Letters to the Editor
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Who?
controls the media?
owns the banks?
starts the wars?
runs the government?
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Re: Who?
My money's on the Wizard of Oz. At least last time I checked, anyway.
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Pay no attention
to the man behind the curtain
By the way - his real name is Dick Cheney.
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Support your local progressive
Or at least libertarian, with whom you might disagree on most issues not having to do with Iraq, the GWOT or the assaults on the constitution, but who are at least with us on these issues and honest and transparent about their stances on the other issues. Just don't support, abide or take seriously the lies being spewed out by anyone who calls themselves a Democrat but who continually votes to support the neocon, authoritarian, corporatist, anti-constitutionalist agenda of the Bush administration and the GOP. What the religious right appears to be doing right now against pro-choice Repubs, progressives have to do against pro-Bush Dems.
I happened to watch an excellent event the other day on CSPAN, of an unofficial "hearing" held by the house progressive Out of Iraq caucus, on the Iraq war. They invited military expert William Polk, who was an advisor to Democratic administrations in the 60's on the Vietnam war (until he fell out of favor for asserting that the war was pointless and lost, years before the political establishment finally acknowledged this), to give them his thoughts about the Iraq war. Needless to say, he was extremely pessimistic about our prospects there, called the "surge" a tactical irrelevancy, and basically said that we need to start planning to get out.
Anyway, the point that I'm trying to make isn't so much on the war, but that there are, clearly, house members who share our goals and values, are genuine progressives, and are trying their best to fight Bush, the GOP, and other Dems, on the issues that we all care about. They include Barbara Lee, Sheila Jackson Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Maxine Waters, Keith Ellison, Steve Cohen, and others, and they are our friends. So when people say that ALL Dems are worthless, they are wrong, and making a stateme which, however understandable from an emotional point of view, is really not true, nor helpful. We need to support these progressives in their fight against currently larger and more powerful forces, and oppose the real enemies here, i.e. Bush, the GOP (with a handful of principled exceptions), and complicit Dems.
And I urge everyone to try to watch this hearing on CSPAN, in case they rebroadcast it or offer it online. Again, the speaker was William Polk, the name of the show was "Violent Politics" (also the name of his new book), and it took place on 9/19/07. If there is a way out of the present crises, it will necessarily involve these progressives. They are NOT our enemy.
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@ Arne Langsetmo
Arne said: ""[T]arget" is a technical term in . It is the person on whom you place the surveillance."
(My Bold)
My point is that the US Government ain't really talking about our grandfather's "wiretapping" here.
The US Government is talking about "drift-netting" communications where they don't have a specific individual to "target", but instead have a notion that bad folks in foreign places are communicating with US folks here.
The "target" therefore is the entire universe of communications between those foreign places and US folks here.
This is a vast, vast expansion of your and Glenn's law enforcement "term of art".
If the US Government had a "specific" individual to target, then that is exactly what they would do.
The fact that the US Government does not have a "specific" target means that they find themselves in a world of hurt.
It also means that the US Government are desperately whinging about:
"Gee, we got this umpteen teradata motherlode of modern communications floating around on this fiber-wired world, and...boo hoo...the law won't let us sniff (yes, a packet pun. Heck, I'm a techie. *g*) around to see if we can find anything interesting."
This is more than just "mission creep". This is: "The 4th Amendment is quaint."
If we allow ourselves, and our representatives, to be blinded by the smoke and mirrors of Administration weasel-wording, our offspring will curse our names for generations to come.
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Oops. Salon ate the 1st part of my previous
Sorry Arne,
Salon appears to have eaten the 1st part of my previous comment with your quote of ""[T]arget" is a technical term in wiretapping. It is the person on whom you place the surveillance.
Again, my bold.
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Who?
Who?
controls the media?
owns the banks?
starts the wars?
runs the government?
--Anonymous
Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse. Then again, it might be Pinky and The Brain. Hey wait! That's Steven Speilberg! OMG! It's The Jews!
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@Mad Dogs
If we allow ourselves, and our representatives, to be blinded by the smoke and mirrors of Administration weasel-wording, our offspring will curse our names for generations to come.
Just hearing this gives me a glimmer of hope. If our "offspring" does indeed curse our names, it will mean that they understand and value the meaning of the Republic we were not able to protect. It will mean that they have enough brains and civic virtue to behave better than many of contemporaries and their "leaders" do. It will mean that they do not allow themselves to be blinded by smoke and mirrors. It will mean that the Republic somehow survived or enjoyed a "new birth of freedom."
But despite the glimmer of hope, I remain deeply fearful that the Republic was never as good as we might hope it was, and that if it gets any worse, it will never recover.
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Gad!
Sitting on the sidelines of today's conversations is kind of like watching Psycho when I was about 9, or Wait Until Dark at 16. I want to keep my hands over my eyes and hum to myself, and yet feel compelled to watch. Thanks, all. You're scaring the s#!^ out of me, but I suspect it's for my own good.
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@arne
Leif Erikson Day? I thought that was only a holiday in Bikini Bottom! 8')
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@ Mad Dogs
If we allow ourselves, and our representatives, to be blinded by the smoke and mirrors of Administration weasel-wording, our offspring will curse our names for generations to come.
I agree. I don't think we have an argument. I oppose warrantless wiretapping, and am just as opposed to "general wiretaps" as I am to "general searches".
To the extent that they're Hoovering IP traffic, and sniffing for potential new bad guys, I oppose it. I think that a warrant should be required that states with specificity what's being looked for, why it's being looked for there, and why they think it will be found. I'm funny that way. It is possible that you might need Hoover-size snoops to find stuff you are entitled to see (think the vagaries of IP routing, or of mobile roaming from network to network, enduring headaches for those who are required to do CALEA-compliant IP snoops), I think that the winnowing procedures that limit the stuff that is recorded and seen by humans needs to be for the purpose of making sure that only material covered by a warrant is included in the stuff delivered. If not, then the potential for abuse arises. I'd note that even the procedures of CALEA are not sufficient to protect against recording of privileged information, and there's procedures to deal with that, e.g., if you have a legal Title III wiretap, you're still not allowed to listen in on conversations a "target" might have with their attorney; if the LEAs find themselves listening in on such a conversation, they must immediately terminate the recording and dispose of anything they grabbed related to that call. FISA did have minimisation procedures in it; if a warrant didn't ensue, the records should be destroyed, and similarly after a certain time if the surveillance gives nothing, they need to destroy the records as well. But the minimisation procedures in the recent amendments are far less clear.....
Cheers,