Posted on 01/19/2006 5:39:46 AM PST by conservativecorner
DEMOCRATS who criticize President Bush for using warrantless wiretaps to elicit information about potential terrorist activity should be aware that the American people strongly support his decision to do so. Believe it or not, they trust their own government and the president they elected to use the information wisely and for our own protection. The Fox News poll of Jan. 11 asked voters whether the president "should have the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor electronic communications of suspected terrorists without getting warrants, even if one end of the communication is in the United States?" By 58 percent to 36 percent, the answer was "yes." Indeed, 42 percent of the nation's Democrats agreed that the president should have this power.
The poll also tells us that Americans attribute the absence of terrorist attacks over the past 41/2 years to our government's efforts to protect us. Asked if the fact that there has been no major terror attack since 9/11 was due to "security measures working" or to "no attack having been planned" by terrorists, Americans credited government efforts by 46 percent (to 22 percent for the terrorists, with another 20 percent saying both factors contributed).
Other results: Some 61 percent — including a majority of the Democrats — said they'd be willing to surrender some of their own privacy to help prevent terror attacks. Respondents support renewal of the Patriot Act by 57 percent to 31 percent. (Even Democrats only oppose renewal by 40-47.)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And those who called attention to the NSA policy of warrant-less wiretaps are called "traitors" by 50 percent of the voters and "whistleblowers" by only 27 percent. Democrats opted for "traitors" by 42 percent to 34 percent.
In other words, Ann Coulter represents the Democratic mainstream better than Al Gore on this one!
I hope this was a scientific Fox News Poll, not just an online one.
Oops, formatting error. The Ann Coulter line was from the NY Post as well, not from me! Sorry!
Good post.
How lovely
4th Amendment: "Unreasonable search and seizure"
What is "unreasonable" about searching phone calls of Al Kaeda? That is what the public would like to know.
Is it "unreasonable" to search the phone calls of a 3 time loser on parole/probation?
Is it "unreasonable" to search the phone calls of a serial child molestor?
Is it "unreasonable" to search the cars of all drivers at a "road block" just in case one of them might not be wearing his seat belt?
Define "unreasonable".
I would say President Bush was lax if he didnt use NSA.
What say you if the conversations of Americans who are not "suspected terrorists" and are not talking to "suspected terrorists" are monitored without a warrant?
So much for Zogby's poll results.
I hope that the democrats try real hard to have the president impeached.
The president is liked very much and the public supports him on this.
It will kill the democrats in the 2006 elections.
They are just talking about it now to see how the people respond to the idea.
It was fine to use against "suspected Mafiosi" back in the 1970's, so it's fine by me to use on suspected terrorists.
News Flash.... The NSA has been monitoring ALL calls via computers for years and it pre-dates even klintoon. The software programs are triggered by keywords and then examined by an analyst. It is named the NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY for a reason. This is the mission of NSA... protect the USA. Whoa, what a concept.
From 2004 from polipundit:
Zogby: Back in 1996, pollster Zogby hit the bullseye in predicting the results of the Presidential election. In 2000, they were close again, though their aggregate error tied them with 5 other national polls. In 2002, Zogby appeared to show a lean in favor of the Democrats, and he was way off in his mid-term election predictions. This year, at the end of the spring, John Zogby actually came out and predicted John Kerry would win the election, which appeared to indicate his bias had reached the point of full-blown partisanship against the President, reflected in a growing number of opinions made out of personal preference, rather than on the evidence. Zogby’s refusal to show his work, only magnifies the apparent distortion of his results.
Zogby runs two polls; a telephone poll and an Interactive Internet poll. Unlike almost every other poll, Zogby’s telephone poll is not RDD. Zogby describes his list as follows: “The majority of telephone lists for polls and surveys are produced in the IT department at Zogby International. Vendor-supplied lists are used for regions with complicated specifications, e.g., some Congressional Districts. Customer-supplied lists are used for special projects like customer satisfaction surveys and organization membership surveys.
Telephone lists generated in our IT department are called from the 2002 version of a nationally published set of phone CDs of listed households, ordered by telephone number. Residential (or business) addresses are selected and then coded by region, where applicable. An appropriate replicate1 is generated from this parent list, applying the replicate algorithm repeatedly with a very large parent list, e.g., all of the US.
Acquired lists are tested for duplicates, coded for region, tested for regional coverage, and ordered by telephone, as needed.” Zogby notes that “regional quotas are employed to ensure adequate coverage nationwide.” That is, Zogby takes pains to insure that his respondent poll is not random.
As for his weighting, Zogby states “Reported frequencies and crosstabs are weighted using the appropriate demographic profile to provide a sample that best represents the targeted population from which the sample is drawn from. The proportions comprising the demographic profile are compiled from historical exit poll data, census data, and from Zogby International survey data.”
In other words, Zogby uses his own polls to drive some of his demographic parameters, a practice not approved, much less recommended, by either the NCPP or the AAPOR.
All in all, Zogby’s habit of confusing his personal opinion with data-driven conclusions, his admitted practice of manipulating the respondent pool and his demographic weights, by standards not accepted anywhere else, along with mixing Internet polls with telephone interview results, forces me to reject his polls as unacceptable; they simply cannot be verified, and I strongly warn the reader that there is no established benchmark for the Zogby reports, even using previous Zogby polls, because he has changed his practices from his own history.
I was referring specifically to this one:
52% of Americans: Impeach Bush on wiretaps (Zogby)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1558790/posts
Yes, that would be unreasonable, but that's a topic for another thread!
You mean, like using the NSA against political opponents?
Kinda like the Clinton Administration's use of the IRS against political opponents, as Barrett tried to uncover?
You know, in the report where Dems blocked releasing information about such abuses?
That's the problems the Dems have here - they are setting themselves up to simultaneously be against use of the NSA against terrorists while covering up use of the IRS by Clinton against political opponents.
A very untenable position, given that a single GOP congresscritter could leak the unredacted Barrett Report.
Inbound items to the US have always been open for inspection. Customs has been examining inbound people and materials for centuries now. What makes a data or voice transmission that originates oversees so sacrosanct that they can't be examined?
The objection isn't to what is considered "unreasonable", which can be disagreed upon by honorable people. The objection is to not having a judicial warrant for wiretaps on American citizens, which cannot be disagreed upon by honorable, honest people.
Very well explained. What it is in layman's terms is manipulating data to support one's conclusions and bias which is therefore scientifically unreliable.
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