Dirty Hippies Be Afraid
By Erick Posted in National Security — Comments (28) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
I can hear you. Can you hear me? Probably not, because you're a dirty hippie and my guy Cheney just got the power of FISA thanks to your "leaders" in Congress.
Seriously, guys, what good is it to have control of the House and Senate if you can't stop the war, pass FISA reforms that well:
Civil liberties groups and many Democrats say it goes too far, possibly enabling the government to wiretap U.S. residents communicating with overseas parties without adequate oversight from courts or Congress.
Hey, anyway, I was really dreading the socialist take over of Congress, but so far it hasn't been too bad.
Consider this a morning open thread.
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But the whining over there is spectacular and going down quite well with my coffee this fine FISA filled Monday morning.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
I don't think we want to get too cavalier about these things. I don't particular want to be known as the pro-citizen-monitoring party.
And to pretend this is some kind of great shakes in security when balanced against our rights is just plain sad. With the state of our borders, it's somewhat akin to sleeping with all your house's doors open and occasionally monitoring cell phone traffic in the neighborhood to catch would be burglars, rapists, or murderers before the get a hold of you.
It's stupid and sad, and while I don't doubt it's necessary since we've done so little else to fix our security issues, I'm not celebrating it.
"I don't particular want to be known as the pro-citizen-monitoring party."
You just don't get it, do you?
I do however, agree with you on the border issue.
Also, please list people who's rights were violated the first time around. Thanks for your help.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
Come on, haven't you heard- The FBI can find out what kind of books we check out from the library. And don't get me started on how oppressive it is to have to fit all my toiletries into a 3oz bag when I travel.
Well at least by withering away our own rights to freedom and privacy we'll take away reason that the terrorists hate us!
FISA stands for "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." Please notice that first word, like, you know, "Foreign". While each and everyone of us are citizens of the world, it means, like, you know, NOT citizens of the United States.
Furthermore, the idea that illegals who burgle, rape or murder being detected and stopped by FISA doesn't really fit, either. Because these people rarely use cell phones, email, or the Internet to, like, you know, coordinate their rapes, burglaries or murders with other burglars, murderers or rapists.
There is not that much difference between the comment about "pro-citizen monitoring" and the Kos kids, convinced as they are that Bush and company are using the phones to gather intelligence on perfectly law-abiding Democrat citizens who are only interested in keeping abortion legal, medical care free, and sexual perversity constitutionally protected. And tax rich people. And limit the free speech of religious nuts like evangelicals. And, you know, stuff like that.
"Foreign." It's a tough concept, but work with it. You'll get it eventually.
No Fun Allowed? I'll take my 15 minutes of fun perusing the Kos site when they are delivered a defeat (generally meaning a victory for the United States of America). The party that embraces socialism which requires suppression hates tracking FOREIGNers who would do us harm because they think that is a repression of American Citizen rights? Those are some scary folks on the left side of the aisle. I agree wholeheartedly on the border debacle.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
You're on board with RuPaul for Pres, right?
Sheesh.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
Since you mentioned RuPaul, I haven't seen Ru and Ron in the same place at the same time.
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you. Washington Elected Elite
it then. Of course, "then" is Feb 2008- primary season!
This sort of blatant troll-bait early on a Monday morning is, well, curious.
Unless Moe is looking to try out a new RedState Approved™ BoomStick, that is - in which case all I can say is "Open Season".
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Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
http://www.nysun.com/article/59872
"WASHINGTON — As an American-born spokesman for Al Qaeda threatens to blow up American embassies abroad, intelligence gleaned from last month's British "doctors plot" of car bombers suggests that a Qaeda cell is on the loose in the American homeland.
E-mail addresses for American individuals were found on the same password-protected e-mail chains used by the United Kingdom plotters to communicate with Qaeda handlers in Europe, a counterterrorism official told The New York Sun yesterday. The American and German intelligence community now believe the secure e-mail chains used in the United Kingdom plot have provided a window into an operational Qaeda network in several countries.
"Because of the London and Glasgow plot, we now know communications have been made from Al Qaeda to operatives in the United States," the counterterrorism official said on condition of anonymity. "This plot helps to connect a lot of stuff. We have seen money moving a lot through hawala networks and other illicit finance as well." But this source was careful to say that at this point no specific information, such as names, targets or a timeline, was known about any particular plot on American soil. The e-mail addresses that are linked to Americans were pseudonyms"
"Even though we gave President Bush much more surveillance power than we felt he should have, he still failed to detect and prevent this attack."
How once you are required to make decisions that any President would make, you decide the same as Bush did. I guess the domestic spying lie is no longer operative? What are they going to do about it now? Word smiths must be working overtime to come up with an appropriate fax that will tell them all what the new line to use is.
Muscular, no that is taken, that was the howler about Obabma.
Bush should come out and say, "thank you Democrats for approving my domestic spy program" just to rub it in.
But don't worry, they will fix it later -- see nutroots we don't really really mean it. Sure they will.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
...when they see me they'll say, "There goes Loren Wallace,
the greatest thing to ever climb into a race car."
...are very confused about this. They have been lied to by their leaders about the net effect of the FISA program. They have been led to believe that Bush and Cheney have been secretly listening to all of their calls and peeking in their underwear drawer since 9/11. Thinking people actually took this law as a sign of the end of days for America.
Partisan hyperbole. Hate it.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
You use the term honest liberals and then immediately follow it up with the charges constantly leveled by the moonbat fringe. And then for good measure you toss in "thinking people".
Please.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
A thinking person who doesn't spend all of their time on blogs can reasonably believe that reading the newspaper is a good thing. They can reasonably assume, in fact, that it's an act of solid citizenship. They can rightly feel superior to the hordes people who get their news from Entertainment Weekly.
Did these people get an honest appraisal of the FISA law before now? If they honestly believe that the Democratic Party, while partisan, is in the end honest, would they understand the true implications of FISA? They have been told until now that Americans have been under pervasive secret surveillance by their government. They have rightly been concerned about it.
The idea that without the benefit of alternative media, which in the end is still in its infancy and not nearly as pervasive as we might hope, a person should just sorta "know" when the media and the Democratic Party are obfuscating an issue is just silly.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
I think I was too vague about who and what I was critiquing.
I think honest liberals are very confused about this. They have been lied to by their leaders [liberal Democrats, not Bush/Cheney] about the net effect of the FISA program.
They have been led [incorrectly] to believe that Bush and Cheney have been secretly listening to all of their calls and peeking in their underwear drawer since 9/11. [and are therefore very confused that the largest part of this legislation was left intact by a Democrat-led congress] Thinking people actually took this law [meaning actually the earlier program implemented by the administration. Law is the wrong term.] as a sign of the end of days for America [because their liberal leaders have convinced them that this was the end of civil liberties, which also fit the media's running narrative about the Bush Administration -- and if true as portrayed would represent a legitimately heinous intrusion].
Partisan hyperbole [in this case by the Democrats]. Hate it [whether Democrat or Republican generated].
I think I left you with the impression that I was believing the KnownFacts™. I wasn't.
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
Thinking people actually took this law as a sign of the end of days for America.
I interpreted this statement to infer that people who didn't take the Patriot act "as a sign of the end of days for America" wouldn't fit into the category "thinking people." I take it you didn't mean it that way.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman
I was trying to say: Some people, including thinking people (not just the lunatic fringe)...
I can see how that might have been taken as "All thinking people..."
Hard to believe that I write for my supper, isn't it?
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.
would it be fair to say that "thinking people" and "honest liberals" include exactly zero elected Democrats in DC?
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.
At least, now that Lieberman is Indy.
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100 percent.
...you face really grim choices these days. It's not as though you're going to suddenly abandon your ideals and become a Republican, so you ignore the inconvenient truth that the sum total of your party's activity for the past 6 years has been fretting about Bush.
But to your point, I think there's room to admire some DC Democrats -- just not Reid, Pelosi, and the moonbats types. Kennedy, Feingold, Levin -- even Schumer -- are wrong on the issues, but I'm quite certain they believe what they are saying. They are not nearly as bad as their "leaders".
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We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.