busybody said:HEY YOU^^^^
Im still lookin fer that apology
Don't hold your breath. On second thought, do.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
busybody said:HEY YOU^^^^
Im still lookin fer that apology
it belittles youGringao said:Don't hold your breath. On second thought, do.
JazzManJim said:I just don't get the level of outrage here.
On one hand, we have a President, in the middle of waging a war, who authorizes the NSA to...well...do its job. Abdul Dirtbag Terrorist gets or makes a phone call and we peep on the conversation to see if we can get some good info that'll let us stop some more Americans from dying. The list is small. The program is finite. The review process involves lawmakers, judges, and lawyers from several places in government. It dances on the fine edge of the law, but does take care to have a specific aim.
On the other hand we have ECHELON, a program that, I'll bet, most folks had completely forgotten about until it came up again this week. It monitored every single electronic communication in the country, waiting for a keyword to appear so it could report that communication to the authorities. Whether or not your communication merited further action was not based on any suspicion of you beforehand but because of what one of those intercepted e-mails or telephone calls said. A Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton said that searches like the one we're talking about now (warrantless searches) was important not only for prevention, but for "policy-making".
I don't recall the big Congressional huff over the giant information Hoover that was (or is?) ECHELON so I don't get why this program, which clearly falls well short of anything ECHELON did, is drawing such apoplectic reactions. The President has made his position pretty clear and it's obvious that his position is certainly more restricted than the prevention and "policy-making" aims of the last administration.
So why, exactly, is the program we're talking about today so much worse, so much more a danger to our civil liberties, than what we've already seen and apparently lived quite freely with for the past few years?
JazzManJim said:I just don't get the level of outrage here.
On one hand, we have a President, in the middle of waging a war, who authorizes the NSA to...well...do its job. Abdul Dirtbag Terrorist gets or makes a phone call and we peep on the conversation to see if we can get some good info that'll let us stop some more Americans from dying. The list is small. The program is finite. The review process involves lawmakers, judges, and lawyers from several places in government. It dances on the fine edge of the law, but does take care to have a specific aim.
On the other hand we have ECHELON, a program that, I'll bet, most folks had completely forgotten about until it came up again this week. It monitored every single electronic communication in the country, waiting for a keyword to appear so it could report that communication to the authorities. Whether or not your communication merited further action was not based on any suspicion of you beforehand but because of what one of those intercepted e-mails or telephone calls said. A Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton said that searches like the one we're talking about now (warrantless searches) was important not only for prevention, but for "policy-making".
I don't recall the big Congressional huff over the giant information Hoover that was (or is?) ECHELON so I don't get why this program, which clearly falls well short of anything ECHELON did, is drawing such apoplectic reactions. The President has made his position pretty clear and it's obvious that his position is certainly more restricted than the prevention and "policy-making" aims of the last administration.
So why, exactly, is the program we're talking about today so much worse, so much more a danger to our civil liberties, than what we've already seen and apparently lived quite freely with for the past few years?
Ishmael said:In a word, the difference is 'Bush'. No other reason is needed.
JazzManJim said:There has to be more than that. I can't simply accept that people would willingly toss national security out the window - put themselves and their families at greater risk - simply because they don't like the President. There has to be anothe reason - something rational.
JazzManJim said:There has to be more than that. I can't simply accept that people would willingly toss national security out the window - put themselves and their families at greater risk - simply because they don't like the President. There has to be anothe reason - something rational.
zipman said:Nobody is "throwing National Security out the window" at all. People want more oversight of the government, who they are monitoring and the extent of it. You assume they are monitoring terrorists but the truth is they are monitoring people suspected of being a terrorist.
Bush has lost credibility with the American people. I think requiring government oversight is always a good thing as checks and balances were built into our constitution for a reason, to prevent abuses. You may trust Bush but I and a lot of other Americans don't.
Again I'm not saying they shouldn't monitor people that deserve to be monitored, but I think there should be greater scrutiny of how surveillance is used. It shouldn't just be up to the discretion of the President.
Ishmael said:Bull shit Zip. They are monitoring people that are communicating with people who are known to have terrorist connections and people in foriegn lands at that.
Don't try that disengenious spin shit.
Ishmael
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that President Bush has the authority to order international eavesdropping on suspected terrorists in the United States without informing a court.
zipman said:Nobody is "throwing National Security out the window" at all. People want more oversight of the government, who they are monitoring and the extent of it. You assume they are monitoring terrorists but the truth is they are monitoring people suspected of being a terrorist.
Bush has lost credibility with the American people. I think requiring government oversight is always a good thing as checks and balances were built into our constitution for a reason, to prevent abuses. You may trust Bush but I and a lot of other Americans don't.
Again I'm not saying they shouldn't monitor people that deserve to be monitored, but I think there should be greater scrutiny of how surveillance is used. It shouldn't just be up to the discretion of the President.
The Mutt said:Ah, I just love it. Whenever the question of how a president should act, what a president should do, what a president should be comes up, the Dittoheads always point to what Clinton did, what Clinton said, what Clinton was.
Bill Clinton. The Gold Standard. The Paragon of Presidents. Just ask busybody.
My thoughts exactly.Gringao said:Let the ass-covering begin!
zipman said:Fuck you. They are the ones who said "suspected terrorists" not me.
For all the disingenuous bullshit spin you post on these boards you have some nerve saying that to anyone else.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretaps/
zipman said:Fuck you. They are the ones who said "suspected terrorists" not me.
For all the disingenuous bullshit spin you post on these boards you have some nerve saying that to anyone else.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/20/cheney.wiretaps/
JazzManJim said:Bollocks, zip. Leaking this information to the media is exactly throwing national security out the window. If wanting more oversight, beyond the oversight that was already there, was the aim, there are plenty of ways to get that without blowing hte program's cover.
Also, you're misrepresenting "checks and balances". It doesn't mean that oversight can infringe on a Presidents war-time powers. In fact, the same founders who wrote in the "checks and balances" also left great latitude for a President to act without checks and balances in a war. You say that monitoring hostile agents should not be up to the discretion of the President. I disagree strongly. I can think of no one better suited in the government to determine how suspected agents of our enemies should be monitored than the Commander-in-Chief. It's kind of built right into his job. Regardless, the administration did consistently take what they were doing to FISA judges and government lawyers and members of Congress. No one seemed to get all out of sorts about it until this week, or at least not as out of sorts as they are now. If someone like Senator Rockefeller felt so strongly about the program, why didn't he demand closed hearings on it? Why didn't he take any sort of stand? Why didn't Harry Reid? It was certainly within their power to press the issue if they had wanted to. So why didn't they?
But, even if I assumed that you were correct, this program pales in comparison to ECHELON. So why the outrage now? Where have the aggrieved civil libertarians been since ECHELON was revealed. I can't find anything that says it was shut down, or even scaled back in its scale of monitoring.
JazzManJim said:Actually, zip, CNN said "suspected terrorists" not the Vice President. From the article, the only quote they gave where the VP mentioned the word he said we needed the program to "aggressively go after terrorists."
C'mon JazzMan, when was the last time you saw a rational far leftie? They don't exist.JazzManJim said:There has to be more than that. I can't simply accept that people would willingly toss national security out the window - put themselves and their families at greater risk - simply because they don't like the President. There has to be anothe reason - something rational.
zipman said:I don't think the President should have carte blanche to do whatever he wants because we declared war on afghanistan. Is this contact about the war in Afghanistan or about the war on terror which will most likely never end?
Do you have a link to them taking this information to FISA judges? I haven't seen that reported anywhere.
As for Echelon, perhaps it's because people simply do not trust Bush or this administration.
zipman said:I don't think the President should have carte blanche to do whatever he wants because we declared war on afghanistan. Is this contact about the war in Afghanistan or about the war on terror which will most likely never end?
Do you have a link to them taking this information to FISA judges? I haven't seen that reported anywhere.
As for Echelon, perhaps it's because people simply do not trust Bush or this administration.