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2006's Bill of Wrongs
Jamie continued the never ending flow of year-end recap stories, this one is the Bill of Wrongs which lists the 10 most outrageous civil liberties violations of the year, according to Slate. Several of these aren't news to Slashdot readers, but it's still worth a read.
Personally I'd like to know what the author would do in the Ticking Time Bomb scenario; Dahlia probably wouldn't have any answer.
In any case, the number 2 complaint listed is The Military Commissions Act of 2006, which is strange because the author would presumably like to have constitutional protections apply to non citizens captured on a foreign battlefield. Apparently the point of our civil liberties is to protect everyone on earth, including the terrorists, huh?
That's all just moveon.org, put your enemies first, self denouncing liberal, forget the UN raping kids type stuff. It's not worth a read at all.
when the article is about the US
If you R'ed TFA with any modicum of care, you'd see that the article makes no claims about being solely about the US. And I think one would be hard-pressed to rank all (or any) of the items on that list ahead of true gross violations of human rights like what's going on in Darfur.
Amendment XVI. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
As for the disarmament of the citizenry, who really gives a shit at this point? What are you going to do? Go hole up on a compound out west with your guns? What's the fucking point? Really think you're going to protect yourself from the government that way? With the hugely militarized police forces all across the country? You really think you're gonna go Tankgirl on the US Government or something? Have fun with that.
You libertarian asshats are all the same, "Give me MY Money and MY Guns, and fuck all you fuckers!" Gods forbid anyone should want to do anything for the public good, like try and encourage education, or public health. Can't have people who've already stolen their pile being forced to contribute anything back to society, that's UnAmerican!
Here's a longer summary:
- Protecting terrorists' rights is more important than preventing terrorism. Completely compromise the efforts to prevent terrorism rather than compromising terrorists' rights in the slightest degree (or even in appearance). Any other course of action (or even the discussion of it) is forbidden and evil.
- Courts and the media can do no wrong and are above scrutiny. Even discussions to the contrary are forbidden and evil.
- Bush is evil and you should believe anything bad about him, no matter how kooky, speculative, or outright false.