Defiant Bush admits breaking law

[kapkomet]

I wonder how gung ho you would be if instead of Middle Eastern American males they were targeting the males of you or your family's ethinicity.  Might not be as dissmissive and apologetic about wire taps and the like.

If the shoe fits...

 

If they listen to someone who's innocent once, and nothing comes of it, I bet that's done and over. If you have nothing to hide, it doesn't matter much.

[BigSqwert]

If the shoe fits...

 

If they listen to someone who's innocent once, and nothing comes of it, I bet that's done and over.  If you have nothing to hide, it doesn't matter much.

 

You would have loved Communist Russia. Sounds like your kind of place. They'd even check your mail for you before you had a chance to read it. But as long as you had nothing to hide no problem.

 

Better yet, why don't you let me listen in on all of your phone conversations starting today? Just in case. You never know who's a terrorist. I want to be able to help my country whenever I can. You don't have a problem with that do you?

Edited December 24, 2005 by BigSqwert

[Balta1701]

If the shoe fits...

 

If they listen to someone who's innocent once, and nothing comes of it, I bet that's done and over.  If you have nothing to hide, it doesn't matter much.

So just because 1 call from the middle east wasn't from Zawahiri, you can assume that all the calls coming in aren't from him? Man, you'd do terrible at the NSA.

[NorthSideSox72]

You jest but your example is already in practice.  Go to any military town's local watering hole about 2 AM and see the coppers hanging around waiting to nail drunk soldiers stumbling to their cars.  You just proved my point.

 

OK, so let's go a step further with this example.

 

To me, one thing is OK here, and one is not. It IS OK, I feel, for cops to hang out near a bar where people tend to get drunk and drive. Similarly, it's OK to hang out near the night club where fights tend to start. The police are reacting to a BEHAVIOR.

 

Now, what is NOT OK, is to pull over people I see with military stickers in the windows or that drive cars that I see parked outside the questionable night club. It's not OK in this instance because it's profiling, and because it judges a whole sector of the population unjustly (thus, in a sense, degrading they freedom).

 

Do you see the difference I am illustrating? Behavior is choice. If you choose to act like an imbecile, you're at risk of getting trouble, and should be. You have in essence given up some of your freedoms by choice. But BEING someone or something, like say a racial group, is not a choice. Therefore if the police profile based on it, then they have taken away that choice, and are degrading their freedoms.

[mr_genius]

OK, so let's go a step further with this example.

 

To me, one thing is OK here, and one is not.  It IS OK, I feel, for cops to hang out near a bar where people tend to get drunk and drive.  Similarly, it's OK to hang out near the night club where fights tend to start.  The police are reacting to a BEHAVIOR.

 

 

 

 

lol

 

than you would support bugging Mosques (that is where the terrorists go, like drunks go to a bar).

[FlaSoxxJim]

lol

 

than you would support bugging Mosques (that is where the terrorists go, like drunks go to a bar).

 

lol

 

A whole lot more terrorists in this country have hung out in Christian churches than in mosques.

[NorthSideSox72]

lol

 

than you would support bugging Mosques (that is where the terrorists go, like drunks go to a bar).

 

Clearly, this conversation is lost on you.

[mr_genius]

lol

 

A whole lot more terrorists in this country have hung out in Christian churches than in mosques.

 

Osama used to attend St.Rita's all the time.

[mr_genius]

Clearly, this conversation is lost on you.

 

 

it certainly isn't

 

Al-Quida is just fighting the evil white male oppressor which is the Great Satan (united states).

 

IMPEACH BUSH! IMPEACH BUSH!

 

NO OIL FOR OIL!

[FlaSoxxJim]

Osama used to attend St.Rita's all the time.

Figures. I always knew Rita guys were assholes.

[Rex Kickass]

Don't even get me started on Bingo night...

[WilliamTell]

I just hate hearing this race card get thrown around. If they were only targeting white people nothing would be getting thrown around. No one ever really makes complaints that teenage boys have higher car insurance than teenage girls, which could be called for sexism. But the reason behind that is because teenage boys get in more worse accidents than teenage girls. Just like other ethnic and racial backgrounds have been more apt to get involved in this sort of thing. It's nothing against the Muslims or other groups in my opinion. I have nothing against nearly all of them.

Edited December 24, 2005 by WilliamTell

[kapkomet]

You would have loved Communist Russia.  Sounds like your kind of place.  They'd even check your mail for you before you had a chance to read it.  But as long as you had nothing to hide no problem. 

 

Better yet, why don't you let me listen in on all of your phone conversations starting today?  Just in case.  You never know who's a terrorist.  I want to be able to help my country whenever I can.  You don't have a problem with that do you?

Yep. I would have loved it there. Those f***ers were my kind of government. Radiation detectors were not targets of PEOPLE. They were targeting AREAS. Commie f*** that I am.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I wonder how gung ho you would be if instead of Middle Eastern American males they were targeting the males of you or your family's ethinicity.  Might not be as dissmissive and apologetic about wire taps and the like.

 

 

If people of Polish ( Im Polish ) descent were known to be plotting and committing acts of terrorism then I would have absolutely no problems with Law Enforcement profiling Polish people. If they ran my record they'd see Im a card-carrying Republican, NRA member, military guy and go "next".

 

Wait, I just thought of something, every time a polak gets behind the wheel of a car he commits an act of terrorism.

 

Seriously though, if people would stop whining about Law Enforcement and just co-operate with them then life would be a lot easier. Some people here make it sound like Law Enforcement has nothing better to do than harass people just for the sake of harassing them.

[BigSqwert]

If people of Polish ( Im Polish ) descent were known to be plotting and committing acts of terrorism then I would have absolutely no problems with Law Enforcement profiling Polish people.  If they ran my record they'd see Im a card-carrying Republican, NRA member, military guy and go "next". 

 

Wait,  I just thought of something,  every time a polak gets behind the wheel of a car he commits an act of terrorism.  

 

Seriously though, if people would stop whining about Law Enforcement and just co-operate with them then life would be a lot easier.  Some people here make it sound like Law Enforcement has nothing better to do than harass people just for the sake of harassing them.

 

Just seems anti-American to support the government s***ting all over the constitution and violating our civil rights. Thousands of good Americans died for us to have those rights and now we could care less about them.

Edited December 24, 2005 by BigSqwert

[kapkomet]

Just seems anti-American to support the government s***ting all over the constitution and violating our civil rights.  Thousands of good Americans died for us to have those rights and now we could care less about them.

I'm so sick of hearing that generalization. OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH MY f***ING RIGHTS ARE BEING TAKEN AWAY!

 

f***ing WAAAAAAAH. Don't get involved with crackpipe assholes that want to blow us up, and guess what? YOUR rights won't be taken away. These people want to KILL our rights. What part of that don't you people get?

[BigSqwert]

YOUR rights won't be taken away.

 

They already have been. Whether it is me specifically, which I will never know, or another American citizen, our rights have already been violated. What part of that don't you get?

[BigSqwert]

Great article from The Nation. Posted on 12/20/2005:

The Hidden State Steps Forward

 

Jonathan Schell

 

When the New York Times revealed that George W. Bush had ordered the National Security Agency to wiretap the foreign calls of American citizens without seeking court permission, as is indisputably required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, he faced a decision. Would he deny the practice, or would he admit it? He admitted it. But instead of expressing regret, he took full ownership of the deed, stating that his order had been entirely justified, that he had in fact renewed it thirty times, that he would continue to renew it and--going even more boldly on the offensive--that those who had made his law-breaking known had committed a "shameful act." As justification, he offered two arguments, one derisory, the other deeply alarming. The derisory one was that Congress, by authorizing him to use force after September 11, had authorized him to suspend FISA, although that law is unmentioned in the resolution. Thus has Bush informed the members of a supposedly co-equal branch of government of what, unbeknownst to themselves, they were thinking when they cast their vote. The alarming argument is that as Commander in Chief he possesses "inherent" authority to suspend laws in wartime. But if he can suspend FISA at his whim and in secret, then what law can he not suspend? What need is there, for example, to pass or not pass the Patriot Act if any or all of its provisions can be secretly exceeded by the President?

 

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.

 

But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

 

The danger is not abstract or merely symbolic. Bush's abuses of presidential power are the most extensive in American history. He has launched an aggressive war ("war of choice," in today's euphemism) on false grounds. He has presided over a system of torture and sought to legitimize it by specious definitions of the word. He has asserted a wholesale right to lock up American citizens and others indefinitely without any legal showing or the right to see a lawyer or anyone else. He has kidnapped people in foreign countries and sent them to other countries, where they were tortured. In rationalizing these and other acts, his officials have laid claim to the unlimited, uncheckable and unreviewable powers he has asserted in the wiretapping case. He has tried to drop a thick shroud of secrecy over these and other actions.

 

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

 

The Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form. Until recently, these were developing and growing in the twilight world of secrecy. Even within the executive branch itself, Bush seemed to govern outside the normally constituted channels of the Cabinet and to rely on what Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff has called a "cabal." Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill reported the same thing. Cabinet meetings were for show. Real decisions were made elsewhere, out of sight. Another White House official, John DiIulio, has commented that there was "a complete lack of a policy apparatus" in the White House. "What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm." As in many Communist states, a highly centralized party, in this case the Republican Party, was beginning to forge a parallel apparatus at the heart of government, a semi-hidden state-within-a-state, by which the real decisions were made.

 

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

 

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

 

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

Edited December 24, 2005 by BigSqwert

[kapkomet]

ZIG HEIL!

:rolly

 

Now how have YOU personally lost your rights again?

[BigSqwert]

Now how have YOU personally lost your rights again?

Why do you insist on a selfish perspective like that?

 

"How does it affect ME as an individual? Because if it doesn't affect me personally than I don't care. Who cares if it affects thousands of other law-abiding Americans because I only matter."

 

Great attitude!

Edited December 25, 2005 by BigSqwert

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Seriously though, if people would stop whining about Law Enforcement and just co-operate with them then life would be a lot easier.  Some people here make it sound like Law Enforcement has nothing better to do than harass people just for the sake of harassing them.

Given government's track record (Palmer Raids, COINTELPRO etc. etc. etc.), then yes, they have abused power. Let's not forget that the government has even recently investigated those notorious terrorists the Quakers.

[mr_genius]

Given government's track record (Palmer Raids, COINTELPRO etc. etc. etc.), then yes, they have abused power.

 

 

contrary to what your sociology teacher has been preaching to you, compared to most governments, ours has done a pretty good job protecting it's citizens rights.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

contrary to what your sociology teacher has been preaching to you, compared to most governments, ours has done a pretty good job protecting it's citizens rights.

Actually I've done lots of my own research on the topic so please preach to me more in a condescending tone.

 

Please tell me how extrajudicial murders (as seen in COINTELPRO, for example) keep me more secure or sending tapes telling MLK Jr. to kill himself make me more secure.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro

[mr_genius]

Actually I've done lots of my own research on the topic so please preach to me more in a condescending tone.

 

Please tell me how extrajudicial murders (as seen in COINTELPRO, for example) keep me more secure or sending tapes telling MLK Jr. to kill himself make me more secure.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro

 

 

Uh, all I said was the U.S. isn't as 'evil' as you have been lead to believe. I don't think the government should be able to ignore the 4th amendment, so I agree with you in a lot of ways, just not on the 'blame america always and first' stuff.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Uh, all I said was the U.S. isn't as 'evil' as you have been lead to believe.  I don't think the government should be able to ignore the 4th amendment, so I agree with you in a lot of ways, just not on the 'blame america always and first' stuff.

I'm just trying to really dispel the "Well, I have nothing to hide" defense that some are attempting to use in this thread. Nothing personal.