Governments have always spied on the people - any people; and armed troops have always tried to get the dope on enemy movements.

However, there's just a huge difference between today and long ago, technique-wise.

For example, the U.S. Army tried and tried to figure out what Sitting Bull and various chiefs might have been saying to each other out there on the Plains, at a time when Grant, Hayes, and Garfield felt they needed to know what them injuns were up to.

The Army must have done a fine job reading puffs of smoke emerging from under a series of tactically placed fires, built on high spots amidst the tall grass and the buffalo.

Sitting Bull and the rest of those good ol' boys did give it up eventually.

You'll recall that, even if they weren't citizens of the Republic at the time, they didn't like the program set out for them. They discussed it amongst themselves, and through their own intelligence network.

But the government didn't have the capability to spy on, or listen to, talks in tee pees, conducted amiably under the smoke of peace pipes. I'd wager though that some colonels and Indian agents at the time wanted to.

Why should I be happy that the government today, with the technology that can track everything I might do or say, might be in a position to monitor any puffs of dissent that I might choose to emit, whether on the street or in my home?

I don't accept that they're going to do it to "protect" me.

As many of you are aware, Reid has scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow around noon on the SSIC version of the FISA bill, ignoring Senator Dodd's hold. Dodd will have 35 minutes of floor time before the vote, during which he is expected to introduce an amendment stripping retroactive immunity from the bill. He also has stated that he intends to filibuster any bill which still retains retroactive immunity.

Biden, Clinton and Obama issued statements earlier in this process, stating that they would support the filibuster. If cloture is invoked (that is, if there are 60 votes tomorrow to end debate on the SSIC version of the bill), then the final vote on the bill is scheduled for Wednesday.

It is my understanding (but someone who knows the Senate better, please correct me if I have this wrong) that Dodd's (and any other pending) amendment would be debated and voted on in this interim period.

I am disturbed that there are no statements from Biden, Clinton or Obama that I can find on this issue having been issued since Reid took his action Friday. Further, the websites of these candidates, where schedules are published, still continue to show events for them in Iowa tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning will be critical. By clicking through on the links at http://chrisdodd.com/filibuster, you can place phone calls to the Washington offices of Biden, Clinton and Obama. I encourage everyone to flood these offices with calls once Washington opens for business tomorrow morning. I will start calling at 9 am. Please ask these Senators to return to Washington and support the Constitution and the rule of law, or any outcome in the campaign in which they find themselves now will be meaningless.

It is crucial to contact other Senators as well. I intend to call Senator Byrd's office and ask him to please address the Senate on the appropriateness of Reid's actions. I suspect that the refusal to honor Senator Dodd's hold is very much against Senate tradition and it would be powerful if the longest-serving and self-appointed historian of the Senate took the floor to state this. Every Senate vote is important. If we can rally 41 patriotic Senators, the SSIC version of the bill will die.

May it rest in peace. Better yet, may it rot in hell.

Could you imagine if the National Surveillance State were dligently focused on monitoring gun purchases and gun owners?

(And how do the NRA and wingers know it's not?)

What bout if the National Securty State started eroding protections and laws governing "property rights"?

Why the selective sacrifice of the Constitution?

Proves they're authoritarians and capitalists.

I would like to remind you, Shooter, that Bush was directly warned by our supposedly "blind" intelligence agencies that Sept. 11 was going to happen and he did absolutely nothing. Any fool could have read that Aug. 6 PDB and chosen, at a minimum, to beef up airport security. He did nothing.

Sorry hag but that isn't true. If you want to pursue that avenue, you'll have to explain some 36 similar warnings since 1997, the lack of hijacked plane into a building scenario, no time or place, the 70 ongoing FBI investigations mentioned and multiple warnings to the FAA that summer. This is the kind of misinformation that makes people crazy over something that isn't true. I hope you're offering this out of ignorance and not maliciousness.

the only reason you haven't heard anything about eavesdropping is because the government has flatly defied courts, congress, and anyone else legally entitled to the information, and declared it none of your business.

In other words you have no idea whether any eavesdropping has taken place that's inappropriate and just assumed guilt. You'd be popular at a lynching.

They want to continue to spy for whatever list of reasons, but they don't want any oversight whatsoever. What is it they're doing that makes them fight so hard against any oversight?

All of their objections related to "it's cumbersome" or "we'll alert the enemy" and the like are stupid, rationalizations you'd expect to hear on a grade school yard. Why are they so opposed to operating under the law when the Congress seems so hell bent on giving them whatever they want? Is what they're doing so patently offensive, even to their allies in Congress, they couldn't sell it if it were laid out in secret, let alone made public? It still doesn't make sense.

I am sure it’s just me, but I am having trouble seeing any point to your posts beyond various misdirections. Would you mind, terribly, clarifying your position?

IF telecommunications companies have broken the law in acquiescing to illegal information requests by the government, do you think said companies should be subject to prosecution?