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Congress Makes Deal To Renew Patriot Act For 4 Years
airfoobar writes "A four-year extension to the highly controversial Patriot Act is set to be rushed through in the coming week." Techdirt has its usual trenchant critique. I hope it's not unpatriotic to raise doubts about "one of the critical tools the intelligence community has to keep America safe."
"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate." -- Jefferson
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." -- Jefferson
Or swimming pools.
In 2007, there were 3,443 fatal unintentional drownings in the United States, averaging ten deaths per day. An additional 496 people died, from drowning and other causes, in boating-related incidents.
http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html
He's not exactly the new boss. It's been years.
Anyway, how many voters outside the slashdot crowd are even aware the patriot act is still with us let alone oppose it? That doesn't excuse Obama or any of the Democrats, but it's never going to go away until more people start caring about it. Rather than bring up that saying year in year out, why not, oh, I don't know, do something to raise awareness about it?
I mean, I guess that doesn't get you slashdot karma...
There's nothing wrong with optimism. Our country was founded on it (along with slavery and the genocide of natives). But you are placing your optimism in a failed party system, instead of individuals. The Democrats and Republicans have both had their chances to turn a new leaf and do the people's will, but their entrenched interests are set in a self-winding clockwork of greed, power, and obligation. When they act in the banner of "national interests", it is the interests of their campaign funders, partisan base, lobbyists, and future employers in which they act, not the interests of people at large who they supposedly represent.
Obama was a last chance for the Democrats. I think most of us not under the influence of corn syrup and reality shows wanted to believe that Obama was somehow an internal revolution in the Democratic party; someone to whom only the people he was accountable to. But then we saw the bank bailouts, the tacit approval of Bush/Cheney crimes, the defense of wiretapping and assassinations of US citizens, the abandonment of a promise to close Guantanamo, the frail response to the "Arab Spring" revolutions, and in those revolutions we saw ourselves. Except that we don't seem to yet have the unified anger against the systemic violations of liberties to rise up in any meaningful way. Not when people like yourself are still clinging to the ghost of Kennedy.
The only way we can move forward as a country, and avoid a kind of Romanic crumbling of our nation, is organizing around a third party. A third party that represents and addresses the people, not corporations. This is only possible if we leave behind the ridiculous social bickerings of abortion and religious contentions and unite as a wide swath of Americans against the entities and individuals controlling America. But maybe I'm just a dreamer.
Yeah, let's wait until they pen us up then see what we can do about it. Sounds like a plan. You go on and piss away your rights, I'd like to keep mine. No, we aren't under tyranny but if others had your attitude we would have been long ago.