By "elsewhere" he must mean "in other sentences in this document." His facts, which he rarely backs up, are extremely suspect given his inability to separate his prejudices from his presentation.
When your list of published citations is as long as Peter's I'll be willing to examine your argument that he's making shit up or that he's an ideologue. Until then, I'll take Peter at his word. He's one of the smarter people I've met and seems to be a stand-up guy, but I don't know you from Adam.
An Outlook group policy is also supposed to be pushed to disable sending of HTML formatted messages. If your admins have been paying attention to the NOTAMs, that is.
"Problem is that encrypting has the bad side-effect of rendering the email unreadable via OWA"
Only OWA on Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, or the (future) Exchange 2007. Exchange 2003 uses a pre-installed ActiveX control to handle S/MIME at the client.
Incorrect. Spotlight's index is created by calling plugins for each file type and storing the output. If you have an application that defines a new file type, you can easily provide a Spotlight plugin that will "properly" create the metadata for indexing that file, for whatever value of "properly" is appropriate.
For example, Mail.app uses mbox file format, and there's a Mail.app Spotlight plugin (Mail.mdimporter) that tells Spotlight how to index these files.
"The plan can hardly be both complete and in need of supplemental plans."
I never said Canadian provincial plans were incomplete or in need of supplementals. Canadian provincial plans are comprehensive. Supplemental insurance plans tend to cover medical "luxuries," like private rooms, non-medical-necessity procedures, or out-of-nation care.
"[...] but the point is that the vast majority of expected expenses already have a fixed plan, one that an individual has no choice but to comply with."
I'm not sure why you're characterizing this as a negative. When Canadians get sick, they see the doctor. If they get injured, the go to the nearest hospital. If they change jobs, they don't have to change doctors. There's no hassling about "Did you see your PCP first?" or "Sorry, that's an out-of-network hospital, you need to meet your out-of-network mega-deductible first," or "Sorry, that's a pre-existing condition so we won't cover you." The fixed, baseline plans provide everyone with certainty of care *regardless* of any other concerns. That's something I'd like to have.
"While I can switch insurance companies in a month, tops, politicians are only held accountable at election time, if you're lucky."
The vast majority of Americans with health insurance are in plans provided by their employers. Most have only one plan to choose from, so changing plans means either dropping out of the employer provided plan and shouldering 100% of the cost themselves, or changing employers. These are not exactly viable options for most people.
For the rest, where employers provide more than one plan to choose from, employees can only change plans once a year unless they have a major change in status (adding new family members or removing family members from death or divorce). So much for "in a month, tops."
"The system only breaks down when people don't have a choice, or don't have the proper information to make a choice."
This is exactly the problem with the US system of privatized insurance. *People* don't have choice of coverage. *Employers* have choice of coverage.
"That's a problem with the employers making the choice for you. By itself, it's no different than the state making the choice for you. Either way, the choice is made by someone "above" you. You can always buy supplemental insurance if you want..."
This is where we really disagree. The State can dilute risk across a far larger population than any employer. Dilution of risk directly equates to lower premiums for everyone in the pool *or* increased coverage for the same premium. That's how insurance works. In addition, I derive indirect benefits from having *everyone* insured; for instance, I'll have shorter wait times in the ER as it won't be full of the uninsured with the flu (been to an ER lately?), and I'll have lower overall insurance costs because providers won't have to raise costs to recoup costs of treating the uninsured. These are things a privatized insurance system can never provide.
Yes, State-provided insurance is no different than employer-provided insurance in matters of choice of plan, *but* it does provide direct and indirect benefits that the employer-provided system cannot. That's a pretty compelling argument in my book.
"I didn't know they had fisheries for the last, oh lets say...10,000yrs? or however long human's have had the ability to fish."
Umm, what? A "fishery" is where you catch the damn fish.
"I also seem to remember this type of people, they were called nomads I think, they traveled from place to place especially when resources became scarce."
And how many of them were there? 10 kiloyears ago *world* population is estimated at only 5 million (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ). Today there are nearly 900 million in Africa alone. Also, movements of people are nowadays constrained by these things we've created called "political boundaries," the crossing of which can engender a rather violent response in some people.
"Now I agree that it's rather bizarre that we don't just tax capital gains as income; actually it's bizarre that we don't just tax all income as income, and do away with all the little niggling special categories -- if it was someone else's money and now it's yours, that's income, tax it at the same rate."
Hear, hear. *And* we should tax corporations on their *income* as well, not just their profits. They want to be treated like people--fine; tax 'em like people.:)
Between the ongoing collapse of fisheries, pollution of waterways, exhaustion and salinization of farmland, and rapid disappearance of wilderness lands (mainly for new farmland), where exactly would you like these people to fish, farm, and hunt?
"The OP has a choice about which coverage option to choose, and can change if it's not the best option given individual circumstances. You don't and can't."
Incorrect. Canadians are free to purchase additional coverage over and above the provincial plans at their own cost or with costs shared by employers. The provincial plan is a *baseline*, not a *ceiling*.
"Things don't come for free. It's all about how you choose to pay for it. Personally, I'd much rather have the choice in my own hands, rather than in the hands of a politician who can't possibly know what's best for me as an individual, and has only weak standards of efficiency to live up to."
What's far more amusing in your stance, however, is your willingness to trust profit-motive-driven corporations with knowing what's best for you as an individual (you don't pick your health plan--your employer does, and even then they can only pick what plans are *offered* by the insurance companies) which have no accountability to you whatsoever, rather than trust someone who is ultimately accountable to the citizenry such as elected provincial officials and the offices they oversee.
"Anyway, just try to think, I know this may be hard for some libs, for yourself. What if he didn't lie, what if Islamists can be evil, what if they're not joking when they say they want to kill us."
Do you put words in other peoples' mouths often? Name me one liberal who says that anti-American Islamic fundamentalists *don't* want to kill Americans. Name me one liberal who thinks anti-American Islamic fundamentalism is a *good* thing.
Can't? Didn't think so.
The difference between you and us is *how to deal with it*.
"This war is a very important thing if we are going to stop extremist Islam in the world, [...]"
Here's something to twist your little noggin: You can't kill an idea with a bullet.
"[...] to have a country that is on our side other than Israel in the middle east is a good thing."
Here's another little geo-political fact to twist your little noggin: Nearly *all* of the major Middle Eastern nations (except Syria and Iran) *are* on our side; they are dependent on the US and EU for arms or aid or oil cash. The fun part is the balancing act these governments have to put on in order to keep the *populace* in check. And remember this: the Iraq war isn't earning the US any brownie points with those *populations*.
"I have seen documentation of the fact that he had them, the links to al-qaeda, etc. etc."
Of *course* Hussein *had* (note the *past tense*) chemical weapons. The US (and others) sold the precursors to him intentionally, when he was fighting a proxy war with Iran. They were all used, destroyed or otherwise past their spoilage date before even the first Gulf War.
As for the "links to Al-Qaeda," one meeting that ended badly does not a link make. One thing I think we forget about Hussein is that he was ultimately a pragmatist, not an ideologue. I think he realized that these people would be after *him* next (being an Arab secularist and all), so it wouldn't be a good idea to back these guys over the long haul.
I agree, but this is unlikely to happen as long as we have right-wing blowhards on the radio and in office telling everyone that the problem is that the school system is government-funded. These people hate government, but the fun part is that it is the existence of government that makes their particular fantasizing about dismantling it even possible. After all, would you hire a vegan to cook your steak?
Which speaks volumes about the President's meetings with the Crichton where they discussed _State of Fear_, global warming conspiracy, and were in "near total agreement."
"Hate crime" legislation is obscene. Why should we be easier on murderers who kill people because they catch them fucking their wives, or for money, or for no reason at all?
Because intent is written into the very fabric of English common law (the tradition on which both UK and US law is rooted). If we go bird hunting and I blow your head off, that's negligent homicide. If we go bird hunting and I blow your head off because you picked that time to tell me you've been fucking my wife, making me very very angry with you, that's murder. If we go bird hunting and I invited you on the excursion for the sole purpose of blowing your head off, that's premeditated murder (or capital murder in some jurisdictions).
Each of these would be prosecuted and punished with differing levels of severity, and most people agree that this is right and proper. Think of it this way: if I accidentally blow your head off while bird hunting in a capital punishment jurisdiction, should I be put to death? Would that be justice? Would that be proportional to the crime? Proportionality of punishment is a key concept in human ideas of Justice ("an eye for an eye" and all that).
So too with hate crimes. A hate crime targets not just the immediate victim, but seeks to intimidate a whole community of which the victim is a representative. The criminals usually want to "send a message" to some group; sometimes they are very explicit with this intent among themselves or people they believe to be of like mind. This is an intent that goes well beyond causing harm to an individual, and a more severe punishment is an attempt to keep proportionality.
There you go again, being intentionally dense. Did I ever claim perfection? No. No system build and staffed by humans will ever be perfect. Did I ever claim that it will work because we're "the good guys?" No. In fact, I claim the opposite--not all people are good, even on our own side. This is what we must guard against. In point of fact, it's your system of "trust us" anti-terrorism that works by the assumption that we're "the good people" and "you just know" it'll work.
What I am offering is a system with some measure of transparency, oversight and accountability. These are safeguards that protect us from the bad people that are inevitably drawn to power--even American power. These are also the prerequisites for measuring performance. And I know it'll work not because I assume so, but because it has worked. Not perfectly, because nothing can be perfect; but very well. History bears this out; maybe you should read some.
Which system is more likely to be abused: yours of warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, interrogators given carte blanche with no legal liability for anything they do, or mine? Which system when it is abused (and don't kid yourself, it will happen) is more likely to expose the abusers; yours or mine? Which system is more likely to punish those who abuse it; yours or mine? Which system is more open to correction if it fails to perform; yours or mine?
The answer is simple and obvious and in your heart you know it's true. My way preserves the greatest freedoms for the greatest number. The only thing that lies your way is totalitarian government.
A fine fantasy, but it's irresponsible when lives are at stake.
And so we go back to the beginning of this discussion. There are, simply put, some things more important than our lives. Freedom is one. Fighting tyranny is another. If you simply can't bring yourself to be willing to make this sacrifice or to even take the risk of making that sacrifice, than maybe you're not deserving of it. Maybe you are, at heart, just a coward, looking for the coward's way out: "Protect me Daddy, no matter what it takes, principles be damned!"
But I'm not like you. I'll fight and die for my freedom. I'll keep to my principles because otherwise they're not principles, even if that means my death. And I'll fight and die for your freedom too--not because I like you, not because I agree with you, and not because you deserve it, but because it's the right thing to do.
I believe and will do these things so that I will always be a better man than any of our enemies. It's a shame you can't say the same.
You're being intentionally stupid again. Is this a habit?
Legal interrogations and dealings work. They've worked for centuries and they've worked with terrorists in US custody in the past. This has the benefit of producing more reliable and actionable intelligence, particularly stuff that won't get thrown out of court because it was coerced. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
We don't have to hire people. If you can convince people (hey! Social work!) you don't need to pay them. Sometimes people have a change of heart, and do the right thing even after a lifetime of evil. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
Infiltration is another viable tactic, BTW. It's difficult and risky, but it's very very effective.
Wiretaps can be had with that thing, what's it called, oh yeah--a warrant. And there's even a mechanism for obtaining national security sensitive warrants: the FISA court. You're even allowed to get one after the fact (within reason) and the court has never refused a warrant request. And this has the benefit of being able to survive a court challenge (since it followed the requirements of that Constitution thing), unlike intelligence gathered without a warrant. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
Next? Or are you finally out of stupid, narrow-minded crap to spew?
Something that strikes me as I review our little exchanges is that you have yet to make an actual argument. You've made a bunch of hyperbolic, unsupported, and sometimes downright laughably dumb assertions, but presented no actual reasoning why you need to discard the document that has served us so well through worse threats (like, oh I dunno, the Civil War). You've also shown no sign that you've even thought about the issues I've raised and the challenges I've issued, and you consistently ignore the uncomfortable issues (such as foreigners being guaranteed rights, or the crass violations of established Constitutional law you insist are needed while claiming you wish to see the Constitution enforced).
It's a war against a foreign enemy. The Constitution does not exist to protect foreign enemies from the US.
But the Constitution does guarantee the rights of foreigners in our custody. This is why visiting tourists who get arrested are treated just like citizens. Nowhere does the Bill of Rights say "just citizens." Or is that too complex for you to understand?
Also, listening to terrorist phone calls is hardly "everything".
I like how you elided the secret prisons, the detention without habeas corpus, the use of interrogation techniques identical to those used by the Khmer Rouge, and the use of secret evidence in trial. Good try. And that is nearly "everything."
It's too bad you're pretending it supports your position. It doesn't.
You're the one pretending the Constitution supports things it does not. The Constitution explicitly guarantees freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, right to a speedy trial, right to face the accuser, right to habeas corpus, and freedom from cruel or unusual punishment; but you want to abrogate these things. I know, I know, you'll say "Foreigners don't have these rights," but you'd be wrong. Two hundred years of American jurisprudence has constantly reinforced that foreigners under American jurisdiction have these rights. Don't believe me? Which part of "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" is unclear to you?
Which one of these would have stopped, say, the bombing of the USS Cole? How many cops? Doing what?
Let's examine that sentence again, since you can't seem to read:
...that no amount of traditional police, intelligence, diplomatic, and social work will be sufficient to combat terrorism....
Better intel would certainly have helped prevent the USS Cole attack.
"I hear you want us all dead or to convert to Islam. [...]
Bzzt. Incorrect, but thank you for playing. Have you bothered to actually read the writings of our enemies? Apparently not. This is not what they want. This might be an acceptable end if they don't get what they want, but that's not the same thing.
I say: Know your enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle.
-Sun Tzu
And putting "social work" in there is extremely humorous.
You're being intentionally stupid again. Terrorism is a tactic used by extremists. Extremism is an idea. You engage ideas on the battlefield of the mind. This is social work.
Christ almighty, are you listening to yourself? You're presuming that if you don't get the OK to violate everything the Constitution lays out as the limits of government power needed to guarantee our freedom, that no amount of traditional police, intelligence, diplomatic, and social work will be sufficient to combat terrorism. Well, that's just stupid; this not an either-or situation. If you're utterly unable to think your own thoughts on this matter, then there's no further point trying to get you to try.
Slashdot Mirror
When your list of published citations is as long as Peter's I'll be willing to examine your argument that he's making shit up or that he's an ideologue. Until then, I'll take Peter at his word. He's one of the smarter people I've met and seems to be a stand-up guy, but I don't know you from Adam.
I'm not allowed to speak ill of my swabbie and jarhead brethren. Or the contractors they hire, either. :)
What you describe isn't communist, it's authoritarian. Communism and authoritarianism are orthogonal. Get that right and you'll be more convincing.
"Install some middleware and use your CAC card"
CAC. *CAC!* Say it with me: "CAC." Does "Common Access Card card" make sense to you?
Sorry. Pet peeve o' mine. But I live this field.
An Outlook group policy is also supposed to be pushed to disable sending of HTML formatted messages. If your admins have been paying attention to the NOTAMs, that is.
"Problem is that encrypting has the bad side-effect of rendering the email unreadable via OWA"
Only OWA on Exchange 5.5, Exchange 2000, or the (future) Exchange 2007. Exchange 2003 uses a pre-installed ActiveX control to handle S/MIME at the client.
Incorrect. Spotlight's index is created by calling plugins for each file type and storing the output. If you have an application that defines a new file type, you can easily provide a Spotlight plugin that will "properly" create the metadata for indexing that file, for whatever value of "properly" is appropriate.
For example, Mail.app uses mbox file format, and there's a Mail.app Spotlight plugin (Mail.mdimporter) that tells Spotlight how to index these files.
You find me a Dell or HP that:
1) Has comparable hardware specs,
2) Has a comparable software load,
3) Is half the cost of my MacBook
and we'll talk. Until then, STFU.
"The plan can hardly be both complete and in need of supplemental plans."
I never said Canadian provincial plans were incomplete or in need of supplementals. Canadian provincial plans are comprehensive. Supplemental insurance plans tend to cover medical "luxuries," like private rooms, non-medical-necessity procedures, or out-of-nation care.
"[...] but the point is that the vast majority of expected expenses already have a fixed plan, one that an individual has no choice but to comply with."
I'm not sure why you're characterizing this as a negative. When Canadians get sick, they see the doctor. If they get injured, the go to the nearest hospital. If they change jobs, they don't have to change doctors. There's no hassling about "Did you see your PCP first?" or "Sorry, that's an out-of-network hospital, you need to meet your out-of-network mega-deductible first," or "Sorry, that's a pre-existing condition so we won't cover you." The fixed, baseline plans provide everyone with certainty of care *regardless* of any other concerns. That's something I'd like to have.
"While I can switch insurance companies in a month, tops, politicians are only held accountable at election time, if you're lucky."
The vast majority of Americans with health insurance are in plans provided by their employers. Most have only one plan to choose from, so changing plans means either dropping out of the employer provided plan and shouldering 100% of the cost themselves, or changing employers. These are not exactly viable options for most people.
For the rest, where employers provide more than one plan to choose from, employees can only change plans once a year unless they have a major change in status (adding new family members or removing family members from death or divorce). So much for "in a month, tops."
"The system only breaks down when people don't have a choice, or don't have the proper information to make a choice."
This is exactly the problem with the US system of privatized insurance. *People* don't have choice of coverage. *Employers* have choice of coverage.
"That's a problem with the employers making the choice for you. By itself, it's no different than the state making the choice for you. Either way, the choice is made by someone "above" you. You can always buy supplemental insurance if you want..."
This is where we really disagree. The State can dilute risk across a far larger population than any employer. Dilution of risk directly equates to lower premiums for everyone in the pool *or* increased coverage for the same premium. That's how insurance works. In addition, I derive indirect benefits from having *everyone* insured; for instance, I'll have shorter wait times in the ER as it won't be full of the uninsured with the flu (been to an ER lately?), and I'll have lower overall insurance costs because providers won't have to raise costs to recoup costs of treating the uninsured. These are things a privatized insurance system can never provide.
Yes, State-provided insurance is no different than employer-provided insurance in matters of choice of plan, *but* it does provide direct and indirect benefits that the employer-provided system cannot. That's a pretty compelling argument in my book.
"It seems to me that TV executives just don't "get" science fiction."
InstaCounterExample: Battlestar Galactica. Easily one of the best dramas on TV right now.
InstaCounterExample2: Hero.
"I didn't know they had fisheries for the last, oh lets say...10,000yrs? or however long human's have had the ability to fish."
Umm, what? A "fishery" is where you catch the damn fish.
"I also seem to remember this type of people, they were called nomads I think, they traveled from place to place especially when resources became scarce."
And how many of them were there? 10 kiloyears ago *world* population is estimated at only 5 million (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population ). Today there are nearly 900 million in Africa alone. Also, movements of people are nowadays constrained by these things we've created called "political boundaries," the crossing of which can engender a rather violent response in some people.
"Now I agree that it's rather bizarre that we don't just tax capital gains as income; actually it's bizarre that we don't just tax all income as income, and do away with all the little niggling special categories -- if it was someone else's money and now it's yours, that's income, tax it at the same rate."
:)
Hear, hear. *And* we should tax corporations on their *income* as well, not just their profits. They want to be treated like people--fine; tax 'em like people.
-- Tim
Between the ongoing collapse of fisheries, pollution of waterways, exhaustion and salinization of farmland, and rapid disappearance of wilderness lands (mainly for new farmland), where exactly would you like these people to fish, farm, and hunt?
"The OP has a choice about which coverage option to choose, and can change if it's not the best option given individual circumstances. You don't and can't."
8 /768 and http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/ 24/6/1629 and http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=16 23 for starting sources and you can continue your research from there).
Incorrect. Canadians are free to purchase additional coverage over and above the provincial plans at their own cost or with costs shared by employers. The provincial plan is a *baseline*, not a *ceiling*.
"Things don't come for free. It's all about how you choose to pay for it. Personally, I'd much rather have the choice in my own hands, rather than in the hands of a politician who can't possibly know what's best for me as an individual, and has only weak standards of efficiency to live up to."
You clearly don't know about how private insurance works, if you think "efficiency" has anything to do with it. Private insurers eat up to 30% (industry average of between 10% and 15%) of all premiums in "overhead" costs (salaries, buildings, processing, etc.), compared to less than 5% for public insurers (See http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/349/
What's far more amusing in your stance, however, is your willingness to trust profit-motive-driven corporations with knowing what's best for you as an individual (you don't pick your health plan--your employer does, and even then they can only pick what plans are *offered* by the insurance companies) which have no accountability to you whatsoever, rather than trust someone who is ultimately accountable to the citizenry such as elected provincial officials and the offices they oversee.
"You say Bush lied, where's the proof?"
Google Iraq and "yellow cake" sometime.
"Anyway, just try to think, I know this may be hard for some libs, for yourself. What if he didn't lie, what if Islamists can be evil, what if they're not joking when they say they want to kill us."
Do you put words in other peoples' mouths often? Name me one liberal who says that anti-American Islamic fundamentalists *don't* want to kill Americans. Name me one liberal who thinks anti-American Islamic fundamentalism is a *good* thing.
Can't? Didn't think so.
The difference between you and us is *how to deal with it*.
"This war is a very important thing if we are going to stop extremist Islam in the world, [...]"
Here's something to twist your little noggin: You can't kill an idea with a bullet.
"[...] to have a country that is on our side other than Israel in the middle east is a good thing."
Here's another little geo-political fact to twist your little noggin: Nearly *all* of the major Middle Eastern nations (except Syria and Iran) *are* on our side; they are dependent on the US and EU for arms or aid or oil cash. The fun part is the balancing act these governments have to put on in order to keep the *populace* in check. And remember this: the Iraq war isn't earning the US any brownie points with those *populations*.
"I have seen documentation of the fact that he had them, the links to al-qaeda, etc. etc."
Of *course* Hussein *had* (note the *past tense*) chemical weapons. The US (and others) sold the precursors to him intentionally, when he was fighting a proxy war with Iran. They were all used, destroyed or otherwise past their spoilage date before even the first Gulf War.
As for the "links to Al-Qaeda," one meeting that ended badly does not a link make. One thing I think we forget about Hussein is that he was ultimately a pragmatist, not an ideologue. I think he realized that these people would be after *him* next (being an Arab secularist and all), so it wouldn't be a good idea to back these guys over the long haul.
I agree, but this is unlikely to happen as long as we have right-wing blowhards on the radio and in office telling everyone that the problem is that the school system is government-funded. These people hate government, but the fun part is that it is the existence of government that makes their particular fantasizing about dismantling it even possible. After all, would you hire a vegan to cook your steak?
I call it the "Certainty of God," and it's deadly, dangerous thing. People who are sure they have God on their side are capable of any atrocity.
Doubt is that which keeps Man in check. Doubt is what makes faith work.
Which speaks volumes about the President's meetings with the Crichton where they discussed _State of Fear_, global warming conspiracy, and were in "near total agreement."
Defining the problem away just makes you look like a tool. Just FYI; HTH, HAND.
"Hate crime" legislation is obscene. Why should we be easier on murderers who kill people because they catch them fucking their wives, or for money, or for no reason at all?
Because intent is written into the very fabric of English common law (the tradition on which both UK and US law is rooted). If we go bird hunting and I blow your head off, that's negligent homicide. If we go bird hunting and I blow your head off because you picked that time to tell me you've been fucking my wife, making me very very angry with you, that's murder. If we go bird hunting and I invited you on the excursion for the sole purpose of blowing your head off, that's premeditated murder (or capital murder in some jurisdictions).
Each of these would be prosecuted and punished with differing levels of severity, and most people agree that this is right and proper. Think of it this way: if I accidentally blow your head off while bird hunting in a capital punishment jurisdiction, should I be put to death? Would that be justice? Would that be proportional to the crime? Proportionality of punishment is a key concept in human ideas of Justice ("an eye for an eye" and all that).
So too with hate crimes. A hate crime targets not just the immediate victim, but seeks to intimidate a whole community of which the victim is a representative. The criminals usually want to "send a message" to some group; sometimes they are very explicit with this intent among themselves or people they believe to be of like mind. This is an intent that goes well beyond causing harm to an individual, and a more severe punishment is an attempt to keep proportionality.
There you go again, being intentionally dense. Did I ever claim perfection? No. No system build and staffed by humans will ever be perfect. Did I ever claim that it will work because we're "the good guys?" No. In fact, I claim the opposite--not all people are good, even on our own side. This is what we must guard against. In point of fact, it's your system of "trust us" anti-terrorism that works by the assumption that we're "the good people" and "you just know" it'll work.
What I am offering is a system with some measure of transparency, oversight and accountability. These are safeguards that protect us from the bad people that are inevitably drawn to power--even American power. These are also the prerequisites for measuring performance. And I know it'll work not because I assume so, but because it has worked. Not perfectly, because nothing can be perfect; but very well. History bears this out; maybe you should read some.
Which system is more likely to be abused: yours of warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, interrogators given carte blanche with no legal liability for anything they do, or mine? Which system when it is abused (and don't kid yourself, it will happen) is more likely to expose the abusers; yours or mine? Which system is more likely to punish those who abuse it; yours or mine? Which system is more open to correction if it fails to perform; yours or mine?
The answer is simple and obvious and in your heart you know it's true. My way preserves the greatest freedoms for the greatest number. The only thing that lies your way is totalitarian government.
A fine fantasy, but it's irresponsible when lives are at stake.
And so we go back to the beginning of this discussion. There are, simply put, some things more important than our lives. Freedom is one. Fighting tyranny is another. If you simply can't bring yourself to be willing to make this sacrifice or to even take the risk of making that sacrifice, than maybe you're not deserving of it. Maybe you are, at heart, just a coward, looking for the coward's way out: "Protect me Daddy, no matter what it takes, principles be damned!"
But I'm not like you. I'll fight and die for my freedom. I'll keep to my principles because otherwise they're not principles, even if that means my death. And I'll fight and die for your freedom too--not because I like you, not because I agree with you, and not because you deserve it, but because it's the right thing to do.
I believe and will do these things so that I will always be a better man than any of our enemies. It's a shame you can't say the same.
You're being intentionally stupid again. Is this a habit?
Legal interrogations and dealings work. They've worked for centuries and they've worked with terrorists in US custody in the past. This has the benefit of producing more reliable and actionable intelligence, particularly stuff that won't get thrown out of court because it was coerced. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
We don't have to hire people. If you can convince people (hey! Social work!) you don't need to pay them. Sometimes people have a change of heart, and do the right thing even after a lifetime of evil. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
Infiltration is another viable tactic, BTW. It's difficult and risky, but it's very very effective.
Wiretaps can be had with that thing, what's it called, oh yeah--a warrant. And there's even a mechanism for obtaining national security sensitive warrants: the FISA court. You're even allowed to get one after the fact (within reason) and the court has never refused a warrant request. And this has the benefit of being able to survive a court challenge (since it followed the requirements of that Constitution thing), unlike intelligence gathered without a warrant. So that's viable, contrary to your assertion.
Next? Or are you finally out of stupid, narrow-minded crap to spew?
Something that strikes me as I review our little exchanges is that you have yet to make an actual argument. You've made a bunch of hyperbolic, unsupported, and sometimes downright laughably dumb assertions, but presented no actual reasoning why you need to discard the document that has served us so well through worse threats (like, oh I dunno, the Civil War). You've also shown no sign that you've even thought about the issues I've raised and the challenges I've issued, and you consistently ignore the uncomfortable issues (such as foreigners being guaranteed rights, or the crass violations of established Constitutional law you insist are needed while claiming you wish to see the Constitution enforced).
I find that telling.
It's a war against a foreign enemy. The Constitution does not exist to protect foreign enemies from the US.
But the Constitution does guarantee the rights of foreigners in our custody. This is why visiting tourists who get arrested are treated just like citizens. Nowhere does the Bill of Rights say "just citizens." Or is that too complex for you to understand?
Also, listening to terrorist phone calls is hardly "everything".
I like how you elided the secret prisons, the detention without habeas corpus, the use of interrogation techniques identical to those used by the Khmer Rouge, and the use of secret evidence in trial. Good try. And that is nearly "everything."
It's too bad you're pretending it supports your position. It doesn't.
You're the one pretending the Constitution supports things it does not. The Constitution explicitly guarantees freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, right to a speedy trial, right to face the accuser, right to habeas corpus, and freedom from cruel or unusual punishment; but you want to abrogate these things. I know, I know, you'll say "Foreigners don't have these rights," but you'd be wrong. Two hundred years of American jurisprudence has constantly reinforced that foreigners under American jurisdiction have these rights. Don't believe me? Which part of "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" is unclear to you?
Which one of these would have stopped, say, the bombing of the USS Cole? How many cops? Doing what?
Let's examine that sentence again, since you can't seem to read:
Better intel would certainly have helped prevent the USS Cole attack.
"I hear you want us all dead or to convert to Islam. [...]
Bzzt. Incorrect, but thank you for playing. Have you bothered to actually read the writings of our enemies? Apparently not. This is not what they want. This might be an acceptable end if they don't get what they want, but that's not the same thing.
And putting "social work" in there is extremely humorous.
You're being intentionally stupid again. Terrorism is a tactic used by extremists. Extremism is an idea. You engage ideas on the battlefield of the mind. This is social work.
Just like the last time.
Not if we have an administration willing to act. Gee, I wonder which recent administration refused to act?
When has Microsoft ever made anything seamless?