McCain Supports Warrantless Domestic Surveillance

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "While there have been shifting reports about McCain's view on warrantless wiretapping, nothing could be clearer than the latest comment by McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, who said, 'We do not know what lies ahead in our nation's fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.' Article II, of course, is what Bush has argued gives the President virtually unlimited power during war, and McCain has already voted in favor of Telecom Immunity, though he sometimes mentions, to those asking for accountability, wanting to hold hearings about what the telecoms did."

Comments

Re:hrm

[Hyppy]

Timothy McVeigh was a christian.

Re:and next comes....

[purpleraison]

I think that when the winner takes office this time, the keyboards will have all the letters. (For those of you who are too young to remember, the Clinton staff removed all the "W's" from all the White House computer keyboards.) My guess is the only reason all the keyboards will have all the letters intact, is because Bush &Co were using Crayons and finger-paint.

Re:Article I Makes Congress More Powerful

[DaveV1.0]

The President's first duty is to the Constitution, not the laws passed by Congress. Is first duty is to the supreme law of the land, not the laws passed by Congress.

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If the President believes a law is unconstitutional, he is sworn to uphold the Constitution first.

Now, please, go blow your brains out before you infect others with your ignorance.

Re:bullshit

[nguy]

Wikipedia is your reference? My, you are educated.

I picked Wikipedia as a reference for you because (1) it gets the basic facts about the history of the Middle East right and (2) it's suitable to your level of historical understanding.

An eloquent statement. That's a common European attitude to consider anyone who doesn't live an exactly western lifestyle as inferior. It's only a few hundred years old.

Of course it's a common European attitude. Europeans understand the problems that the Middle East has because Europe used to be the same kind of dump that the Middle East is today.

Second, it's sad that you don't believe in the same Republic that the founding fathers did.

The founding fathers foremost believed in freedom and rights for Americans. Initially, they falsely assumed that they could accomplish this through isolationism, but the real world kept intruding. And at that point, Americans started getting involved in world politics and build a strong military. The US has been fighting wars and using its military to ensure its safety in the world ever since. But unlike Europeans or Middle Easterners, so far, it has managed to use its military without bringing total destruction on itself or its neighbors.

Funded, not constructed. The US did do a good job of stabilizing the world in the wake of that disaster, but it was through diplomacy and economic incentive, not inane foreign policy and secret police.

That's a nice theory, but it's not in line with facts. US intervention in German society was massive and heavy handed, from Germany's constitution to de-Nazification. The US pressured the other allies to reconstruct Europe the way the US wanted, and it could do that because the other allies were weak. And the Cold War involved everything from espionage to government-sponsored murder--on all sides.

So, we agree that the US did the right things during and right after WWII. You delude yourself, however, into thinking that US actions after WWII were all sugar and roses; they were as interventionist and heavy-handed as they have been in the Middle East in more recent times. The difference is that they actually mostly worked, but aren't working well in the Middle East. The problem with recent US interventions in the Middle East is not one of the level of pride one should take in them, but in the fact that they have been failures.

Because?

Because Europeans haven't learned what you think they have learned. European attitudes are not all that different from American attitudes: Europeans want their politicians to bring home the bacon, they don't like or trust the Middle East or Islam, they don't give a f*ck about privacy or personal freedoms, and they consider themselves superior to the rest of the world while knowing virtually nothing about it and ignoring their own history.

What Europeans have actually learned is that it's best if white Europeans don't squabble amongst themselves, and that the US is willing to do Europe's dirty work for free.

I'm proud of most of our post-war work, if not some of the terrorism we committed during the war. It was our inability to control the machine that we created that has led to our current situation, just as Dwight Eisenhower predicted.

So? We don't disagree there. The "military industrial complex" is bad economic policy, and Bush screwed up massively in the Middle East.

You're just making the mistake of assuming that things used to be better and have somehow deteriorated. Fucked up as things may seem to you today, they actually used to be worse.

The US needs to rethink and massively overhaul both domestic and foreign policy. But that would be doomed to failure if people start that process with false ideas about how things used to be.

I'll be sure to look that word up on my new guide to education: Wikipedia.

You should, because it's evidently still beyond the level of historical education that you actually seem to have.