Letters to the Editor
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It’s clearer for me now
I’ve read a lot by experts and bloggers who know a lot more about the law, our constitution and FISA than I do. Thanks for putting what they have been saying in a manner that I can better understand. Now that I do, I am more scared than I was. So, thanks, I think.
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FBI claims preposterous
And the FBI wants us to believe that the Madrid bombing fingerprint was connected to Mayfield rather than that the NSA database was connected to the Madrid fingerprint. The claim that out of all the fingerprints in the FBI database they got a match on a Muslim is preposterous.
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At Least The Feds Used FISA...
W. Bush is famous for ignoring it, and for asserting that he need not pay attention to it.
I hope this case, somehow, helps the case for impeaching the creepy Bush and the execrable Cheney.
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"Hello"
"Hello. Yeah. America here."
"Yeah, that's right. It's parchment-colored, lists branches of government after a brief preamble, etc."
"Yeah, it somehow disappeared about a year after George Bush became President. If you find it, please call us - we really need to get it back."
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as chance would have it
I worked with a person who was a friend of one of the FBI agents involved, which is why this is posted anonymously.
After Mayfield was arrested, and then the case fell apart, the coworker mentioned that their friend had been on that case. The FBI agent's direct quote about the case? "He was guilty. People like that are always guilty of something."
Kinda of telling of how law enforcement views our civil rights these days. Not as an absolute line that cannot be crossed for the good of our democracy, but as an inconvenience that protects only the guilty.
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An Exception To Shakespeare's Henry VI Observation
My condolences to the Mayfield family for having had to endure such a travesty of misplaced suspicion, especially since it was foisted on them by their own country's government.
However, I thank all deities that Mayfield is a lawyer; if this had to happen to an American, our entire country is blessed that it happened to one of its better educated patriots.
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Clear and present danger
Thank you for reminding us that we have met the enemy, and the enemy is us. "We" voted for Bush, our legislators endorsed the Patriot Act and sent our soldiers to war, and the trickle down effect of the government's deceptions in local communities results in a police state where free speech dissenters are tasered, unreasonable searches and seizures are rampant, and civil rights are violated.
Enough is enough. I'm mad as hell and not gonna take it any more. Lead on, Epps, we're with you!
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Parson Jim
The parchment is in W's bathroom evidently. One guess what he's doing with it. :(
Fortunately, there are many copies, and apparently, some really great judges have them. That part's good, anyway.
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One day at a time
Yeah - three cheers to Judge Aiken in Oregon for remembering the fundamentals.....our right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure and the protections of the Fourth Amendment. Amen to her and all those who would stand in the face of tyranny.
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even if Mayfield is right about the Patriot Act
As a former Army intelligence officer and convert to Islam, common sense says that he was someone worth monitoring.
Regardless of the illegailty and counterproductive nature of the actions of the US government in the world, Islam-motivated violence is a serious and very longterm threat to peace. Muslims had a violent, expansionist tendancy long before the US or Israel came into existence.
Thus converting to a religion behind a significant portion of the violence in the world is an action which should raise the suspicions of people with common sense in our intelligence and law eneforcement agencies.
If he had become a Unitarian and then was spied upon I might have symapthy for him.
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The Price of Experience
Our most heroic citizens may well be those ordinary people who survive the first blow landed by servants of their own government when that government no longer serves those ordinary people who by right hold the reins of that government. Brandon Mayfield and his family have suffered a peculiar sort of terror at the hands of this government and by surviving the initial hit, Brandon has become a true American hero, someone to whom we can actually look for inspiration in a time when there is a scarcity of heroes (unless one's only acceptable definition of the word is a person trained to kill foreigners).
What is necessary now is for a critical mass of his fellow citizens to stand behind Mayfield, to emulate his example, and to "tear this building down."
It's time. Mayfield has created a crack so the light can get back in. The rest of us owe it to him and to ourselves use this crack to shatter the wall which has been erected around us.
Thank you Brandon Mayfield, for being a true American, and thank you Garrett Epps, for throwing some light on this proof that we are, indeed, right to love our country but fear our government - and to replace that government. Now.
All pretenders to the Presidency ought to take notice of this change in the weather.
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Great Stuff
Most people, I think, would have taken a settlement and stopped there. This guy had the nads to go after the patriot act. (The patriot act -- the name is a joke in itself if you look at the history of the US revolution.)
And Gerry Spence rides again. That guy is down home and basic.
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Anonymous 09:36
It may be assumed that the majority of our troops as well as all the central figures of our government are professing Christians with the occasional Jew or agnostic. These people are presently accountable for as much violence in the world as any professing Muslim anywhere, and the comparison is just as valid.
If Unitarians would stand up for anything as a group, they'd be getting watched too, now, as they were very much so during the 1950s and 1960s.
And when they come for you, we can feel certain there was a good reason for it as well. We of course don't know what it is, as yet, but we do know that what our government tells us is unimpeachable truth -- or at least that a significant portion of our citizenry is still willing to purchase shares in the Brooklyn Bridge. Just sign right here....