No government operations of any kind that are secret except legitimate military secrets in time of legitimate war
The problem is that there is always going to be someone that calls any war or anything military illegitimate. Also, surveillance is important even in times of peace. It is worthless if everyone knows what we are looking at and what we find.
Since secrets are important to a government, regardless of your opinion, and since courts are public and have no current ability to hear cases where the matter is deemed secret by those charged, there is no oversight at all. Your resistance to court oversight that can keep things that need to be secret secret,is supporting the status quo where government has virtually unlimited power because any abuses can simply be called "national security" and court oversight is completely avoided.
The court system is supposed to be above public opinion and pubic opinion is not supposed to have any effect on the court's decisions.
If the judicial branch of the government is going to work outside the framework of law that it is built upon, the what's the point? Without checks that can actually be checked by an outside agency, there is no way to limit infractions, corruption, and abuse.
No, this court, like any other, would work within the law. The problem is that without the appropriate clearance, judges are not legally allowed to hear the evidence in the case so judicial oversight is not possible right now. All this would be is a court where the judges have the clearance to hear the cases and the evidence. The evidence in the cases as well as most of the information about the cases could be kept secret so these cases could go to court without damaging national security or the government using that as an excuse to keep the cases from ever being heard.
The Judiciaries job is not to *trust* the military to do the right thing, its to *check* they are doing the right thing
The justice system is supposed to be blind and not "trust" anyone. I don't think the FISA court was set up to deal with the Constitutionality of the law itself, but to grant or deny warrants.
Where was the judicial oversight? Kept in the dark by abuse of secrecy.
We need a separate court that is secret like FISA whose purpose is to deal with cases brought up where the evidence brought up in the case should not be made public. They could handle the cases of terrorists, for example or any challenges to instances where the government is doing something that needs to be kept secret, but may or may not meet Constitutional muster.
I think the fact that this has been made public and that the government itself is no longer denying this negates any attempt to call this "state secrets".
However, there will be cases that deal with actual state secrets. For those, we need a court set up to deal with that sort of thing, not just a court to approve warrants, but a court to handle cases brought up by whistle blowers that evaluate the Constitutionality of cases like this.
The problems you speak of are due to corruption, not free markets. Even in the height of the Soviet Union, most people were living in squalor while the few lived in luxury. I know you are not going to say that the former Soviet Union was a free market.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein had the same situation. Most people lived in poverty while those that were high ranking party members were rewarded handsomely.
China is not a free market either. While it does have some capitalist tendencies, it is still a Communist nation. You need government permission to run a business. However, in order to make it, you better be tight with the person approving the application. It's one thing to get your application approved. It's something else entirely to have your competition denied and your abuses of the law and your employees ignored.
Mexico is another example. While the market there is freer than the other places I've mentioned, the success of your business rests on your ability to grease the palms of the right people.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries are in the same situation. It doesn't matter what laws you have in place when those that enforce those laws are on your side. Selective enforcement of the law is a major ingredient in any tyranny.
What sets Europe and America apart is the lack of corruption compared to most other countries. It's not the laws that are in place, but a willingness to enforce them equally. Unfortunately, America seems to be moving away from that. Our DOJ, EPA and IRS departments seem to apply different levels of enforcement based on the political beliefs of those being investigated.
I don't think you are in any position to accuse anyone of creating a false dichotomy. Your whole point is that there are only very rich and very poor in America and yet the vast majority in America are neither. The fact that you are using a computer to spread your crap tells me that you are neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Your existence proves that you are full of crap.
That's really odd. I can afford a home and I'm not rich. As a matter of fact, everyone in my neighborhood is in the same situation I am in. No one in my entire city is what I'd call "rich" and yet very few of them live in squalor. The few that are "living in squalor" are illegals passing through anyway.
I don't know what country you live in, but in this country, the average salary is over $50,000/yr. That's ample to buy a house in most communities.
I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).
Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.
However, it would be too radical (not to mention ironic) to disqualify sections of the electorate on the basis of stupidity or lack of values.
No Joke! I would love to see voters required to pass a basic test before being allowed to vote. And I mean something very basic like "Name one right protected by the Bill of Rights", or "True or False, The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed""
Poll results are notoriously sensitive to exactly how the questions are phrased. The other problem is that those polled might not understand the entire scope of the program, or have considered how it can be misused and how little protection against misuse there might be (or might not be - that's the charming thing about a secret court)
I wonder if the polls would have the same result if they were asked if their information were used in a presidential campaign?
“Earlier this year, in an interview with TV One, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) praised President Barack Obama for putting together a campaign database that "will have information about everything on every individual."
“And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before,” Waters told “Washington Watch” host Roland, referring to Obama’s “Organizing for America,” which was changed from a campaign organization to a 501(c)(4) called Organizing for Action.... Martin asked if Waters if she was referring to “Organizing for America.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Waters said. “And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.”
Waters said the database would also serve future Democratic candidates seeking the presidency.
“He’s been very smart,” Waters said of Obama. “I mean it’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”
Remember, winning means everything. It's not about getting more voters. It's about getting more of YOUR voters to vote (or at least make it appear that way). The first step in getting your own voters out is to know who they are, where they live, what they are doing, etc. The other half of this is what is going to happen to use who do not vote for the (D) candidate?
So if you see all of these problems with the country, why would you tell someone that may want to fix some of them "We don't need your 'improvement'"? Is it your believe that any attempt to rein in the problems (like, for example, having more sane drug laws) will only make things worse?
No, if I see that all these problems have only gotten worse, I'm going to say, "Let me take care of it. You tried. You failed!" When your solution doesn't work, you don't double down on the "solution" that didn't work the first time. Maybe you should try something different.
Yes! SANE drug laws. As in, don't sell to minors and don't drive stupid. I don't see much need for anything else. Compare that to the "solutions" of the past 50 years where we just spend more and more money and make laws harsher and harsher. I don't recall drug cartels killing people when I was growing up. Now, it's rather common. You want to put the drug cartels out of business in about an hour? Legalize their product so we can grow it here and sell it with sensible regulations like we do alcohol, completely cutting them out of the equation.
The point is more government doesn't work. All we need is for the government to protect us from foreign invaders and from screwing each other over. Beyond that, it really doesn't serve much purpose other than to turn minor problems into major ones.
I think you just answered that - because it's the place I live... my family, my friends, my home, my job, etc are all here in the USA so why would I want to pack up and leave? And if I really feel that what I'm advocating is an improvement, why wouldn't I want to share it with everyone?
Because we don't want your "improvement" and we don't have the option of moving as there is no place else in the world that has the economic opportunity and freedom that the US has.
Hmm...isn't that what people said about racial segregation? We don't want "those" people on "our" bus or drinking from "our" fountains? Or about gay rights "If we let the gays marry, then everyone will want to marry their dogs and once heterosexual people see homosexual people in committed marriages, it will tear heterosexual marriages apart!".
I didn't even say what "improvement" I wanted, so how can you say that you don't want it? Don't you value my freedom of speech? You're trying to shut down my opinion before I even voiced it.
I'm not talking about civil rights. I'm a conservative libertarian. I'm talking about economic and personal freedom. Some of us just want to be left the hell alone while others demand that someone oversee what I do in my personal and financial life. It is how things used to be and the system worked quite well. For example, there are more people in poverty today than there was when Johnson declared a "War on Poverty". There are more people smoking marijuana today than there was before marijuana was made to be illegal. More people have a cocaine problem today than when cocaine was legal and could be purchased in a bottle of Coca Cola. the federal deficit was smaller before there was an income tax. The list goes on and on.
There are those of us who see that when government makes up a problem and declares war on it, that problem always gets worse. You would think that people would realize this and just stop it, but that hasn't happened. It has actually gotten worse. It seems that the more government fails, the more people demand that the government needs to grow to fix those problems. It's an endless cycle and the only end I see is absolute failure before we are allowed to restore what works.
I think you just answered that - because it's the place I live... my family, my friends, my home, my job, etc are all here in the USA so why would I want to pack up and leave? And if I really feel that what I'm advocating is an improvement, why wouldn't I want to share it with everyone?
Because we don't want your "improvement" and we don't have the option of moving as there is no place else in the world that has the economic opportunity and freedom that the US has.
Not well, but I can't imagine it would have been any better with the other choices.
I know! States rights must suck. I'd hate having to deal with the responsibility of knowing that my vote counts more towards the way my government works. Double that because of the effort I'd have to put into voting in state elections.
That's a great comeback -- don't like something about your country? Well pack up, get out, and move someplace worse because america is perfect the way it is so you either need to accept that or get out - we don't need your changes!
A couple of points here. First, Snowden ironically fled to Hong Kong, which is China. I think the GP was making a joke. Here's your whoosh!
But in response to your post, there is some logic behind the "Love it or Leave it" argument. For example, there are many in America who want to make America like Europe, and work hard to transform it to that. It makes sense to ask these people, "Why don't you just move to Europe?" Here is why the logic works: If they were to move to Europe, they could line under a government that is exactly what they want. They'll be happy there. As a bonus, those of us who like things in America the way they are get to stay and live in under a government that is exactly what we want. It's a win-win! We all get what we want. On the other hand, when they stay and fight to transform America, they make themselves miserable living in a country they don't like and make the rest of us miserable fighting to keep them from changing America into a country we won't want.
Why try to change the place you live into someplace else when you could simply move to that someplace else?
Again, what crime has the TEA Party espoused? The TEA Party is for lower taxes, not tax fraud. What crime has pro-life groups or traditional marriage groups committed? The only "crime" these groups have committed is having an opinion and wanting to use their First Amendment rights. Remember, the First Amendment not only protects speech you disagree with, but it also protects speech that the government disagrees with specifically. Read the text itself: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
Isn't that part in bold exactly what the TEA Party groups were trying to do? Opposing groups are allowed to take money and not pay taxes on them. Why can't the TEA Party. If anything, groups that call for higher taxes and then apply for tax exempt status for themselves are the ones who should be viewed with suspicion. There is nothing suspicious about the TEA Party trying to be tax exempt. That is exactly what you would expect them to do. But Organizing for America wants people taxed more. Why would they think that they should be exempt?
Also, this is not just about taxes and money. It is about protecting your donors from those who disagree with your group. For example, if a list of donors to an anti-gay-marriage group were leaked, the donors, their families, and their businesses could be targeted by groups that support gay marriage. It could happen and it did. The law was created to protect donors to civil rights groups in Alabama during the Civil Rights movement and is just as necessary today.
And if you don't think that these groups should be tax exempt, that's great. I agree. But that's not the point. The point is that as of right now, these groups are allowed to be tax exempt under the law. If you like, petition for the law to be changed, but until it is, it must be applied fairly. The IRS can not apply the law to one group and not another, especially when the deciding distinction is a groups political beliefs or support of or opposition to policy. Also, the IRS should not be able to give you extra scrutiny because you oppose the tax exempt status of 501c groups, just as they should not be allowed to scrutinize the TEA Party because they want the 10th Amendment followed.
If I say in public that I like to kill people and want to do it again. The cops should probably check on what I have been doing.
I am pretty sure anti gay marriage groups already do not believe in equal protection under the law.
That's not for the IRS to decide. If laws are being broken or public safety has been threatened as in your "kill people" example, then it's up the DOJ to investigate, not the IRS. The IRS deals with tax law and punishing those who have cheated on their taxes. None of these groups have been charged with cheating on their taxes. By applying for tax-exempt status, they were actually attempting to follow the law. It was their applications that were scrutinized, not their tax forms.
Also, there is nothing illegal about wanting lower taxes or protecting traditional marriage. For that matter, it is the traditional marriage groups who are trying to preserve the law as it stands now. Under your criteria, shouldn't pro-gay-marriage groups gain extra scrutiny? You said that the TEA Party groups should get extra attention because they are trying to change the law as it stands? If that is your criteria for extra scrutiny, than any group supporting changes in any policy should be scrutinized, including anti war groups, and anti corporate groups.
The IRS is not supposed to base it's application of policy based on politics, PERIOD. IRS employees are not allowed to pick and choose which law-changing groups they investigate based on their personal opinions of which laws need to be changed.
And the retaliation in this case was the IRS delaying the status for years while approving those groups on the opposite end of the political spectrum. You may think it's OK for the IRS to decide the level of investigation groups receive based solely on their political beliefs, but even the President of the United States and the IRS itself disagrees with you. They have both feigned outrage and apologized for the targeting of conservative groups and have sworn investigations to prevent it from happening again (not that it matters as the goal of reelecting Obama has already been achieved).
I am not sure what you mean about that last thing. The IRS investigating anti-tax activists, is good policy. The DEA should probably keep tabs on NORML leaders as well. If you come out and say you oppose law X then I expect the agency in charge of enforcement will at least give you an extra look.
Free speech is free. We are allowed to disagree with our government and say so out loud and publicly without fear of retaliation. That includes the right to speak out against tax policy without the IRS suppressing you.
But this goes beyond the TEA Party and their political stance for lower taxes and responsible government spending. Conservative groups that have nothing to do with taxes were also targeted. Pro Life and groups against gay marriage were also targeted. This proves that the targeting was not related to their tax policy, but their political views in general. That is an extreme violation of the First Amendment. The fact that "progressive" groups were given tax exempt status without the same scrutiny violates the 14th Amendment clause that guarantees equal protection under the law. Frankly, if all these groups were given the same scrutiny regardless of their political views, this would not be an issue. But since this scrutiny was only given to one side because of their political views, we have a problem.
I don't trust a government with everyone's phone records that will abuse power like that to silence the political opposition.
I think unconstitutional spying is far more betraying democracy than releasing some information. Democracy without an informed populace cannot work.
I was not comparing the relative moralities only the headcount. Terrorism is simply too rare to dedicate so much resources too. It would be like the government spending billions to protect the populace from lightning.
To be fair, this program is currently legal. I don't think it will pass Constitutional muster if it ever hit the courts, but that hasn't happened yet. The appropriate course of action would be to challenge this law in the courts rather than releasing classified data.
On the other hand, you can't challenge a law if you don't know about it. Without this release, the law could not be challenged until the program was to gather evidence used to prosecute a citizen.
I don't have a problem with the government gathering this data to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, this administration has shown that it has no problem abusing government agencies to punish political opponents.
What? National socialism is a right wing movement. But also, yes you're right. Neither right nor left nor centre should get access to these tools when in power.
Right wing movements don't use government power to seize industry.
If Obama wanted to touch this issue, he wouldn't have been able to.
You are mostly correct. Obama is in charge of the Executive Branch, which includes the IRS, EPA, NSA, FBI, CIA and so on. All it would have taken is a phone call to whoever is in charge of the NSA to say, "stop doing that", and it would be done.
He would need Congressional action to prevent the next president from doing it, however, but there is nothing in the PATRIOT act mandating that the NSA snoop on US Citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
No government operations of any kind that are secret except legitimate military secrets in time of legitimate war
The problem is that there is always going to be someone that calls any war or anything military illegitimate. Also, surveillance is important even in times of peace. It is worthless if everyone knows what we are looking at and what we find.
Since secrets are important to a government, regardless of your opinion, and since courts are public and have no current ability to hear cases where the matter is deemed secret by those charged, there is no oversight at all. Your resistance to court oversight that can keep things that need to be secret secret,is supporting the status quo where government has virtually unlimited power because any abuses can simply be called "national security" and court oversight is completely avoided.
The court system is supposed to be above public opinion and pubic opinion is not supposed to have any effect on the court's decisions.
If the judicial branch of the government is going to work outside the framework of law that it is built upon, the what's the point? Without checks that can actually be checked by an outside agency, there is no way to limit infractions, corruption, and abuse.
No, this court, like any other, would work within the law. The problem is that without the appropriate clearance, judges are not legally allowed to hear the evidence in the case so judicial oversight is not possible right now. All this would be is a court where the judges have the clearance to hear the cases and the evidence. The evidence in the cases as well as most of the information about the cases could be kept secret so these cases could go to court without damaging national security or the government using that as an excuse to keep the cases from ever being heard.
The Judiciaries job is not to *trust* the military to do the right thing, its to *check* they are doing the right thing
The justice system is supposed to be blind and not "trust" anyone. I don't think the FISA court was set up to deal with the Constitutionality of the law itself, but to grant or deny warrants.
Where was the judicial oversight? Kept in the dark by abuse of secrecy.
We need a separate court that is secret like FISA whose purpose is to deal with cases brought up where the evidence brought up in the case should not be made public. They could handle the cases of terrorists, for example or any challenges to instances where the government is doing something that needs to be kept secret, but may or may not meet Constitutional muster.
I think the fact that this has been made public and that the government itself is no longer denying this negates any attempt to call this "state secrets".
However, there will be cases that deal with actual state secrets. For those, we need a court set up to deal with that sort of thing, not just a court to approve warrants, but a court to handle cases brought up by whistle blowers that evaluate the Constitutionality of cases like this.
The problems you speak of are due to corruption, not free markets. Even in the height of the Soviet Union, most people were living in squalor while the few lived in luxury. I know you are not going to say that the former Soviet Union was a free market.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein had the same situation. Most people lived in poverty while those that were high ranking party members were rewarded handsomely.
China is not a free market either. While it does have some capitalist tendencies, it is still a Communist nation. You need government permission to run a business. However, in order to make it, you better be tight with the person approving the application. It's one thing to get your application approved. It's something else entirely to have your competition denied and your abuses of the law and your employees ignored.
Mexico is another example. While the market there is freer than the other places I've mentioned, the success of your business rests on your ability to grease the palms of the right people.
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries are in the same situation. It doesn't matter what laws you have in place when those that enforce those laws are on your side. Selective enforcement of the law is a major ingredient in any tyranny.
What sets Europe and America apart is the lack of corruption compared to most other countries. It's not the laws that are in place, but a willingness to enforce them equally. Unfortunately, America seems to be moving away from that. Our DOJ, EPA and IRS departments seem to apply different levels of enforcement based on the political beliefs of those being investigated.
Awesome false dichotomy you got there.
I don't think you are in any position to accuse anyone of creating a false dichotomy. Your whole point is that there are only very rich and very poor in America and yet the vast majority in America are neither. The fact that you are using a computer to spread your crap tells me that you are neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Your existence proves that you are full of crap.
That's really odd. I can afford a home and I'm not rich. As a matter of fact, everyone in my neighborhood is in the same situation I am in. No one in my entire city is what I'd call "rich" and yet very few of them live in squalor. The few that are "living in squalor" are illegals passing through anyway.
I don't know what country you live in, but in this country, the average salary is over $50,000/yr. That's ample to buy a house in most communities.
To put it another way, you are full of shit.
So explain why all of these free market places end up with a few rich and everyone else living in squalor.
Talk about false dichotomies!
I'm not living in sqaulor. I'm not rich either. According to your theory, I don't exist.
Try to stick to the real world too, none of this theory BS.
Project much?
Does the NSA app come pre-installed, or do I have to download it?
It's the only app available at this time. More to come soon!
I've got lots of perfectly good hardware (scanners, printers...etc) that never received a Windows 7 driver. I have to keep at least one XP machine around just for that reason.
My nephew is staying at my place for the summer and brought an old Vista machine. Rather than run a network cable to his room, I gave him a USB wireless-N adapter. He tried for a couple of weeks to make it work while a cat-5 cable ran across my office floor into his room. The other day, he decided to install Linux on the system after using my machine every time his crashed. We downloaded Mint and installed it. Once it was up and running, I plugged in the USB adapter, unplugged the network cable, punched in my wifi password and BAM! He was on the network and reading reddit. (I guess reddit is what kids do these days).
Anyway, the point is that all the drivers you may need are probably included in some of the latest Linux distro's out there. You might want to try booting off a live CD and try it out. If you're not a gamer, I see no reason to be stuck running XP or any other Windows based system.
No I meant running my freezer. Hence the reason I typed:
"I always wanted to have a computer running my freezer"
instead of
"I always wanted to have a computer running IN my freezer"
Oh. Then I don't get it.
As a side note, I've always wanted to take an old mini fridge and turn it into a computer case.
Finally! I don't have to trust that ding-bat I picked up to remember to take her pill!
However, it would be too radical (not to mention ironic) to disqualify sections of the electorate on the basis of stupidity or lack of values.
No Joke! I would love to see voters required to pass a basic test before being allowed to vote. And I mean something very basic like "Name one right protected by the Bill of Rights", or "True or False, The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed""
Poll results are notoriously sensitive to exactly how the questions are phrased. The other problem is that those polled might not understand the entire scope of the program, or have considered how it can be misused and how little protection against misuse there might be (or might not be - that's the charming thing about a secret court)
I wonder if the polls would have the same result if they were asked if their information were used in a presidential campaign?
“Earlier this year, in an interview with TV One, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) praised President Barack Obama for putting together a campaign database that "will have information about everything on every individual."
“And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before,” Waters told “Washington Watch” host Roland, referring to Obama’s “Organizing for America,” which was changed from a campaign organization to a 501(c)(4) called Organizing for Action. ...
Martin asked if Waters if she was referring to “Organizing for America.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” Waters said. “And that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.”
Waters said the database would also serve future Democratic candidates seeking the presidency.
“He’s been very smart,” Waters said of Obama. “I mean it’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/waters-obama-campaign-database-has-information-about-everything-every-individual
Remember, winning means everything. It's not about getting more voters. It's about getting more of YOUR voters to vote (or at least make it appear that way). The first step in getting your own voters out is to know who they are, where they live, what they are doing, etc. The other half of this is what is going to happen to use who do not vote for the (D) candidate?
So if you see all of these problems with the country, why would you tell someone that may want to fix some of them "We don't need your 'improvement'"? Is it your believe that any attempt to rein in the problems (like, for example, having more sane drug laws) will only make things worse?
No, if I see that all these problems have only gotten worse, I'm going to say, "Let me take care of it. You tried. You failed!" When your solution doesn't work, you don't double down on the "solution" that didn't work the first time. Maybe you should try something different.
Yes! SANE drug laws. As in, don't sell to minors and don't drive stupid. I don't see much need for anything else. Compare that to the "solutions" of the past 50 years where we just spend more and more money and make laws harsher and harsher. I don't recall drug cartels killing people when I was growing up. Now, it's rather common. You want to put the drug cartels out of business in about an hour? Legalize their product so we can grow it here and sell it with sensible regulations like we do alcohol, completely cutting them out of the equation.
The point is more government doesn't work. All we need is for the government to protect us from foreign invaders and from screwing each other over. Beyond that, it really doesn't serve much purpose other than to turn minor problems into major ones.
I think you just answered that - because it's the place I live... my family, my friends, my home, my job, etc are all here in the USA so why would I want to pack up and leave? And if I really feel that what I'm advocating is an improvement, why wouldn't I want to share it with everyone?
Because we don't want your "improvement" and we don't have the option of moving as there is no place else in the world that has the economic opportunity and freedom that the US has.
Hmm...isn't that what people said about racial segregation? We don't want "those" people on "our" bus or drinking from "our" fountains? Or about gay rights "If we let the gays marry, then everyone will want to marry their dogs and once heterosexual people see homosexual people in committed marriages, it will tear heterosexual marriages apart!".
I didn't even say what "improvement" I wanted, so how can you say that you don't want it? Don't you value my freedom of speech? You're trying to shut down my opinion before I even voiced it.
I'm not talking about civil rights. I'm a conservative libertarian. I'm talking about economic and personal freedom. Some of us just want to be left the hell alone while others demand that someone oversee what I do in my personal and financial life. It is how things used to be and the system worked quite well. For example, there are more people in poverty today than there was when Johnson declared a "War on Poverty". There are more people smoking marijuana today than there was before marijuana was made to be illegal. More people have a cocaine problem today than when cocaine was legal and could be purchased in a bottle of Coca Cola. the federal deficit was smaller before there was an income tax. The list goes on and on.
There are those of us who see that when government makes up a problem and declares war on it, that problem always gets worse. You would think that people would realize this and just stop it, but that hasn't happened. It has actually gotten worse. It seems that the more government fails, the more people demand that the government needs to grow to fix those problems. It's an endless cycle and the only end I see is absolute failure before we are allowed to restore what works.
I think you just answered that - because it's the place I live... my family, my friends, my home, my job, etc are all here in the USA so why would I want to pack up and leave? And if I really feel that what I'm advocating is an improvement, why wouldn't I want to share it with everyone?
Because we don't want your "improvement" and we don't have the option of moving as there is no place else in the world that has the economic opportunity and freedom that the US has.
Not well, but I can't imagine it would have been any better with the other choices.
I know! States rights must suck. I'd hate having to deal with the responsibility of knowing that my vote counts more towards the way my government works. Double that because of the effort I'd have to put into voting in state elections.
The horror!
Don't like it? Move to China.
That's a great comeback -- don't like something about your country? Well pack up, get out, and move someplace worse because america is perfect the way it is so you either need to accept that or get out - we don't need your changes!
A couple of points here. First, Snowden ironically fled to Hong Kong, which is China. I think the GP was making a joke. Here's your whoosh!
But in response to your post, there is some logic behind the "Love it or Leave it" argument. For example, there are many in America who want to make America like Europe, and work hard to transform it to that. It makes sense to ask these people, "Why don't you just move to Europe?" Here is why the logic works: If they were to move to Europe, they could line under a government that is exactly what they want. They'll be happy there. As a bonus, those of us who like things in America the way they are get to stay and live in under a government that is exactly what we want. It's a win-win! We all get what we want. On the other hand, when they stay and fight to transform America, they make themselves miserable living in a country they don't like and make the rest of us miserable fighting to keep them from changing America into a country we won't want.
Why try to change the place you live into someplace else when you could simply move to that someplace else?
Please forgive the off-topicness
Again, what crime has the TEA Party espoused? The TEA Party is for lower taxes, not tax fraud. What crime has pro-life groups or traditional marriage groups committed? The only "crime" these groups have committed is having an opinion and wanting to use their First Amendment rights. Remember, the First Amendment not only protects speech you disagree with, but it also protects speech that the government disagrees with specifically. Read the text itself:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances
Isn't that part in bold exactly what the TEA Party groups were trying to do? Opposing groups are allowed to take money and not pay taxes on them. Why can't the TEA Party. If anything, groups that call for higher taxes and then apply for tax exempt status for themselves are the ones who should be viewed with suspicion. There is nothing suspicious about the TEA Party trying to be tax exempt. That is exactly what you would expect them to do. But Organizing for America wants people taxed more. Why would they think that they should be exempt?
Also, this is not just about taxes and money. It is about protecting your donors from those who disagree with your group. For example, if a list of donors to an anti-gay-marriage group were leaked, the donors, their families, and their businesses could be targeted by groups that support gay marriage. It could happen and it did. The law was created to protect donors to civil rights groups in Alabama during the Civil Rights movement and is just as necessary today.
And if you don't think that these groups should be tax exempt, that's great. I agree. But that's not the point. The point is that as of right now, these groups are allowed to be tax exempt under the law. If you like, petition for the law to be changed, but until it is, it must be applied fairly. The IRS can not apply the law to one group and not another, especially when the deciding distinction is a groups political beliefs or support of or opposition to policy. Also, the IRS should not be able to give you extra scrutiny because you oppose the tax exempt status of 501c groups, just as they should not be allowed to scrutinize the TEA Party because they want the 10th Amendment followed.
Being investigated is not retaliation.
If I say in public that I like to kill people and want to do it again. The cops should probably check on what I have been doing.
I am pretty sure anti gay marriage groups already do not believe in equal protection under the law.
That's not for the IRS to decide. If laws are being broken or public safety has been threatened as in your "kill people" example, then it's up the DOJ to investigate, not the IRS. The IRS deals with tax law and punishing those who have cheated on their taxes. None of these groups have been charged with cheating on their taxes. By applying for tax-exempt status, they were actually attempting to follow the law. It was their applications that were scrutinized, not their tax forms.
Also, there is nothing illegal about wanting lower taxes or protecting traditional marriage. For that matter, it is the traditional marriage groups who are trying to preserve the law as it stands now. Under your criteria, shouldn't pro-gay-marriage groups gain extra scrutiny? You said that the TEA Party groups should get extra attention because they are trying to change the law as it stands? If that is your criteria for extra scrutiny, than any group supporting changes in any policy should be scrutinized, including anti war groups, and anti corporate groups.
The IRS is not supposed to base it's application of policy based on politics, PERIOD. IRS employees are not allowed to pick and choose which law-changing groups they investigate based on their personal opinions of which laws need to be changed.
And the retaliation in this case was the IRS delaying the status for years while approving those groups on the opposite end of the political spectrum. You may think it's OK for the IRS to decide the level of investigation groups receive based solely on their political beliefs, but even the President of the United States and the IRS itself disagrees with you. They have both feigned outrage and apologized for the targeting of conservative groups and have sworn investigations to prevent it from happening again (not that it matters as the goal of reelecting Obama has already been achieved).
I am not sure what you mean about that last thing. The IRS investigating anti-tax activists, is good policy. The DEA should probably keep tabs on NORML leaders as well. If you come out and say you oppose law X then I expect the agency in charge of enforcement will at least give you an extra look.
Free speech is free. We are allowed to disagree with our government and say so out loud and publicly without fear of retaliation. That includes the right to speak out against tax policy without the IRS suppressing you.
But this goes beyond the TEA Party and their political stance for lower taxes and responsible government spending. Conservative groups that have nothing to do with taxes were also targeted. Pro Life and groups against gay marriage were also targeted. This proves that the targeting was not related to their tax policy, but their political views in general. That is an extreme violation of the First Amendment. The fact that "progressive" groups were given tax exempt status without the same scrutiny violates the 14th Amendment clause that guarantees equal protection under the law. Frankly, if all these groups were given the same scrutiny regardless of their political views, this would not be an issue. But since this scrutiny was only given to one side because of their political views, we have a problem.
I don't trust a government with everyone's phone records that will abuse power like that to silence the political opposition.
I think unconstitutional spying is far more betraying democracy than releasing some information. Democracy without an informed populace cannot work.
I was not comparing the relative moralities only the headcount. Terrorism is simply too rare to dedicate so much resources too. It would be like the government spending billions to protect the populace from lightning.
To be fair, this program is currently legal. I don't think it will pass Constitutional muster if it ever hit the courts, but that hasn't happened yet. The appropriate course of action would be to challenge this law in the courts rather than releasing classified data.
On the other hand, you can't challenge a law if you don't know about it. Without this release, the law could not be challenged until the program was to gather evidence used to prosecute a citizen.
I don't have a problem with the government gathering this data to fight terrorism. Unfortunately, this administration has shown that it has no problem abusing government agencies to punish political opponents.
What? National socialism is a right wing movement. But also, yes you're right. Neither right nor left nor centre should get access to these tools when in power.
Right wing movements don't use government power to seize industry.
If Obama wanted to touch this issue, he wouldn't have been able to.
You are mostly correct. Obama is in charge of the Executive Branch, which includes the IRS, EPA, NSA, FBI, CIA and so on. All it would have taken is a phone call to whoever is in charge of the NSA to say, "stop doing that", and it would be done.
He would need Congressional action to prevent the next president from doing it, however, but there is nothing in the PATRIOT act mandating that the NSA snoop on US Citizens.