I have said it before and I am saying it again. The United States government through the NSA and various other agencies have been in the business of intercepting American telephone calls, radio transmissions, and more recently faxes, emails, etc. - for decades. This collection occurs at the macro level, through giant antennae that suck up all radio transmissions, cell phone calls and in the form of taps on the giant switches through which all communications must pass. They also intercept all satellite transmissions. Essentially they get everything. Those many terrabytes of data are then processed by hyper-advanced super computers which look for key words, key voice prints, addresses et al. Communications deemed suspicious or of interest are then flagged for human intervention.

Since they have been doing this since the 50's it means that elements of your government, from both the Democrat and the Republican parties have been complicit. Since the intercepts are global, and as I said essentially complete, this means that "they" have been spying on not just the "Commies" and nowadays "Islamofascists", but also Americans, illegally - not to mention unconstitutionally.

They are all guilty, Democrats and Republicans. This is the real reason why Bush and Reid, working together, will get what they want, what they have always had - total awareness of your "private" communications.

So nothing will happen. The bill will pass, and another nail will be driven into the coffin into which Bush has placed your Constitution and Bill of Rights. Chris Dodd seems to be sincere and good for him, but he has no chance of being president. And he has no chance of blocking this bill.

Will Americans rally round Dodd? I see no sign of that at all. Instead I hear broken, fearful and bewildered American serfs repeating memes like, "If you have nothing to hide..." That is when I hear anything at all.

Some of you here have suggested that I am being negative to the point where I am suggesting that we just give up! I am not saying that at. Fight these bastards, take your freedoms back before they are gone, but understand the length, breadth and depth of just how big this is and just how corrupted democracy and freedom in America has become.

It is still possible for a movement to begin, and those of us who are awake and aware, such as the many fine and perspicacious posters at Salon, must form the nucleus of such a movement; but be aware that any such revolution must occur from without your system, not within.There is an "opposition" but it cannot be found in your Senate, your Congress or your slave corporate media, it can only be found in the people, who, united, can never be defeated.

Such is the threat, as Senator Frank Church warned the American people over twenty years ago. 'At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such [is] the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…'

http://home.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html

Considering his record of attempting to debunk 9/11 "conspiracy theories".

This question of how good a pilot would have to be to execute the maneuvers that are alleged on Sept. 11, 2001 is very relevant to this article. I asked Patrick about this several years ago now and his reply to my question was a rather glib, "Easier than you might think."

Now I am faced with an article that contends that a "simple" landing of a large airliner would be beyond the capabilities of a fairly experienced single engine pilot! Okay, I buy that, but what about Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of the flight that hit the pentagon? He was a documented bad pilot. How am I to reconcile that fact with your earlier statements Patrick?

"...when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons."

Remember that Hanjour is supposed to have brought his 757 into the pentagon after executing a 180 degree turn while descending from 5000 feet, then flying down a highway low enough to clip street lights, until he finally brought the plane into the wall of the pentagon at 500 mph, 3 feet above the ground! He even seems to have maneuvered around all the hundreds of surveillance cameras as well!

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hanjour.html

And just in case Captain Smith pulls rank on me, there are a few people in his club who don't buy the shit either...http://www.pilotsfor911truth.org/