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Archive.org Defeats FBI's Demand For User Information
eldavojohn writes "Although we don't know what they were after due to the settlement, a gag order was just released that kept Internet Archive member Brewster Kahle quiet. The FBI had issued a national security letter to them under the Patriot Act. Kahle fought it. Hard. The EFF came to the aid of his lawyers and what resulted was one of the only three times an NSL has been challenged: all three have been rescinded. The FBI agreed to open some of the court files now for it to be public. The ACLU added, 'That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven't been challenged.'"
A five year prison term might be preferable to experiences like this, especially when ratting out the FBI can save hundreds of thousands of innocent people from further constitutional abuse. I can not demand heroic action by others but I wish there had were more than three in the hundreds of thousands of abused citizens so far. Innocent people going to jail for protecting privacy of other innocent people would shut this monster program down fast.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
well done Internet Archive.
it might be time to start challenging every single one of them and put some LIGHT onto it
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
That would be everyone in government of that time, except for Russ Feingold.
I thought you couldn't discuss a NSL, so how would we know that hundreds of thousands of them have been issued?
Are they tracked somewhere publicly, and wouldn't that defeat the whole point of being secret about them?
And given that these are clear-cut violations of free speech, how is it that the entire NSL program still exists? The first time one of these was challenged, I thought any judge worth their salt would declare the NSL anti-constitutional.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
Personally, the voting record is more important to me than whether they have an R or D beside their name. If that means that I'm voting in Republicans then so be it. I'd rather have a Republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act than a Democrat who dropped to his knees and pucked up to the Bush administration. Not that there are many Republicans who fit that description...
Boy, I'm sure the telcos are hating this. This story shows once and for all that "the government told me to" is not a valid excuse for violating civil rights.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Resist the temptation to make this partisan. Democrats were perfectly willing to vote for the PATRIOT Act and then try to excuse their complicity after the fact. That is not a commendable act.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Can someone send him a letter telling him to shut up?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Or giving Bush a blank check to wage war for that matter. Not that I think that the Democrats are worse than the Republicans, on whole. I think the Republicans, as an organization, are definitely more corrupt. But the Democrats failed to take a solid stand when it mattered, and I'm not going to forget that, even if I vote Democrat out of necessity.
A five year prison term might be preferable to experiences like this, especially when ratting out the FBI can save hundreds of thousands of innocent people from further constitutional abuse. I can not demand heroic action by others but I wish there had were more than three in the hundreds of thousands of abused citizens so far. Innocent people going to jail for protecting privacy of other innocent people would shut this monster program down fast.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
You had me right up until "Vote for anyone but Republicans...Us against them. Good over evil. With or against us. Sheep think in those terms.
The emotional rhetoric from politicians never ends and their simple minded constituents emulate that behavior instead of engaging in critical thinking.
You do realize that there were PLENTY of Democrats that had voted for the Patriot Act. Hell, IIRC 99% of Congress didn't even read the God damn thing!
Is it really constitutional or moral to ask him to shut up? Let yOur Conscience be YouR guiDe.
Allowing small group of people that benefit disproportionably to the many, to create an indentured servitude is not patriotic, fighting it is. The maintaining of the separation of powers, protecting the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution as well as defending them is the is the ultimate Patriotic Act.
It is time for transfer of power from the few to the many, the wise (conservative) and those that value freedom (liberal), and those that value both, (party free independents for collective control).
Laws of changed such that we have become cattle simply to be herded and this is most unpatriotic.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
Actually, except for the biblical references it seemed pretty much like your standard basement-dweller's +4 Insightful rant. I think if he got a user account, dropped the religious stuff, and started bashing on the President more directly, he'd have the makings of a top Slashdot political commentator.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
At this point in my life, I wouldn't mind going to prison for five years for violating an NSL gag order, as long as I was able to tell the public what the hell the FBI wanted. I don't have kids or family to support, and only student loans debt.
We live with systems based on fictions and it is time for the truth to prevail. No govenment, army or police power can stop 100 million people acting in unity. We need to transfer power to the collective eliminting egoic intentions and special interests from warping insitituions, industries, and professions. Paramount to the success of the collective is the preservation of the liberties of the individual, the freedom of expression and the pursuit of happiness with no fear of persecution. For it is the pioneer, radical, outcast, eccentric, rebel, non-conformist, and those that question the status quo that are essential to the evolution of mankind, the collective, being they are the impetus for change, discovery, and invention needed to adapt and evolve
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
I agree with you that heroic stands need to be made in the face of abuses of constitutional rights; in fact, I wholeheartedly agree with the entire first paragraph. However, even though this will get modded down into oblivion, your final sentence ruins the entire spirit of the post, turning it from an insightful, inspriational comment into a partisan insult. (Disclaimer: I am not affiliated or registered with any major party, though I did vote for Bush in 2000) Abuses of personal privacy by the FBI/CIA are nothing new, and cannot be blamed on either the national Republican party or those Congress-critters who voted for the Patriot Act while the rubble of the WTC was still being cleared from the ashes.
I agree that major sections of the Patriot Act brush up against the grayest of gray areas in the realm of constitutional law, and that they should be revisited and even repealed. Given time, any reactionary measure should be reviewed and revised. Emotions and political actions do not observe Newton's laws of motion. If anything, each action is met with an underwhelming lack of reaction (Katrina and the Gulf Coast) or an overzealous attempt to keep anything bad from happening again, ever, at any cost (America: Sept. 12, 2001-present). There is precious little middle ground when an appropriate response is ever made.
See the Patriot Act for what it was in historical terms: a reactionary measure passed and supported by representatives of a hurting, angry nation. Considering the national mood at the time, it was the "right" thing to do: Americans were more than happy to give up essential liberties for Bush's promise of temporary security. His approval ratings set new historical record highs in the weeks immediately following the 9/11 attacks and the start of the Afghan war.
These metrics cannot be blamed on the whole of the Republican party or on the Congress seated in 2001-2002. Instead blame the current administration for continuing to act as though we are attacked on our soil on a daily basis, more than 6 years after those attacks. The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict, convinced that there is someone right there hiding who might "endangerfy our American way of life". While legitimate threats exist both inside and outside our borders, a bombing, the destruction of a major landmark or building, even a massive attack that cripples or destroys a city will not change our way of life. America will go on; hopefully, continuing to uphold and honor our constitutional rights.
Perhaps the saddest part of 9/11 is that the attacks themselves did not change America's way of life. America's panicky reaction and an adminstration that used this panic to grant itself unsupervised and unconstitutional executive powers changed our American way of life. Such results can not be blamed on the current Republican national party, nor on Al Qaeda, nor on the Reps or the Dems who supported the original Patriot Act. Full responsibility should rest squarely on the man in the White House. George W. Bush has preyed on the fears of the population in every speech and policy for years, reaping the benefits of governing a nation of sheeple. He has made his legacy from this, and it will not be remembered fondly in years to come.
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see ...the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people........ if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?
What is this, a kookiest rant competition? I thought that event was celebrated later in the year. Personally, I'd like to see this guy and twitter in a cage match...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Newest entry on US no-fly list: Brewster Kahle
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What this really needs is a logo. Something people recognize and associate with determination. I'd vote for a hand holding a HD and "from my cold, dead hands" written below it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Vote the Republicans out of the White House. Then the deceptively-named USA PATRIOT act can be repealed in its entirety, and America can go back to being America.
Vote for anyone but Republicans in 2008 and vote out everyone who had anything to do with the poorly named Patriot act.
Personally, the voting record is more important to me than whether they have an R or D beside their name. If that means that I'm voting in Republicans then so be it. I'd rather have a Republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act than a Democrat who dropped to his knees and pucked up to the Bush administration. Not that there are many Republicans who fit that description...
Ron Paul is a republican who refused to vote for the Patriot Act.The Dubya Bush administration is like a paranoid meth addict
Yes. But not because of the attacks anymore, they fear you, their people. And it's not an isolated phenomenon. You can see it all over the "western" world, with more and more paranoid surveillance laws coming into existance. Most of them targeting the internet, which is a perfect tool to assemble and organize people of the same interests. Interests that may and often do go diametrally against the goals of our governments.
The advantage governments have over their subjects is that they are organized. No, don't laugh, I know how bureaucracy weighs it down, but they have the advantage of having trained specialists in every field necessary. Something you don't have. You are not a lawyer, bureaucrat, IT professional, PR guru and fundraiser all rolled into one. That's what gives your government an edge over you (in case one wants to stand up against the government). With the internet, people can organize and gain access to the same specialists the government has.
The same holds true for corporations, btw.
Now, the internet also allows organisation of partisan groups who won't just fight with legal means but also illegal ones. And that's what they're really afraid of. Since they already managed to bleed the "lower incomes" completely dry, not only siphoning away the little rest of their savings but also pushing them so deeply into debt that they can't spend anymore, the meager rest of the middle class is the next target. The divide between rich and poor opens wider, the number of poor people growing, and it's a matter of time until the mob reaches critical mass again. Their attempt with the increased surveillance is to make sure it's easy to identify the "heads" of such movements and decapitate them before they can gain momentum.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Don't Tread on Me".
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Here is the URL of March 2007 " A Review of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Use of National Security Letters" published by the Office of the Inspector General. Note section IV, "Improper or Illegal Use of National Security Letter Authorities." http://cryptome.org/fbi-nsl/fbi-nsl.htm A link to the pdf is available there as well.
i have a strong suspicion that thing is the result of some kind of AI research experiment.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's why you vote for Obama. Clinton supported the PATRIOT act. Clinton supported the war. Obama was against both of those. I was honestly planning on voting Libertarian, because I can't bring myself to vote for anyone who supports the PATRIOT act and all this other crap...but Obama fits that quite well.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You think democrats will get rid of it.. ha. Vote them ALL out.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Oh I know there's no shortage of fanatical Paul supporters, whose existence assures that Paul and other Libertarian candidates will never be elected to any office of significance.
I was trying to be funny. Apparently I misjudged my ability to make funny posts. Sorry.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Given the large amount of NSLs that have been issued it would be fair to suspect that if anyone wanted to act on this abuse it would have happened by now. Instead it takes pressure from outside the system to start addressing this - that sort of says it all, no?
Insert
Oh I know you, you will forget it. Because some people let the same shit happen again and again. *Cough* CIA *cough* Clinton *cough* Extraordinary *cough* Rendition.
I recognize the fact that there are times in which the violation of privacy and the suspension of certain rights are necessary for security reasons. However, I have never heard a valid reason as to how judicial oversight and transparency interferes with this. In what way does due process hinder investigations? Is it a time efficiency thing? No problem, lets streamline the process and allocate more resources to quicken it. Will it clue in those being investigated? No problem, we could have clauses which delay but never prevent full disclosure. Why does does this kind of request NEED to be secret? The only conclusion I can draw is that it must be secret because it is illegal.
Nope. Bad analogy to illustrate why you're wrong about this: let's say you have a 10 year old son (let's call him Bart) and you suggest that you'd change roles for a day so that he learns how hard it is to be a parent. Instead of trying to fit your role, he instead messes up the house, sets the cat on fire, annoys the neighbors, unsettles your closest friends, attacks the candy store with bags of dog poo and causes general mischief all over the city. Bart's fault, or should you have intervened before too much damage was done? Just a thought.
Good. Because they count on that when they vote.
Nobody read it. The Senate received the bill at 6 AM for a 9 AM vote. The bill ran to hundreds of pages. Not one member of Congress could have read it and understood the consequences of the bill in less than 3 hours.
:)
Russ Feingold said at the time he wasn't necessarily opposed to the bill but couldn't vote for something with such sweeping changes without having time to read or research it. He has said since then that after reviewing it he supports about 95% of the things in the bill. He strongly opposes that other 5% that is total crap.
Man I love having him as my Senator
So vote for anyone except Republicans and Democrats. Actually... don't vote. It's a scam.
I'm not sure what kind of crack you're smoking, but Barack Obama voted to renew the PATRIOT act.
Why does this remind me of the "lettre de cachet"? -a fill-in-the-blank warrant the rent a thug is sent out with where he fills it in as he needs. France got rid of them in 1790, our Constitution has provisions against this. Now all it takes is a Lawer with a power tie and a BIC Pen to ruin your life.
Welcome to the Land of the Free.....Have you any rights to declare?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Its getting so bad that many of the details found on the Stazi police wiki entry can be cut and pasted straight into the FBI wiki.
Grandparent's point was that Feingold was the only Senator to vote against it. There were also 66 Representatives who opposed it (mostly Democrats, but yes, including Ron Paul.)
The court documents are available as well as other information.
We hope this helps de-spook some of these demands and encourages other libraries and recipients to consult lawyers and consider their alternatives.
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=192021
Personally I think whoever chose the name of the bill and made sure it was rushed through without time for it to be read should be imprisoned as a driving force back to monarchy. Voting against it was deliberately made to look unpatriotic. Without being able to consider the content the vote was on the name alone - so the vote was along the lines of "do you want to look like a dirty commie or not? The guy that wants to be King says it's a good idea and if you go againt the King you go against the country".
I guess there is one candidate for President that didn't vote for USAPATRIOT or the Iraq war...
But that's an exercise for the reader.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I thought that the Patriot Act was passed "unanimously" by a verbal vote or show of hands or something like that. I didn't think all votes were logged (which is absurd).
Maybe someone can correct me here?
Republicans are well known for holding the line and sticking to their talking points. They've worked hard to earn this reputation, and there's no reason to forget that they've repeatedly unified behind awful ideas.
Obama voted against the AUMF and filibustered the permanent reauthorization of the PATRIOT act. Additionally, he wont be tempted to hold the Republican line, seeing as how he is a Democrat.
The same logic applies to other good Democrats. It works against the Republicans - we need look no farther than Ron Paul to see what happens to Republicans who respect the constitution and the rule of law.
Posting anonymous because I moderated in this thread.
When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and angry as anyone could be, and wanted to get the person/people involved. This Osama Bin Laden character came out quickly as the chief suspect.
9/15 or so (eh - few days later. Whatever.) I was standing in line at Sam's Club, and the guy behind me strikes up a conversation with me for the sole purpose of telling me that if HE ever sees one of Those Towelheads, he'll "run 'em over with his truck". As badly as I felt because of 9/11, I remember being shocked that someone would advocate the random vigilante killing of another person who likely had nothing to do with it. At the time I just smiled and said "Yeah? Huh." and tried to avoid eye contact.
There aren't many people in that frame of mind anymore, as far as I can tell. I think that guy was just running his mouth, and probably never would have done it in reality, but the fact that random homicide was something to be bragged about to strangers at that time really says a lot about the emotions that were running through the country. Worse, because the guy saying it was probably a decent guy overall, but had gotten all caught up in the spirit of shock, anger, and later patriotism and desire for vengeance.
That wave of emotion was what drove through the Patriot Act without its even being read, and it's what will always keep cooler heads from prevailing. I, personally, have learned from the experience just how dangerous those emotions can be, and to always be on guard when a politician invokes them. Unfortunately, the guy at Sam's Club is probably none the wiser, and has probably totally forgotten I ever existed.
So I think you're right. No one party or president can be blamed for what has happened. We the people not only accepted it, we asked for it. We cried for blood when ours was taken -- and who can blame us? That our politicians took advantage of the situation and created inappropriate responses makes it no less our fault.
-CrazedWalrus
Obama didn't vote for either Patriot Act or the Iraq War ... because he wasn't in office at the time. He did, however, vote *against* reauthorizing the Patriot Act. He's also on the record opposing the Iraq War, though I don't have handy the details of his war appropriations voting record.
Interesting factoid about the Patriot Act: it was passed in a hurry (we all know), and it was presented as legal tools for fighting terrorists. Now, I'd be fine with that, on the face of it - however, DOJ has been heavily promoting it as set of laws (and amendments to existing laws) for fighting crime. Yes, they are promoting to district attorneys etc. using all those bypass-the-constitution-anti-terrorism goodies to inspect the accounts and lives of people who aren't suspected of terrorism.
In other words, the Patriot Act doubles as an end-run around the Constitution for ordinary criminal cases. When I mention this in conversation to folks, many of them say they think this is fine! I don't.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the government in power. You had your chance, and you chose to waste it.
Make no mistake - the teachers unions have nothing to do with it. The students are more than capable of fucking it up all on their own, and tend to take pleasure in doing so.
[BTW, nope, I'm not a teacher, so this rant is not self serving at all; I'm just a product of and a witness to the system, and to me the educations that kids receive these days matches quite well what society considers to be "just right" - a generation of retard parents gives rise to a generation of retard kids, and anyone smarter than that average level of retardation has to really fight the system]
Yes, the Senate approved the reauthorization unanimously.
However, Congress is two parts, the Senate, and the House of Representatives.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans voted 214 for, 14 against, Democrats 43 for, 156 against.
Code or be coded.
Too bad you ended with this gem. It's obvious you were just itching to get your partisan line in, probably in total ignorance as to who voted for the Patriot Act.
This is not a republican or democratic problem. If you can't see the malaise that is affecting our country regardless of who you vote for, then you are beyond help and nothing more than a partisan hack. Those are a dime a dozen these days, if you haven't noticed.
Sigh. Another ill-informed but impressive-looking rant gets modded up so that it shows in the default page view (which is how I found it). And so it goes, as usual.
FYI, Obama votes in favor of Iraq war appropriations.
Obama defends votes in favor of Iraq funding
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
--Frederick Douglass
I am not affiliated or registered with any major party, though I did vote for Bush in 2000
Why do you hate America?
It's the perennial question - how exactly do we exit Iraq? What's your idea? Me, I'm against the war, but I'm not for pulling out hastily. Because, I wonder what will happen... will more people die, will it be as many as the U.S. and its allies have killed already ... will there be further ethnic cleansing and displacement of people beyond the millions who've been "invited" to leave their homes, etc.
Help me Obi Wan.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
...but the fact that random homicide was something to be bragged about to strangers at that time really says a lot about the emotions that were running through the country...Ah, there you have your finger on it. It's a sad, sad thing to win a war, only to discover you've become the enemy.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
That is the entire problem, the people who thought this was a great idea are the same ones who don't mind being watched.
My big point of the year is this: The government isn't some far off, distant, thing that takes our money (and still is in debt), builds roads (to nowhere) and fights (immoral, illegal) wars. The government, in this great nation, IS the people. Once people realize this we can return to a society that valued freedom and the (history book) ideals that we were founded on.
This country needs its own French Enlightenment. It needs to have some writers, thinkers and speakers who don't involve themselves in the process at that level but rediscover the ideals we have strayed from (liberty!) and promote them to the masses. When people start saying The Government can look into your life then it's time to remind them that they are trying to look into your life, they are the ones trying to police your life. Start examining them for flaws, with most people it's not hard, and manipulate them if you have to - they need to realize that this is a very slippery slope.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The Patriot Act wasn't passed unanimously. Russ Feingold (D-WI) voted against it.
Russ Feingold makes me proud to be from Wisconsin.
That's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard. So, in order to have a right to complain about the government in power, you have to actively support the scam* that it created to sustain its power?
(*the concept of voting, itself, is not a scam, but American elections are)
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Obama voted *FOR* reauthorizing the Patriot Act, and has consistently voted for funding the war. Funny how he claims to represent change but is really more of the same.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It's wonderful to see a genuine Bush/Cheney smack down.
I think there's also a large number of democrats who supported the Patriot Act, but now say they don't because of it's lack of popularity.
Just like they wanted to go to war, but now they claim they never wanted to go.
When you start to call parties out, instead of individuals, you are only adding to the problem.
Yup, I got it wrong - it was Kucinich who voted against both. I misread a blog post summarizing Obama's floor speech on Patriot Act.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Too late for that, they're already trampling us and our rights with their boots.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can almost forgive them for that. Most of them voted to authorize the Commander in Chief to do whatever is necessary to keep the US safe when they voted to support the troop build up and that permission to use them if needed. Very few assumed the Office of the President would use it's power in a knowingly needless way, which it appears is exactly what the President did.
The entire pretense for the invasion was a lie, we know it was a lie because up until Sept 11, 2001 when reporters asked anyone in the current administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the universal answer was "they aren't a risk and they don't have them". We can now summize that 9/11 was used as a politically expediant way to enact the vision of the New American Century, whose members rose to being in the Presidents office.
Those who voted to authorize the President to do what was needed and later recanted once they realized what happened were honestly trying to do what's right. No one seriously considered that the President would be so reckless that he would actually make the country more unsafe to live in and more vulnerable to terrorists. Seriously, why would any President do that, even ones you didn't like at the time? They made the same mistake the rest of America did, trust a bunch of self confessed Neo Conservatives to not invade random countries as a demonstration of power and instead focus on actually stopping more attacks on US and Allied soil from killing more people. Just ask Spain and Great Britian how much of an impact invading Iraq had on stopping terrorism and if that money would have been better spent.
Burn Hollywood Burn
that would be?
Exactly right. McCarthyism that worked. Anyone against the Act or the War was "unpatriotic" and risked being tarred & feathered come election time.
Back then the country was at least 70/30 for "goin' after the evil-doers". It has swung to 30/70 at this point, but could easily swing back given the right conditions.
And then another set of laws & actions would be created. We would let the dogs out. Again.
sr
"Speak the truth, but leave immediately after." ~ Slovenian Proverb ~
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
You're thinking of the Senate, which was indeed 98-1, with the one being Russ Feingold. In the House it was 357-66. The 66 Nays included three Republicans and one Independent.
"Sleep. Food. Food. Sleep."
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Republicans are well known for holding the line and sticking to their talking points. They've worked hard to earn this reputation, and there's no reason to forget that they've repeatedly unified behind awful ideas.
Obama voted against the AUMF and filibustered the permanent reauthorization of the PATRIOT act. Additionally, he wont be tempted to hold the Republican line, seeing as how he is a Democrat.
The same logic applies to other good Democrats. It works against the Republicans - we need look no farther than Ron Paul to see what happens to Republicans who respect the constitution and the rule of law. You're comparing one politician to the whole Republican party? Whoopee do! Dear citizen, let me fix your paragraph for you:
Democrats are well known for holding the line and sticking to their talking points. They've worked hard to earn this reputation, and there's no reason to forget that they've repeatedly unified behind awful ideas.
A quick Google search reveals that Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Mark Hatfield (R-OR) voted against the AUMF resolution. So your argument proves nothing.
The GP seemed to imply that part of the solution was to not vote Republican. As if all will be OK when the Dems have control of everything. Not so. Our forefathers warned us against a two party system long ago, and you don't have to be all that bright to figure out why.
But one would have thought that since the nuremberg process "I was ordered to do so" would have NEVER AGAIN been allowed to be a valid excuse. Guess what ? Those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it. (yeah i know I am comparing a crime against humanity against small petty fascism, but wait a few years and who knows where the US will slide down on that slope).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Its times like these that make me happy I'm not American! :D
My understanding is that it wasn't rushed through - the original draft was debated for about three weeks, and had very strong bipartisan support. Enter Bush & Co stage left. They took the bill, modified it quite substantially, and then after having had the presses run overtime printing it through the night, made it available the morning of the vote. Nobody had a chance to read it, much less understand its implications.
What puzzles me is why Congress even voted on this version rather than tossing every copy into a bonfire, and then re-scheduling a vote for the original version. Then, they blew it a second time when they voted to re-authorize it.
Suffice it to say that the Bush regime is largely to blame for the PATRI0T act, but the fact that it's still here means there more than enough blame to go around.
Agreed. The education system isn't broken in this country (USA), it's the parental system that's broken. My parents supported my learning. I've even failed classes, and instead of letting me pass, my parents forced me to retake things. I hated it at the time, but, as they told me, I had to buckle down and get through it, regardless of whether it was easy or interesting. That is what kids these days are missing: discipline to get through tough times.
And as I'm fond of saying, "The education system is not designed to force kids to learn, it's designed to allow kids to learn." The rest is up to parents (a) not being shit-for-brains by allowing their kid to stay out all night because they are the mature age of 14 (and have an attitude) and (b) not allowing their kids to grow up with shit-for-brains. Generalizing, stupid parents breed stupid kids, and smart parents generally breed smart kids.
Cue the Einstein quote about the Universe, designing things to be idiot-proof, and making better idiots.
There are more than one. Lets not forget there are more choices then the two corporate parties. Even though he wasn't in office either - Ralph Nader did not support the Patriot Act or the Iraq war.
Everyone knows what that term means. Perhaps the GP used it without even quotes because he assumed that everyone perceived it as not an euphemism but rather a synonym for genocide.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
The issue with the USA is simple: They are way too old! The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, said Thomas Jefferson. This didn't happen in the States for a long time so it's no wonder the tyrants conned the patriots into joining forces against everyone else...
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Looks like a Markov bot to me. I think it reads Slashdot posts, cuts them into pieces and glues those pieces back together in order to generate a more or less convincing post.
Note how it wrote "(Score:-)" once. To me it looks like the bot read the score from a post and mistook it for actual content; the colon is the end of the fragment and since colons don't occur too often in Slashdot posts the most likely token to begin with a colon is a smiley.
There definitely is some kind of supervision going on, though; the bot clearly expresses some opinions, mostly anti-Bush and pro-conspiracy theory. Of course it might be possible that this comes from Slashdot having an anti-Bush bias, but I don't think that it's that extreme; also, conspiracy theorists usually end up flamed and ridiculed, so a truly random bot would rather toss around random flames instead of chemtrail theories.
I think the most likely explanations are both related to the bot being trained selectively - either on posts with certain views (so the bot ends up emulating them) or on very long posts (so the bot builds up a useful set of sentence fragments quickly). The latter would explain the bias towardy kookery*; kooks tend to write very long posts, even though not all long posts are kooky.
* Note that I don't think that anti-Bush sentiments are kooky; chemtrail theories are, however. That and only few people still insist that Gore is/was the US president.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I think the PP is quite correct. There are sheep in both political camps, so I'm not sure quite why you say he lost you with the comment.
Nobody ever attempted to clear a country of a race they didn't like by writing to them all and saying "Excuse me, terribly sorry but your skin's the wrong colour. Would you mind very much getting on the next plane and going back to wherever you came from? Thanks. Sorry to be such a trouble."
Probably if they did they'd find that most of those they wanted to get rid of couldn't find an ancestor who came from anyware else.
It would be ironic if those advocating "ethnic cleansing" were themselves a more recent immigrant population than those they wanted to get rid of.
I don't know about "retard", but they definitely write him off as a bit insane. He is a bit insane, BTW - it's not the Republican party creating that impression.
They excluded him from debates because he was not a viable candidate. Their cut-off was not historically unprecedented, nor was it directed specifically to Paul.
He did pretty well in the debates that he was in, but it's very hard to get on board with someone who is still advocating the gold standard. That shows either a very confused mind, or someone who hasn't studied economics or history. One only has to look at the last 5 years, where gold has more than doubled in value and inflation has not to see why tying your currency to a commodity is a bad idea.
Money is nothing but a tool for barter - he's way too hung up on it being something more solid than that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yeah, see, I think you might have that a little backwards there. You seem to be going towards the aphorism "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely", which is anecdotally true for most of human history. But the entire point of Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances is to prevent the accumulation of virtual or actual "absolute" power in any one branch of the American government. When one branch (in this case, the Executive) makes a blatant and bald-faced power grab, it's the responsibility-- and duty-- of the other two to rein in that power. If the power is deemed necessary and proper for the well-being of the Union and the people at large, then the other two branches must find a way to ensure that the Executive cannot and does not overstep the legal and proper boundaries of the Constitution in utilizing that power; if that can't happen, then the power is rescinded and the people's rights are more protected (even if there's a slight drop in security).
A strong, overbearing Executive branch creates a police state. A strong, overbearing Legislative branch creates an ineffectual bureaucracy. A strong, overbearing Judicial branch creates a tyrannical dictatorship. None of those things are even remotely close to happening in the US (though we're currently en route to the police state Bad Ending, it's just very far off).
And a side note. We're talking about how we need revolution and regime change and all that sort of fast-movement stuff. Moving quickly is what got us into this mess. The 'Patriot Act' was rushed into law; we jumped to conclusions on Iraq; and so on and so on. In America, regime change happens every four to eight years like clockwork, and things move a little bit more slowly. Be patient. We have six months until the election and eight months until the inauguration. Once that happens we'll see some faster progress back to normalcy.
(Non-Americans, please give us a couple of months into 2009 before you start saying that we haven't changed. Like I said, this stuff takes time.)
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Voting today is playing right into the hands of the traitors who have abducted the US Federal Government. They *want* you to vote because they know it changes absolutely *NOTHING*. It will NEVER matter who you vote for, and voting makes it feel like your fault for whatever happens. You feel *involved*.
Dealing with evil is dealing with evil, even if the act you perform is not evil in and of its self. Voting in a Federal election is supporting pure evil.
The name is rather more appropriate than it might seem at first glance when you realize the purpose of the bill is to identify and remove any and all patriots.
" . . .they definitely write him off as a bit insane."
.it's very hard to get on board with someone who is still advocating the gold standard. That shows either a very confused mind, or someone who hasn't studied economics or history. One only has to look at the last 5 years, where gold has more than doubled in value and inflation has not to see why tying your currency to a commodity is a bad idea."
Right. Who would be crazy enough to want to end the Iraq War and begin dismantling the U.S. military empire? What kind of a nut wants to protect civil liberties? And it's absolutely insane to want to preserve the purchasing power of U.S. currency.
" . .
Oh really? Have you noticed the cost of fuel, health care and food prices over the last 5 years? Seen what the dollar is doing against foreign currencies? Note that food and fuel are conveniently IGNORED in the inflation statistics. Health care is rising at double digit annual rates. Fuel has gone through the roof, and the price of food is going up rapidly. The "confused mind" is one that doesn't believe this counts as inflation.
Meanwhile, the cost of those commodities RELATIVE to gold IS more or less stable. So what lessons from economics or history suggest that it's a bad idea to keep the cost of basic necessities relatively constant?
Not exactly. If you want to take this idea and run with it, this is like getting your neighbourhood together and asking them to vote on whether your son Bart should take over the house for a day. However, you assure your neighbours that Bart is responsible and fit for the position of running a household. When it turns out after the fact that he isn't capable of it, is it your neighbours fault because "they should've known better", or is it your fault because you were the one who presented the candidate to them in the first place and they expected you to know what you were doing?
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
I don't think he needed any help looking insane. I saw him on The Daily Show where he was asked quite innocuous questions, not badgered at all, and still managed to come across as a crazy person living in a fantasy land where real social and economic concerns don't apply.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Having gone through the public school system (both good high stream classes, and bad mixed stream classes), there are three skills that teachers need:
1. Keeping a class under control
2. Knowledge of their subject
3. Being able to provide clear explanations and feedback
4. Being able to structure class work to fit into the school year.
1. Most teachers could do this, although there was one maths teacher I had, who would keep her head down and pretend to work at her desk, while the bozos at the back of the class were giving everyone else hassle by throwing rice and paper around.
2. This wasn't an issue - all the teachers had a degree in their field of knowledge, but now, they find it hard to find science teachers.
3. The best teacher I had, made laminated work cards which provided clear instructions on what was to copied into your notebook, which experiments to perform, and the conclusions to develop. If you didn't get all the work done in class, you could take the card home with you. The worst teachers were the ones who made up their own multi-colored notation (mathematics), or just expected everyone to copy work down off the blackboard for an hour. Other teachers (technical drawing) would just sit at their desk and mark coursework for other classes while expecting everyone to keep working
4. In my undergraduate degree course, all the professors provided a timetable of how the subject material was going to be taught for the year - which topic was going to be taught in which week. Many teachers never did this, and just charged straight into the course material and just keep going for the whole term. It would be a complete surprise to come in on a Monday morning expecting to be continuing to be learning integrals, and suddenly find out that trigonometric equations were being taught.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Republicans are no better than democrats and vice-versa.
DOJ has been heavily promoting it as set of laws (and amendments to existing laws) for fighting crime.
But these criminals* are terrorists! Every housewife is terrified that her philandering husband will hire one of the terrorists. Every parent is terrified that little johnny will come in contact with the terrorists. Every child is terriried that their parents might fall victim to this terrorism.
FEMA was merged with DHS (Department of Humungous Size) to fight these terrorists.
Alas, these terrorists, who kill half a million Americans every year, are part of a corporation and are therefore exempt from all US laws.
-mcgrew
*Just so you don't have to click that particular link to understand what is being said here, it is to an old journal about prostitutes.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What's so different about terrorism that you'd happily give up rights and liberties to fight it that you wouldn't give up to fight regular crime? Far more Americans are affected by non-terrorist crime every month than have been affected by terrorism ever.
If you wouldn't want your government to have certain ``tools'' for fighting crime, don't let them have them for fighting terrorism either.
1. Keeping a class under control
2. Knowledge of their subject
3. Being able to provide clear explanations and feedback
4. Being able to structure class work to fit into the school year.
Now, which of those skills did your teacher lack? I kid, I kid. ;)
Do these graphs have the same shape? Do they look at all alike? No. All of the gold cost increase has come in the last 5 years, whereas the health care cost is a nice linear line extending all the way back to the 60s.
How about oil, then? Here's a graph showing historic oil prices. Unlike health care, the graph has a very similar shape to the rise in gold prices. However, the magnitude of the price increase is more than 3 times greater than the price increase of gold. In other words, oil still would be expensive.
Food. That is your next point of contention. Go here and run some searches on the same time period for different food prices. The only one that I could find with a correlation to gold prices was "eggs". Cue "golden egg" joke. So what lessons from economics or history suggest that it's a bad idea to keep the cost of basic necessities relatively constant? That's a grand idea... cheap necessities for all. The problem is that it doesn't jibe with history. Food and fuel prices have never been stable, not even when we were on the gold standard.
Putting us on a gold standard would make gold expensive again, and pretty much wipe out its use as an industrial commodity. It's completely arbitrary as a standard, too. Why not pick something else?
Most importantly, why not just legislate the monetary policy instead of basing the currency on an arbitrary element? Gold was picked because it is shiny and pretty and fairly rare - a very strange criteria for a currency standard, and one that should have your geek-senses tingling for a more scientific reason. Of course, the environmental consequences of digging for the now artificially-inflated price of gold are pretty horrendous as well.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
(He admits that it still wasn't enough, though.)
...///...
It is not only a problem of getting people to realize they run the government, but getting them educated enough to understand it, so they can have a real evaluation of it. You would need to make every adult retake 8th grade courses on American History and Government on a 5 year periodic basis, and demand simplification, such as no "paper clipping" of bills, non lawyer language publications of the said bills, and names of the people who vote for/against attached to each bill.
Then a nice monthly newsletter sent to every voting citizen with these updates.
Then you have to turn off the tv news, which convinces good, normal people that there is things like child molesters that should be given 90% of our law and crime fighting resources while the car theives are laughing cause they are 90% of the crime.
Take moral issues out of social issues, convince the "poeple" this will make more dollars and cents. Legalize and control things like prostitution in a way that keeps them safe, the "johns" safe, tax income in, and crime out of it.
I like religion, other then when they are preaching at me, it gives millions a sense of community and overall they normally do some good helpful things for society, but just like the media, our current government, and much of the world, they too are the "people" and people seem to be driven more by fear and irrationality more so then a pragmatic cost/benefit view of our issues.
Essentially we all operate strongly from feeling more so then logic, even the most logical of us. Lots of people with an agenda and money know this and use this, every hour of every day to guide those "people".
I agree with you, it's a first big step, stop fearing your government and make them fear you. But I think the complexity immediately after that fact gets very high, especially to maintain the kind of government that would uphold a strong middle class and let people live their lives over the long term.
Wrong on all counts. Did you ever even look at the actual numbers? It looks like you just pulled them all out of your ass.
Senate: 98 for, 1 against (Feingold D,WI)
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=1&vote=00313
House: 357 for, 66 against.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll398.xml
Because, I wonder what will happen... will more people die, will it be as many as the U.S. and its allies have killed already ... will there be further ethnic cleansing and displacement of people beyond the millions who've been "invited" to leave their homes, etc.
Yes. Regardless of when and how we pull out.
The government there is a sham. Established under occupation, it will never be seen as legitimate. It is weak, and will remain so. The people support the idea of an Iraqi nation, but they want it to be run by their team. This means that the recent conflicts between militias (don't fool yourself, the core of the Iraqi Army is the militia formerly known as the Badr Brigade, and the rest are loyal to their local militias which is why they didn't fight) will reappear and escalate. Sunni militias will also be involved. The influence of Iran (which has significant ties to all the most powerful Shiite political parties/militias) will become more overt. Civil war, without the interference of the occupying force.
About the only thing we can do to stop this is to preemptively choose a winner by crushing everyone else for them. Otherwise we have to accept what was inevitable from the moment we removed Saddam from power.
I think the plan is simple. Drawn down as rapidly as possible, transferring as many duties still held by us to Iraqis as possible, without concern to whether the Iraqi Army is capable of policing the entire country. All training, and any remaining coalition forces, should be solely focused on combating foreign fighters. Let the Iraqis figure out the rest for themselves, ending the ludicrous pretense that we know better and should decide for them.
And just as importantly, end the pretense that their is a "good" way for us to get out of Iraq. There isn't. It's going to suck no matter what, and that's a function of the path we took to get to here.
The enemies of Democracy are
However, note this entry in the American Library Association's policy manual:
Unfortunately, you have to give a member ID to read the ALA policy manual (WTF?).
I just read
That was the most pathetic attempt at trolling I've seen here all week. Aren't you supposed to be in school?
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Bullshit. Obama voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT act in 2006. It even says so on Obama's own website (though couched in spin): "Obama Voted For a PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Bill"
everything in moderation
Okay, well how about "Hey, Stop With the Treading on Me Already"
The enemies of Democracy are
AMY GOODMAN: And the argument that they will just descend into civil war and that the sectarian violence will increase, and the U.S. went in and now has a responsibility not the leave a mess? NOAM CHOMSKY: Yeah, I mean, the Germans could have given the same argument in occupied Europe, the Russians in the satellites, the Japanese in Asia, and so on. Yeah, they could have all given the same argument: well, we went in, and now we have a responsibility to ensure that terrible things dont happen, and so on. And the argument had some validity. So, when the Germans were driven out of France, lets say, there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people killed byâ"as collaborators, and in Asia, even more so. But is that an argument for them? No. Its none of their business. We dont know what will happen, and its not our decision to make. Its the decision of the victims to make, not our decision. Occupying armies have no right to make the decision. We could have an academic seminar about it, in which we could discuss the likely consequences. But the point is its not for us to say. Well, until that enters into the discussion, and the critical issues of the war, like what right do we have to invade in the first place, enter into the discussion, the media and the journalism and so on are simply part of the government propaganda system, as I say, like a high school newspaper or like Pravda during the Afghanistan war. -Noam Chomsky interviw with Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org/2006/4/3/noam_chomsky_on_iraq_troop_withdrawal
When did Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul become one person?
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Oops, your plan fails. Obama voted to reauthorize the PATRIOT act. It's right there on his own website, though he tried to justify it with some spin.
everything in moderation
You are giving numbers for the original 2001 bill.
The numbers I gave are for the 2005 REAUTHORIZATION, as indicated in the first sentence of my post where I stated "Yes, the Senate approved the reauthorization unanimously."
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll414.xml
Jul 29, 2005: This bill passed in the Senate by Unanimous Consent. A record of each representative's position was not kept. (This link then goes on to give the exact same numbers I gave for the House)
Perhaps you could read other people's posts a little better before you accuse them of being "wrong on all counts" and obtaining figures by having "pulled them all out of your ass".
Code or be coded.
As a former high school math teacher, I can agree. When I was a student, I went to a school that had a reputation for an ongoing drug problem, but also a fair number of "Advanced Placement" classes. I was able to graduate high school with a full year of college already complete.
Fast forward four years. I'm back teaching at the same school. Often, if a kid was having problems in class, parents would literally ask me "What can I do? He/she won't listen to me." Take away the car keys? Turn off the internet connection? Take away the Playstation? All too often, the parents won't make that move because it's their 'kid's car' or would be too hard, or they just didn't want the confrontation. Most of the time, many of that child's most precious possessions are at the whim of the parent anyway, and they just didn't get it. The kids who had trouble in my classes but also were able to get it together were usually those with a carrot or a stick at the other end; I remember one kid who busted his butt to get a "C" because he had a driver's license riding on it.
http://votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490&type=category&category=61
Bullish Machine Tzar
Agreed. Can we also hold the feet to the fire of anyone who drops the case on the name of the act or shortens it? "USA PATRIOT Act" By showing the goofy case, it at least points out more glaringly that it's a backronym for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001". Someone went to the effort of creating the acronym, then filling in the words later.
Seriously: "Clear Skies Initiative", etc. This administration has been STELLAR at this game. Next up: the "KITTEN Act": Kindergarteners Industrial Task Training Encouraging Necrophilia. You wouldn't vote against kittens, would you?
"the FBI served a .. National Security Letter .. asking for the user's name, address and activity on the site"
Assuming the user did do something, he's hardly going to host the evidence on an archive now would he. Did he upset some powerfull people. If so what's the FBI doing in harassing dissidents, that's the KGBs job.
Of course the FBI is to defend us from all things evil and nasty, unless we're in some kind of a parallel universe where it isn't.
davecb5620@gmail.com
About gag orders from the article: Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer.
This is obviously an oversight. Expect future NSLs to come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, especially to a lawyer.
That's why he has a +2 karma bonus, and you're a piece of trash without the balls to even log in and insult him with your name showing.
...besides, I *like* his blogs. They're at least much more interesting than my cheeto-eating life.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
I read the complaint, and some of the other documents listed on the EFF site, and damn...
"Go big or go home"
They asked for the FBI to be injoined from serving any more NSLs
Time to use the mail-box, and talk to my reps to get this abomination removed from law.
I just can't help but wonder about sanctions against the FBI official who signed this NSL
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
"Listen, nowadays you have to think like a hero just to behave like a merely decent human being."
"So, promise me that if I ever find the courage to think like a hero, then you will act like a merely decent human being. Right? . . . Hey, you cannot reject me. Because I am strengthened by your rejection. So, promise me."
"All right. If you ever manage to be a hero, I'll be a... decent human being. . . . I promise."
--The Russia House (1990)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Thank you for that kind post.
;)
The Chinese have an old curse: "May you live in interesting times". Alas, I'm cursed!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Voting in a Federal election is supporting pure evil.
No, voting for the status quo is supporting evil. Unfortunately, the system has been rigged so only the status quo has any chance of getting elected. Voting for a third party or a write-in may be a "wasted vote" but it is also a vote of "no confidence" in the present duopoly hegemony, and probably the only way your voice can truly be heard.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Well, make up your mind. "Anyone but Republicans" sounds like you'd tolerate people voting for another mainstream party that overwhelming supported and voted in favor of the Patriot Act.
Here's a better, and much simpler idea: vote against fascists.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I think you cut them too much slack with "honestly trying to do what's right." Their duty was to act as a check against executive power. Their duty was to not trust him.
They could have distrusted him and done their own research/intell-gathering and then gone ahead and made the wrong decision, and as long as they did that and owned up to it, I'd cut 'em some slack and say, "Damn, it was just a bad call."
But no one is saying it went down that way. Failure to seriously consider the president might be reckless, is not doing what's right.
Let's raise the bar for the people we let into Washington, dammit. This bunch is lame and Congress' lameness is as much a threat to America as the president himself.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The difference is, the Patriot Act was passed under the guise of fighting terrorism, which people are emotionally (irrationally) charged about. The support wouldn't have been there if they attempted this over-reaching legislation on the premise of fighting crime. Rightfully so. 9/11 didn't happen because the Patriot Act didn't exist. It wasn't a failure of the system, it was a failure of people to listen to the intelligenct they were given.
When you have to wait in line and show ID to get Sudafed at the pharmacy, the law that causes that is the Patriot Act.
I've been upset about this for awhile now.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
And let me just say that it's pathetic that anyone should be in such a situation. The Libertarian Party was supposed to stand for something. I'm glad my radicalization into libertarianism (the philosophy, not the party) proceeded so rapidly that I never had time to vote for a Libertarian before I became a complete non-voter. Those guys went from "decent" to "so corrupt we'll do anything to win an election" fast. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, ... and the bare whiff of a possibility of getting power someday corrupts desperate Libertarians instantaneously.
For the record, though, the folks at Lew Rockwell and Mises have made it quite clear Obama is just about as bad of a warmonger as the rest of them. He's ready to "get tough with Iran" just like everyone else.
You can't vote against the war at this point, if you want to. You can't vote against the Patriot Act. Worst of all for me, you can't vote against socialism.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
And the Feds continue to disarm the citizenry.
...
"The feds" makes it seem like a nice bipartisan effort. It isn't. One party is pushing this. We both know which one.
Why do they want to prevent americans from defending themselves against the state ? Well there is really only one answer to that question, and we all know what it is
Please show me your reason to think that Bush will push a theocracy. It hasn't arrived (not that that's any surprise to anyone).
Will Bush take even a single step towards a theocracy ? The first thing to do seems to me to consolidate the power of a single individual, out of the hands of the people.
What he does here is simple : he prohibits people from telling suspects they're under investigation for real crimes. How does that push a theocracy, as everyone here claims ?
Has he taken any single such step (a clear one, let's leave the conspiracies out of this one, shall we) ?
Nobody believes Bush wants to push a theocracy. At all.
Ahmadinejad "we don't have gays in Iran" and "we executed 28 of them last month", otoh IS a theocratic dictator (the reason he executes gays is simple : islam). Why exactly is the democratic party protecting him ? Talking to him ? Declaring his "good" intentions ? What do democrats want to accomplish by preventing any action meant to lessen the power of said theocrat ? Why did Carter go talk to terrorist theocrats that don't want to talk (read their charter) ? A lot of the darlings of the democratic party these days are theocrats.
Not catchy enough.
I still favor the cold dead hands. First of all, it's a well known phrase. Second, it sounds quite resolute. What we'd need now is some celebrity to push it, akin to what Heston did for the gun lobby.
Unfortunately, most celebrities have a keen interest in NOT supporting data privacy, since it's in their interest to do whatever possible to find people engaging in the swapping of copyrighted material.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Heh, that's funny. Thanks for the link!
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.