Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 249 Editor's Choice: 14
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DCLaw & the end of individual
[Read the article: The administration's FISA falsehoods continue unabated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]suspicions.
I agree completely. But I also harbor a feeling that this may, in some respects, be appropriate. Individual suspicions and the Constitutional burdens we imagine the FISA court provides should still be in-place for situations where individual conversations/e-mail/web traffic was concerned. However, the "drag" that may be put up might itself be concerned with meta-data. Not so much the content of these packets, but the end-points, frequency and time domain relationships to other packets.
The math is quite solid on using this type of "transparent" or "meta" dragnet to sift thru millions of pieces of information to find those nuggets worthy of further study. The problem is twofold, from a legal perspective:
1. No court that I know of has reviewed or approved these methods, relative to US Citizens, with respect to Constitutionality.
2. Without legal sanction/review/supervision, isn't any information (i.e. arrests) produced by such a dragnet "fruit of the poison tree" and, therefore illegal?
This all needs to be hashed out and deliberated upon. Not necessarily in public. The most alarming fact about all this for me has been the statements issued by Senators on the Intelligence Committee--to the effect of "nobody is telling us anything."
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eternal war
[Read the article: "It is impossible to miss the discrimination against ... believers"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The struggle that Ntwit invokes is an eternal one--the immortal struggle between spiritualists and realists/pragmatics. Sending a bunch of wide-eyed bible-toting kids in this manner is the equivalent of the "retired" SS General enlisting 14 year olds in the Spring of 1945.
The conflict he so passionately speaks to, and which this nation currently finds itself at war over, is merely a conceptual error, resulting from the perceived irrelevance of his once-mighty opinion.
How the author could bear to sit thru this is beyond me. I would have lit myself on fire 3 minutes in.
How could one possibly get history so wrong at a commencement and not be thrown off stage?
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DCLaw
[Read the article: The administration's FISA falsehoods continue unabated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the reply.
All I meant was that the loss of individuality may, at some point, be appropriate. The process would, exaclty as you describe, need to be defined by legislation. The devil, of course, would be in the details.
If one were to seek to use a drag of "meta" data as the beggining of an actual investigation, then the legal supervision or approval would be required. Whether the drag itself could run without legal supervision is probably more difficult to say.
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for a really nice summary
[Read the article: A timetable for withdrawal? How about "a few decades"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of why we should get out NOW, one could look at:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20212
by Rory Stewart. A very well-informed, rational and first hand evaluation of the situation.
Cheers
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and why we must
[Read the article: A timetable for withdrawal? How about "a few decades"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]from:
- http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20212
I believe that the time has come to withdraw, that our presence is infantilizing the Iraqi political system. That we're like an inadequate antibiotic. We are sufficiently strong to have turned what might have been a conventional civil war into a highly unconventional neighborhood conflict. But we're not strong enough to eliminate it entirely. At the same time I fear that, without intending to, we have discredited democracy in the eyes of many Iraqis. We have created a situation in which many Iraqis now feel that the only way to keep security is to bring back a strongman. They are extremely skeptical of our programs and suggestions for development.
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thanks Dickens
[Read the article: Why Bush hasn't been impeached]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I found your analysis pretty much dead-on.
Still, why is this sociopath still in office? I think that is what Kamiya was getting at, and I think there is truth in the conspiracy which Dennis Loo mentions--corporatists and the media "protecting" citizens from their own power to prevent "instability."
The Dennis Loo letter is great. I made a tinyurl for it:
http://tinyurl.com/23kp2e
A preznit suffering from NPD should not be sitting in office, and should not have been elected in the first place. I've never voted for anyone remotely like that, and I expect citizens and Congress to ACT!!
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red star for Michael Harold
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The lesson to be taken from all the wars of the last century is quite the opposite of what the NeoCons and what television media imply--that we are a "great" and "strong" nation.
I went on for a while about the lessons of the wars of the last century, but it quickly turned into a book, so I rubbed it out. We were just damn lucky in the 20th century. We didn' have to fight on our own soil. We had a good industrial infrastructure (steel, ships and rails) upon which to run a war, and this infrastructure went unmolested. We had leaders capable of planning and restraint, so when we did engage it was, for the most part, with decisive force and well supported.
In Vietnam we were beaten by an enemy more tenacious and committed (i.e. fighting with patriotic zeal), and, should have, learned some important lessons.
The whole Iraq thing--everything we've done since the twin-towers attacks--seems to be without any historical consciousness or base. We are like a blind crazed monster with no memory, stung by a bee, and flailing at silly notions of PAX American while throwing away our REAL strength (rule of law, Constitution, international alliances, etc.). Is our collective ego really so fragile?
I've finally decided it's television--it has destroyed our sense of society as well as any collective memory. A friend told me last night that the only tv shows his family watches now are idol and dances with starz--because it's wholesome. Pathetic isn't quite strong enough...Has it really come to that? Are we so completely myopic and self-absorbed?
In the article yesterday about "why isn't bush impeached yet" Mr. Dennis Loo has a great letter, which I post hear:
http://tinyurl.com/23kp2e
I'm afraid it's time to take this conversation to a wider, more immediate audience then the letters in Salon.