Letters to the Editor
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Congratulations Glenn and everyone..
A job done well..
All I can do is offer one further place that some recruiting can be done for this sort of effort.
I've been kicked off Democratic Underground several times now since they are extremely allergic to what I have to say.
However, there are some good people there who will call and get out the troops if Paul Revere alerts them.
'Nuff said.
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@ bebop-o
Sorry for the late reply -- I was out registering voters again. Three Democrats in two hours! In my part of Arizona, that's cause for celebration.
Anyway, yes, Howard Shanker has been deeply involved in environmental cases in this area. He's worked for the Navajo and Hopi tribal councils on several issues concerned with developers despoiling sacred areas, and has fought -- successfully and unsuccessfully -- some very important local cases against developers who've ignored or skirted their existing legal responsibilites. Land use and watershed law in Arizona is, to put it mildly, a horror show -- quite typical of the West, but enough to give environmentalists a headache just from reading it.
The point of my original comment, though, was that we talk a lot -- here, and on other blogs -- about supporting candidates in the primaries who are with us on the issues, whether or not they're the party leadership's favorites. In my opinion, Howard is a case in point. We have a number of Democratic candidates running in my district who are acceptable -- quite good, actually -- but Howard is the only one I know of who's made a statement supporting Dodd, or who even seems aware of the constitutional crisis we DFH blog commenters agree that we're facing. That for me is reason enough to support him, and to recommend him to others. I suspect that this same thing is going on in the primaries in other congressional districts and in other states as well.
I'd just hate for us to let such opportunities slip. If you've got someone like this running, get behind them, especially now, when Glenn and others are starting to have a genuinely effective impact on our public discourse.
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Dang!
Knew that NY Times article I submitted looked familiar. Glenn linked to it this morning. Duh!
This could be worth a grin. From an interview Salon did with Harry Reid in 2006 reproduced at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/18/73338/137/808/423291
Are the blogs just another constituency for you, sort of an online AFL-CIO or something?
I wish that were the case, but it's simply not the truth. I've come to learn one thing: They're not controllable. If you do something they like, they pat you on the back. If you do something they don't like, they kick you in the rear end.
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@ perris
I ALSO don’t want depraved individuals use the cover of government to spy on my wife, I don’t want them using the cover of government to listen in on my daughters private conversations or looking up her dress
I think these other consequences of lawlessness in surveillance were mentioned some time ago, back at UT a good while ago, by a number of smarter people than I. (Sorry, I don't have the links for it, but the thread sure stuck in my mind.) What a number of commenters pointed out was that spying on the general citizenry without regard to law or without oversight always creates other kinds of unofficial illegal and secret surveillance activities, the motives of which have nothing to do with the supposed purpose of the original program.
Like a city in anarchy, looters soon begin to take what they can. The people doing the actual spying -- the apparatchiks and technicians -- often run their own little side scams, for titillation or for profit. They in effect can behave like peeping toms, with the resources of a state. One poster noted that in East Germany, such voyeuristic side-effects of state-sponsored spying were known for blackmail for sex, money, job promotions or better housing.
When law and accountability have been suspended, who shall say nay to the grifters and perverts who take advantage of the opportunity? Officially, their activities do not exist. Their crimes are unacknowledged, undiscoverable and unprosecutable.
As another poster had put it, when the law breaks at the top, it breaks all the way down to the basement.
So perris, it seems if history be any guide, then yes they will try to steal your business assets, and yes they will take a salacious interest in your wife and daughter. Despite your frequent caps usage, what you said is not hyperbole.
This illegal warrantless spying has the potential to have affected us in more ways than we may think.
All the more reasons to make every effort to stop it, and to make certain those who helped carry it out (and thought they were going to get away with it) get what they richly deserve.
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@Anonymust - RE sportswriters
Perhaps we should just start calling the political reporters/pundits of the M$M, Versailles, the Village, etc. what they truly are: Sports Writers. Except that I would hate to impugn sports writers as a class. ;~)
Actually sportswriters generally are more used to being fair. Perhaps it's because their paychecks don't depend on whether the Red Sox or the Yankees win, whereas so many of these Beltway pundits, who are paid in 6 figures, are whores and mercenaries who clearly favor the ruling classes they aspire to belong to.
And if that argument doesn't win you over, Keith Olbermann is an ex sports writer.
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Arne Langsetmo
I don't know where you get the idea that millions of illicit targets were eavesdropped on. This is sort of an eastern European "big lie" that kept people worried.
Eavesdropping on millions of people would require tens of thousands of analysts. Even the Bushies would have found it tough to keep a lid on that.
The issue is, assuming say 10,000 targets or that order of magnitude, who have they been listening to...A couple of hundred congressmen and senators, the DNC, Glenn Greenwald, a few lawyers, Siegelman's defense counsel, etc...
Don't get carried away by vanity, tapping phones is laborious and boring and consists of listening to Pizza orders, phone sex and discussions with someone's parents. Too many phonetaps is a huge, unmanageable effort.
The problem is not the number of people listened into, even if unprecedented in scale, it is the who and the why...