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Originally Posted by roachboy
nice try, ace:
your posts aim at dissolving this spying thing into a banal list of other types of intrusive action on the part of an unspecified (in your post) "state"--i am not sure what collapsing local, state and federal levels into each other gets you, really, but anyway if you view domestic spying at the federal level in this (arbitrary) context, then i guess it is not a probem to run the charge to ground and simply argue "government is getting too big"
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I think there are many threats to liberty. It is interesting that one of the worst examples occurred during FDR's administration, the internment of American citizens. The Bush administration using wire taps to listen to known terrorist is nothing in comparison.
It is more likely that our lives can be ruined by one of those items I listed than by something the Bush administration is doing. Yet most of us don't care. I simply don't understand ignoring real threats while chasing imaginary ones.
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except:
-domestic spying on this order appears to be illegal. here is a space in which the present hyper-partisan climate really has bad effects: if the administration were democrat, you would be howling in the night to protest these same policies---it would be lilke the right's response to the new deal all over again--but since it is a far right administration, no problem....
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I howl against the Bush administration subpena of GOOGLE search records. I think it is wrong. I think it is a far bigger issue than wire taps, or even the government searching public library records. GOOGLE is a private company and I am a private citizen, the government has no business in my transactions with GOOGLE unless there is a just cause.
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-domestic spying programs unfold in the context of an administration that uses the "war on terror" to legitimate an unparalleled extension of executive power
which i would imagine you support, given your sophsiticated "big vs. little" evaluative criteria, an authoritarian executive branch that acts without regard for law--not to mention trivialities like civil liberties--because such actions as these **do** effectively shrink government----they cut out the pesky legislative and their irritating oversights implemented in the name of the people--and because these policies occur and are implemented in secret, they attempt to bypass enforcement of law as well, and so effectively cut out the judiciary.
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You call the acts taken by the Bush administration illegal. If those acts are illegal congress has work to do. Noone in congress has taken any action, why? What are they waiting for? Who is the victim?
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--maybe that is why you seem to have no trouble with it----i am and remain baffled by the importance of this size queen approch to thinking about politics that you see surfacing from that curious little crossover area that links liberatarians tempermentally to the extreme right...
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Our enemy is sophisticated. They use our freedoms against us. I truly believe we face a ruthless enemy, an enemy who will not follow any of the rules and traditions of warfare. Given that we have to respond accordingly.
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---i do not know your position on the iraq debacle, but it would not seem to me to follow that you would oppose it enough to act publically on the matter, so perhaps you do not imagine this kind of domestic spying program could be directed at you--rather it entails surveillance of Bad People like those who attend anti-war demonstrations or meetings linked to opposition to the war....so perhaps you see nothing problematic in domestic spy programs originating with the pentagon because you think it will only affect Them..
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Every time I fly since 9/11 my privacy is being invaded, directed at me. I know the consequences, I know the risks of giving the government the authority to spy. I think the benefits outweigh the cost. I trust Bush won't abuse his power the way FDR did. I think we learned the lesson