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Senate Passes 4-Year Re-Up of Patriot Act Provisions
Bloomberg News reports that, as expected, today "[t]he US Senate approved a four-year extension of provisions in the USA Patriot Act allowing law enforcement to track suspected terrorists with roving wiretaps. ... The measure goes to the House for final passage before being sent to President Barack Obama for his signature. The surveillance powers would be extended until June 1, 2015." The story mentions that the Patriot Act powers this approval includes would extend "to so-called 'lone wolf' suspects who aren't affiliated with any terrorist group."
If your congressman or senator failed to vote against this violation of the fourth and fifth amendments, he or she has violated their oath of office. Don't vote for them again unless you want this shit to continue.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh god, here it is. The latest in fear buzzword technology. "Hunker down", WMD, axis of evil, and now the "lone wolf". I miss when "lock box" was the stupidest of these pre-9/11. The worst part is, the media keeps using these deceitful memes and people just keep eating bowl after bowl of this shit.
approval would extend "to so-called “lone wolf” suspects who aren’t affiliated with any terrorist group."
So, more needle in a haystack stuff, we need to violate everybody's privacy just in case one in the 7billlion people on the planet hate us. Didn't they use to hate us for our freedom? Not a problem anymore....
Because now that Osama is dead, this abomination is now to protect from mysterious random people.... A nice way of saying the PATRIOT act will stop being extended when we get rid of every last human being who hates America.
And goes into a 4 year extension of Big Brother spying on what books you read or buy, what your emails contain, etc. It allows Big Brother to collect information on you sans any justification whatsoever - you don't even need to have ANY connection to a so-called "terrorist" or "terrorist organization" (like environmental groups, worker's rights groups, anti-corporate groups, etc...you know, horrific "terrorists").
It is not a "yawn". It is yet another shiv into the heart of so-called "liberty" and "freedom".
Land of the free, home of the brave MY ASS. Land of the chattle, home of pansy candyasses is more accurate.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Will ye tossers start voting something like greens or independents or whatever your alternative parties are already? I mean, last non-dem and non-rep president was 1850-1853.
And don't start whining about how it's never going to matter because of them needing more than whatever share. With that attitude, it never will matter. So grow a pair and start filling in some alternative boxes next election.
</rant>
This is the act that allows the president to declare ANYONE an enemy combatant. Even an American Citizen. And disappear them. No representation. No trial. They just vanish, to be indefinitely imprisoned and even tortured. Hell, killed, for all we know. Since nobody knows that the person is being held, there's no limitation. Granted, this has gone wrong pretty much every time it has been used (documented incidents of innocent people being shipped off to gitmo for example) against innocent people a number of times. But hey, it has the word PATRIOT in it!
These assholes despise the citizenship of this country so much that they stuff something called the PATRIOT act with everything that is the opposite of patriotism and that directly undermines the country they claim the act is meant to protect. And we all sit around like fucking sheep, worrying about meaningless bullshit like birth certificates. And worse, all those jackholes who went around doing the "you HAVE to vote!" last year think that they've done their civic duty, because they voted. They chose between the giant douche and the turd sandwich and disavow any responsibility for upholding the status quo that continues to pin us all under its thumb.
Step 1: Be attacked by terrorists.
Step 2: Implement draconian laws designed to 'combat terrorism' citing the terrorist attack and getting everyone scared. Temporary measures, of course.
Step 3: After society is good and locked down, pass extension of those laws.
Step 4: President gets elected that promises to remove these. President instead extends these.
Step 5: Another terrorist attack or foiled plot.
Step 6: Obviously this one law isn't working, so pass another.
Step 7: Progress and repeat until you can't take a shit without someone needing to be there to look up your asshole and make sure you aren't about to shit a bomb into the public toilet at the gas station.
Step 8: Children grew up with these laws, and they're just how things are.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Staffer: "How much time do we need to debate the Affordable Care Act?"
Senator: "At least eight months!"
Staffer: "How much time for the federal court appointee?"
Senator: "T is Undefined. We're filibustering him without a vote."
Staffer: "How about to renew the USA PATRIOT act?"
Senator: "Oh, four to six hours."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Despite getting off to such a terrible start with the genocide of the "Native Americans" America was the last great hope for humans voluntarily creating a true democracy. The Constitution is an absolutely wonderful work. Future historians will marvel at it's elegance as the founding fathers saw, and attempted to protect against, what would come after them.
Sadly they underestimated the unstoppable inertia of the mass of the "sheeple".
America failed. It's another dead end.
Ho hum... On with the show...
Reboo, restart, on with the show.
Here's more "Hope and Change" for us.
Youd almost think that those retarded Republicans thought the founding principle of the country was a small, limited federal government, or something...
Nothing the Republican Party has done in the past 50 years has illustrated that they actually believe this.
Actually some of the points are valid.
Our schools are receiving less and less money, reducing our GPA as a whole and decreasing our abilities to field educated people in our society.
The issues in Texas where they have put creationism in books, a fundamentally specific religious ideology towards christianity.
The issue where the Church somehow gets a pass on pedoiphilia without being prosecuted.
Republicans do have that ideology, but constantly increase government, look at both Bushes vs Clinton.
What they do though, is they try to underfund/undermine those parts of the government that actually look after consumers and patrons.
Queue images of Gulf Oil Spill and Katrina.
Im sorry, its almost like youre trying to blame me for what other people have done, or infer what I believe from what others have done.
That aside, Republicans believe in a smaller government than the Democrats, and thats a good first step in my eyes.
That aside, Republicans believe in a smaller government than the Democrats, and thats a good first step in my eyes.
Except they really kind of... don't. At all. They just disagree in which areas the government should step in and fuck things up (Interfering with our corporate overlords vs. say... marriage.)
Been that way for at least 25 years (probably more but I would have been too young to remember).
Why doesn't it start with YOU?
Actually, Rand Paul was filibustering this for 7 hours, just asking for a (promised by Reid last time it was extended) full week of discussion!
(I liked this title: http://www.unelected.org/democrat-harry-reid-blocks-rand-pauls-filibuster-of-the-patriot-act but you are welcome to google your own!).
And then we see people still thinking that there is some major difference between people wearing 'D' or 'R' labels, rather than between honest people and liars, and true "public servants" (as in, *Representatives* of *Us, the People*) and ones who pretend to be, to advance their agenda and get rich in the process...
And, before you start protesting, saying that all he wanted to do is to amend it with some additional "gun rights" language, it was only one of his several proposed amendments (picked by Media for obvious reasons of further polarization of us). I guess it was quite a brilliant move to provoke at least some discomfort of cognitive dissonance in the minds of mainstream NRA-supporting republicans, who *also* see absolutely no harm in PATRIOT act!
Well done, "Aqua Buddha"! ;)
Paul B.