Look Everybody We're East Berlin, Pre-Wall Topple!

[Ibby]

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Slightly paraphrased cause I can't remember his exact wording.

Originally Posted by Ibram

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Slightly paraphrased cause I can't remember his exact wording.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
I will do all I can to thwart the Anti-Patriot acts and all bastardizations of cowardice that the chicken-shits of today do. Our forefathers fought people like McCarthy, now we give them medals behind closed doors.
Saying things like, we have to "do all we can" to catch them is fear speaking... the fear of the terrorists winning... the fear of our sloth.... the sickness of how far we have come from the forgotten generation and how we are letting those on the front lines die in vein and dishonor.

Originally Posted by Ibram

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.

Slightly paraphrased cause I can't remember his exact wording.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
~Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
I will do all I can to thwart the Anti-Patriot acts and all bastardizations of cowardice that the chicken-shits of today do. Our forefathers fought people like McCarthy, now we give them medals behind closed doors.
Saying things like, we have to "do all we can" to catch them is fear speaking... the fear of the terrorists winning... the fear of our sloth.... the sickness of how far we have come from the forgotten generation and how we are letting those on the front lines die in vein and dishonor.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

My point being, we're not. This is a process for seeing who you don't search. I have a hard time seeing it as all the way unreasonable. Note, too, that this thing is constructed to do you precisely no harm -- at least, if you're not the kind of guy who showers in a suicide belt and masturbates to the idea of dead Americans because they aren't Moslem enough to suit you. Our enemies are emotionally driven by religious bigotry, remember.

One thing you will have to understand about me: I want us to win this war with the Islamofascists so thoroughly that anything but democracy will be unsatisfactory from now on to the entire Islamic world -- with the antidemocrats, slavemakers, and power pervs all rotting in the ground or making vultures and blackbacked jackals fat and torpid.

George W is not by any reasonable definition a power perv. He's a limited-government man trying to fight a war. His legal position would be simpler had Congress been moved to declare a state of war, as this simplifies matters for the Executive Branch to direct the war effort. However, since formal declaration of war struck everyone involved as disjunct, out of proportion, you have this "do whatcha gotta" Congressional resolution in its stead -- which seems to be taken by some damn fools on the Hill as license to see to it that he can't. The record shows most of these fools are Democrats.

Illegal search and seizure is illegal search and seizure, you don't search unless you have PROBABLE CAUSE THAT IS LEGALLY OBTAINED BY EXISTING LAWS.

The only was we win the war is to never resort to the tactics of the Taliban... to not become what we are fighting... oops.. too late.

Yeah, those signing statements are sure limiting government... who needs those pesky checks and balances?

[mjohncoady]

I can remember when the FBI took 18 months to locate a guy name Ken Kesey. Know who or what he was? An LSD crazed novelist. Then they took over 12 months to find heiress Patricia Hearst who had been allegedly kidnapped by a group calling themselves the Symboinese Liberation Army. They consisted of 6 or so self-agrandizing bank robbers. That same FBI could tell you the name of every woman the Reverand Martin Luther King, Jr. had ever slept with. J. Edgar Hoover may be dead but his spirit lives on.

These guys tell you they are on the up-and-up. Just keepin' us safe from terroists. I can guarantee you that the Shrub and his boys are using the information to keep track of the political oppostion, anti-war folks and libertarian types. They could also used them to run down renegade state legislators like they used Homeland Security to find all those nasty Texas Democrats. They won't find any more terrorists this way than they do making you take off your shoes in the airport or carry a passport to pop over the border for Tequila and Whoppee.

I spent the last 10 months of my four year Army tour at the NSA. I can tell you what the NSA is. It is thousands upon thousands of mindless bureaucrats who whould unquestioningly execute each and every one of us if their overlords so ordered. These are the very same kinds of people Hitler relied on to construct and implement the gas chambers. You need to be very, very afraid of these people. I know I am.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by mjohncoady

SNIP~ I can guarantee you that the Shrub and his boys are using the information to keep track of the political oppostion, anti-war folks and libertarian types. ~SNIP

And were long before 9-11, I suspect.