The House passed a $513 billion defense authorization bill yesterday that includes language intended to allow chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus at public military ceremonies, undercutting new Air Force and Navy guidelines on religion.
The government apparently has even bigger plans “to create a database of every call EVER made within the nation’s borders” to identify and track suspected terrorists. Think about that. Every phone call ever made. No, not so fast.
The editorial then goes on to compare this effort to the infamous Admiral Poindexter-led Total Information Awareness (TIA) trial balloon, which was unceremoniously punctured after immediate and overwhelming congressional and public outcry. It also looks at it in relation to the secret (read “illegal”) NSA surveillance program targeting overseas communications initiated or terminating inside the USA, saying that it can be argued that it’s justified with modest judicial oversight. But get this…
But this vast mining of domestic phone records, this is something else…Why would the government seek and STORE records of EVERY telephone call to your doctor, our lawyer, your next-door-neighbor. TELL US.
But you know, I can see the McLiar/Vader side of this argument. I mean after all, if this program had been initiated during the early days of the Clinton administration perhaps all those phone calls made between Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and any other TERRORIST in their cell would have tipped off the NSA and FBI to their heinous plot to kill innocent children attending a day care center inside the Murrah Federal Building in 1995. I’m CERTAIN that all of those domestic terrorists targeting doctors and patients at LEGAL abortion clinics would have been captured and punished. Hell, they may have been able to find and prosecute all those pesky pornographers who so vex the religious right. At the very least, this data-mining may have resulted in finding out which oil company executives participated in planning and writing the McLiar/Vader energy policy.
In the end, I know that this kind of policy couldn’t have existed under a Clinton administration – even if he had advocated it. After all, he had a hostile house which would have been happy to find ANY EXCUSE to impeach him... and with this idiotic, ass-backwards, and moronic policy, they'd have been right to!
Police State (n.) A state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic, and political life of the people, especially by means of a secret police force.
From CNN this morning:
Faced with growing pressure from Southern states, the Bush administration wants the military to come up with ideas on beefing up the U.S. border with Mexico. In back-to-back moves this week, the Pentagon began exploring ways to lend support at the border, while the House voted to allow the Homeland Security Department in limited cases to use soldiers in the region.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/12/border.defense.ap/index.html
President Bush’s job-approval rating has fallen to its lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll. Of 1,003 U.S. adults surveyed in a telephone poll, 29% think Mr. Bush is doing an “excellent or pretty good” job as president, down from 35% in April and significantly lower than 43% in January. Approval ratings for Congress overall also sank, and now stand at 18%.
The class action claim filed by Michael Cohn, a Los Angeles psychologist, alleges that thousands of males and fans under age 18 are entitled to $4,000 in damages each because they were treated unequally at last May's promotion. Women over 18 received the gifts.
...
The team responded to a complaint letter that Cohn wrote last June by sending him four tote bags and a letter stating the team "ran out of the item that day and had to order more."
"They claimed they didn't have any more bags, but my client said there was a mountain of bags stacked so high a show dog couldn't have jumped over them," said Alfred Rava, Cohn's San Diego-based attorney.
Cohn could not be reached for comment.
This weekend's Mother's Day promotion will offer tote bags to the first 25,000 fans over age 18, rather than cater specifically to women. Mead would not say whether the change was in response to Cohn's complaint.
Rava said the altered promotion still violates the civil rights of fans under age 18.
Sports franchises have given away things for years and years, often to different groups for whom the gift would be particularly intriguing. The Angels, I'm sure, thought that giving women a gift on Mother's Day was a reasonably logical thing to do. When he asked for one later, they sent him four (clearly demostrating the immense value of the bags). Now he wants $4000. A person. For everyone who didn't get the bags. I'm not sure where the show dogs entered the equation, however.
You know, if this were some 16 year old woman with a child who was being told she couldn't have the gift because she wasn't old enough, then it would be a stupid argument, but I'd listen. This guy makes the rest of us look bad.In the wake of the nomination of Michael Hayden to head gut and marginalize the CIA, we hear that at his old gig, they are tracking every phone call we make. Lovely.
The general also indicated that the problem with legality and the NSA wiretapping isn't the wiretapping, it is THE LAW. His solution? WEAKEN THE LAW?
I would like to point out to the general that more is in play here than a statute. There happens to be that thing which he clearly indicated that he did not understand a while back, that pesky 4th Amendment and probable cause and all that. FISA, with its retroactive warrant procedures, is of dubious constitutionality today. he 4th Amendment is the floor beyond which no statutory authorization can go. And if we're playing "how low can you go" and FISA is the limbo stick, it is lying on that floor. Try going below that.
of you have sat, and perhaps thought, with us!
