"I'm not quite lame yet".
Posted on 02/12/2008 9:29:34 PM PST by MNJohnnie
After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.
One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This would be all good if it only applied to terrorism investigations. As years go by I’m sure this will be used to incriminate people against virtually anything, such as downloading music for example.
This is a ‘Pandora’s box’ that shouldn’t be opened IMO. If there are suspected terrorist communication’s, then by all means get the records after judicial process. Giving the ISPs a blank check with regard to monitoring our activities will not lead to a good end.
I guess I’m just not nearly as afraid as you are. Instead of creating more government and more surveilance (it’s not like we didn’t have it before 9/11) maybe we should consider actually securing the borders.
We are intercepting conversations that contain key words from terrorist sources. There are criminal penalties for misuse. I want a minimum of intrusion by the government on our lives, but if a terrorist source uses the words explosives, mass carnage, or nuclear, I want someone in the law enforcement system to know about it and do something about it.
"I'm not quite lame yet".
He should contrast himself to the POTUS wannabe senators from the other side of aisle's inability to make a national defense decision when they have months to study the situation - what are they going to do when they only have minutes?
Setting up your excuse for voting Paul, helping Obama win and then blaming Bush for it?
That would make him look more stupid than I suspect he is.
explain
I think they all suck. I’ll vote Paul if he’s on the ballot, knowing he can’t win because I agree with roughly 90% of his views and he seems like he’s got more integrity than the other candidates. But believe me, I realize it doesn’t matter. The Senate and House races are much much more important to me at this stage, but I’ll probably bite the bullet and vote for McCain if he has a strong running mate that will be his successor in 4 years.
I just don’t get too worked up over it, because the odds of a 72 year old pro war moderate winning in this political climate would be astounding. I don’t want Obama and certainly don’t want Clinton, but we’ve made our beds and it looks like we’re going to be forced to sleep in them. The Dems had to pay the bill in the 1980s, but I don’t expect the swoon for the right to last nearly that long. When conservatism becomes conservatism again, and there are electric spokesmen for the cause able to get people excited about Constitutional values, we’ll get our chance again. The media has succeeded in making the face of the GOP “angry old white guys who want to start wars and spy on you.” I have alot of hope that somebody like Mark Sanford or Bobby Jindal or Lou Barletta (and eventually Duncan Hunter’s son) will rebrand the right back to what it used to be before it was subverted.
See post #16.
Bingo. Not that she needed these powers to be expanded "legally" to feel comfortable using them, I'm sure.
The downside comes when the Democrats are in control of all that necessary apparatus. They won’t be tracking jihadists with it and they surely won’t dismantle it.
He possibly knows what he is doing. He is a Democrat and probably on the other side in the war.
They will use it against US, not against the Jihad. Remember how the Clintons used the IRS in the 90s.
Gotta love it... the Kook fringe of the DNC show their colors.
LOL, So’s my 5 y/o, but more specifically he wants to be a terminator spy robot.
The blind support I see from so many for this program really makes me wonder if anyone really believes in free speech, federalism and limited government, or if they want that only when the opposition is in power.
If this country wants to be serious about stopping terrorism, we already know what needs to be done, and tapping the communications of US citizens is not among those things. Until they take on the issues of energy independence and the Saudi export of jihadist philosophy, as well as establishing actual operational control over our own border, this War on Terror is and will always be a fraud.
As far as 'criminal penalties', I have a real hard time taking that seriously in light of the constant stream of cases in which an agent of the government gets away scot-free with acts that would put any citizen in jail for a long time.
No, it isn't. But down the line - into the campaign - this abstention, in effect a NAY, will be an issue raised big-time against either one or both of them.
McCain voted YEA - and that is all the difference.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.