Somebody ban every but me, please. wwwaaaaa/ :)

Be careful. You run the risk of being banned. The street runs both ways after all

"@rufus11

I don't know where you are posting from, but we usually don't start drinking here for another hour or so, even on a Friday.

Cheers, bottoms up, with a "snit"! (That's what you call the shot of beer you get with a Bloody Mary in Cincinnati or maybe it was Milwaukee)

-- Derbig Mooser "

Somebody ban every but me, please. wwwaaaaa/ :)

I am the largest member of the North American Deer family, with palmate antlers spreading up to seven feet, weighing up to 1500 lbs. I dine on hay and nuts and berries, and the occasional rare steak or pork chop, grilled, washed down with a bottle of plonk.

Is sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy". If you are going to mention it, at least get it right.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008
/Military_official_fired_for_refusing_to_0711.html

The Department of Defense has attempted for years to manipulate popular opinion towards the war in Iraq by limiting press coverage of military funerals.

When Gina Gray, a media specialist with a long history of working with the military, became public affairs director at Arlington National Cemetery earlier this year, she found that officials there had started hampering media coverage even in cases where the families gave permission. When she tried to uphold the existing regulations, she was harassed by her supervisor, demoted, and then fired.

Gray appeared on MSNBC's Verdict with David Shuster on Thursday for her first live interview, along with her attorney, Mark Zaid, who has a history of involvement in high-profile cases involving government secrecy.

"I had no idea I was going to be fired," Gray explained, "but I certainly ... butted heads. ... I wanted there to be clear rules ... and cemetery officials felt like they were the exception to the rule, that they didn't have to play by the same rules."

[...]

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much, much more at link ...

I don't know where you are posting from, but we usually don't start drinking here for another hour or so, even on a Friday.

Cheers, bottoms up, with a "snit"! (That's what you call the shot of beer you get with a Bloody Mary in Cincinnati or maybe it was Milwaukee)

Thanks for the link to the Lessig post. I agree that there may be something intellectually unsavory here. (One comment that I especially don't like these days, arising in connection with Obama's taking unexpected positions, is that Obama never really was that much of a progressive. It's especially irksome when it's pointed out with a self-satisfied air: "I've known that all along, so this suits me just fine.") But is this really inconsistent of Lessig? Two days ago, Lessig criticized Obama about his FISA stance. Yesterday, Lessig writes that the discussion about Obama and FISA is "hysteria". These two positions might be inconsistent, but they don't strike me as obviously so. From Lessig's perspective, (1) Obama has taken a wrong position on FISA, but (2) it's time to move on. Perhaps I'm being too generous with Lessig here, but one can disagree with (2) (and with the characterization of those who disagree with (2) as hysterics) and yet still see (1) and (2) as consistent.

"I cannot quite credit...

...what I am reading in the Letters. It is obvious to me that there is a greater danger in the Government not vacuuming up all the communications, than there is if they do.

"

not all fascsits are republcains. It is an idealogy. How are you any differant than bill o'reilly then?

Sad to watch what we have fought agaisnt infect our movement. It's sad to watch. I guess power curropts. Absolute power corruots absolutly. don't surcum to the gop mr greenwald. Freedom is what seperates them from us. tehy are slvaes, teh borg, clones. do not turn yoru people like rush/hannity.o'reilly do. Be a bigger man.

I am amazed by the attempt to make a distinction between data mining and wiretaps. ...Nutella

************************

Me too. Wire tapping is so old school. Data mining includes everything they can get their hands on. Listen/read the interview Amy Goodman has with Mark Klein the technician who released the internal ATT documents after the NY Times broke the news.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/7/att_t_whistleblower_urges_against_immunity

...what I am reading in the Letters. It is obvious to me that there is a greater danger in the Government not vacuuming up all the communications, than there is if they do.

Has no one here ever committed a crime, or been involved in a conspiracy? Look, the rule is: always involve as few people as possible. The greater the technological effort made to vacuum up communications, the greater number of people involved in doing it. That is ever more people who will know that the Government's contentions of "secret terrorist cells" and "inevitable next attacks" are a fabrication. Since the government does not have to substantiate any of their contentions, they have a much better chance of being successful if they just make shit up! That leaves the fewest number of people who can challenge them, or "rat" them out.

The more stuff they get in, the more ridiculous their contentions of "secret plots" can be shown to be.

Much better just to make up your boogiemen out of the whole cloth. Didn't we see this in the run-up to the war?

And if you check the history on any surveillance society, you will see this is the way it works. All they have to do is convince people they are listening to everything. Besides the chilling effect of paranoia, when the government announces there is a fleet of aerial drones loaded with dirty bombs hidden in Detroit, there will be no-one who can say "I handled those communications, and conscience and patriotism compels me to say they're full of shit.

What the new law gives them, more than anything else, is the power to announce new "dangers" and "imminent threats" without anyone being able to say "Where and when, and from who did you hear this?"

If you have that power, it's to your disadvantage to have any actual communications, which might be discovered, exposed, and show them for liars. Much better to say "Can't tell you that, national security!"

And under those circumstances, they will make shit up. Even the goddam Founding Fathers knew that, and Russia, the Nazis, and East Germany, and many other places have proved it.

I don't worry that the whole government is listening to my communications- Actually, if you think about it, you have more to worry about if they don't, as long as they have the powers given to them by this bill.

That's been their pattern, hasn't it? Announce the big imminent threat, and insist something must be done! By the time the lie or distortion come to light, it's too late! Colin Powell, anyone?