result in complete economic chaos in the US, whose economy is heavily in debt to begin with.
Basically, you are not going to stay a superpower for long anymore, you just don't have the resources to continue dominating the world. Better abdicate peacefully and keep some of your power and riches than being thrown out by force and facing the guillotine.
Not trying to troll or bash the US, just pointing out what I think is the truth. Every empire in the history has fallen eventually, US is no different. I simply think that the fall will happen pretty soon, since the US economy is based on taking debt and is already heavily indebted, and its military hasn't managed to pacify Iraq and doesn't seem able to, in the near future, putting that much more strain to the economy. Add heavy corruption in both government and major corporations, and you have a pretty nasty mess brewing.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.