Authorized eves dropping?  OMG!!!!

Has anyone read "Body Guard of Lies" by Anthony Cave Brown?

After all Winston Churchill let a city be bomded rather than give up intelligene secrets.

Are we, politically correct creatures, out of step here?

Those were unprecedentd circumstances with Britain's existence at stake.Churchill figured that breaking the german high command's code would yield more decisive benefits by not letting the enemy suspect that his code was broken.It happens sometimes in wartime that a commander offers one unit as bait to entrap the enemy by
unleashing an unexpected attack by his other units.....that's why wars are so dirty!

The problem we have is the 4th amendment, which does not permit unreasonable search and/or seizure; and this constitutional provision was made a condition of the Federal union, and has been observed well over 200 years.

Disregarding it or any other term of the social contract risks fragmentation of the nation.  I am dismayed by the number of people, especially in high office, who fail to appreciate this.

As to the policy of spying:  deception is an essential part of conflict; but honesty is essential to cooperation.   A democracy depends on the assumption that the interests of most people in the nation coincide; and as we have seen, we have arrested over 2000 ethnic Arabs, and yet prosecuted none; we have arrested US citizens in the USA and held them indefinitely without charges.  This has uncanny parallels to the mass incarceration of the Nisei during WW2, which the Supreme Court upheld in the Korematsu case; but which years later the nation came to regret deeply.

As we know from our own history, let alone the history of others, spying and any other secret police activity is extremely dangerous to democracy, and easily subverted to evil purposes that would destroy the American nation.

A nation that presumes its citizens are its enemies is condemned by its own fearfulness.

Our adversaries are a small group of individuals with a medieval ideology, who cannot control any fixed population or territory.   They are determined to destroy our way of life; and amazingly, we simply surrender it to them in fear of these, these insects, and start to behave much as they do, because we are so thoughtless that we do not understand ourselves, let alone our enemies.  Their only useful weapon is ideas, and yet they handle that weapon more adroitly than the leaders of the American nation, with all its history of intellectual and moral acheivement.

It is pathetic that we should pour our resources into occupying a country after we discover that there is no real terrorist threat, instead of pursuing these few hundred or thousand criminals.   I cannot escape the suspicion that it is not the terrorists who are the threat to us; it is our own clumsiness that is the threat.

That a President should blatantly violate his duty to the people that he depends upon for cooperation  is a dangerous sign.   What if the people decided that they should violate their duties to the  government, in the same way?  Is it reasonable that they could feel the government has breached the social contract?   The leadership seems to be playing with fire, without so much as realizing what fire is.    

Is the problem that we are being led by a chimp?  Ie., a person whose own White House revealed the identity of a CIA operative, apparantely in a fit of spite?

the "right" to health care and abortions lie?

Or for that matter, 2sense's favorite feedbarrel, the NIH.

Looking forward to your consistent views.

Chowder, I Can't Hear You!

we should instead spy on people that we *can* find something out about, that is, Americans.

But it's far more logical to fire the incoherent idiot who doesn't know what the 4th amendment is, the incompetent motherfuckers who can't run effective foreign intelligence networks, possibly because they are so damn busy compromising those operatives.   It might be a good idea to show them the inside of Leavenworth for a few years, too.

war is conducted by a state with the responsibility of territory and a population.  Criminals do not have that responsibility.

Al Qaeda is a criminal alliance, it is not a state; and we legitimize them by the very act of claiming that they are enemies at war with us, and not merely a international criminal conspiracy, to be handled as pirates.

Americans would be equally willing to pursue criminals or enemies; but there are predators among us who understand that the chance of a terrorist attack affecting them personally is negligible, and recognize their opportunity to exploit fear to their own political and financial benefit.    These people claim that judges are more dangerous than terrorists, and are supported by televangelists and renegade bloodsucking scamsters, people who would sell their own mothers down the river.

They need to be tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

Ah, Bill, this assumes that YOU went to the good afterlife place.

Some of us have reason to doubt that  this actually came to pass.

you have to be careful where you, or others, might take this line of reasoning.

Fer example, the Michael Moore types COULD argue that the US gov't had sufficient forewarning of 091101 and deliberately failed to act in order to provide the pretext for US intervention on a massive scale in the Near East/Persian Gulf/Iraq War.  See? [Hmm, I think this arguement may already have been advanced somewhere].

[I would argue that we ought to ponder what info our erstwhile allies had or didn't have, when they had it, and what was shared and what was withheld.  Now THAT would really be worth knowing].

Just like the isolationalists in WWII who argued that FDR deliberately allowed the Japanese Empire to attack Pearl Harbor in order to provide a pretext for US entry into WWII.  See?

I think it's just the overall perception of Bush's total foreign policy ineptness that makes these things seem so much more objectionable than they are, and they're pretty objectionable.  But many would dismiss this as a necessary evil if there was greater confidence in Bush & company and the Neocons who ruin, er run, our benighted foreign policy.

Bush has nicer hair than Churchill, so I wouldn't worry.  Did anyone honestly believe that the government here did NOT tap our conversations, regardless of president or party.  SUCKERS!

defense of the 4th amendment somehow involves health care, abortions and/or the NIH?  Or that the constitution is the sole source of law?

Something tells me that asking this question is futile; but I'm looking forward to your, ah, coherent view.  

BTW, it will help if you show your work.

That's why I emphasized that britain was in mortal danger! Certainly, there's no comparison between this bunch of terrorists we face now and the german Wehrmacht in WWII.....I agree wholeheartedly that all recent revelations point to an ulterior motive of keeping the GOP entrenched in power thru fear-mongering.

about your own personal threshold.

How many Americans need to die before you consider the Islamofacists to be a mortal threat to the U.S.?

duplicity, but laziness.

Republicans truly appreciate perversions; they are so excited at the thought of perversion, that they will make an honest effort to tap EVERY phone; whereas the Democrats are satisfied with making up a few kinks as they go along.

That is the problem with the Democrats, they have no ambition.  All they want to do is fuck their receptionists, while the Republicans do their level best to fuck the entire world.

Have you heard about Jesus calling the Pope with the good news and bad news, that the 2nd coming was at hand, but he was calling from salt lake city?

Well, I'm not too proud to take advantage of an opportunity.

Since you mentioned abortions, I want to know, (because I'm standing in for Santa Claus today, and I have this letter from Ted Nugent, and he wants a D-30 for Christmas, because he wants a good multipurpose tool for bagging deer, Canucks and the swarthy natives of Detroit) and he wants to know how much of what types of ammunition the 2nd amendment allows him to stockpile; and my legal opinion is of course that the answer is, as much as you can buy; but the best experts on the constitution are not retired Chief Justices, but yahoos who never read the constitution (because of course, they CAN'T read).  So would you do an old man a favor, and take a poll of your drinking buddies, and let me know what they think?

-- Modified on 12/20/2005 12:49:46 PM

Do you have responses to the various comments?

Or what?

Are you referring to the ones that come from the middle east, or the ones currently running the government?  It's getting tough to follow the game without a score card.

Churchill looked like a toad.  Sounded like a genius.  Turned out to be much closer to a genius than a toad.

Bush looks like he works out.   Sounds like he drops those weights on his head much too often.   Turning out to be much closer to a moron than a weightlifter.

[sigh]   Bush makes Jimmy Carter look capable by comparison.  Makes us wish for an obnoxious asshole like LBJ.

terrorists.  Eliminate the will to personally close with & destroy, and all that is left is an asshole.

Please do not confuse bloodthirsty but well-meaning terrorists with the unmitigated assholes of the RNC.

Bring back Kennedy - he knew how to start conflicts and loose them the right way.

Looking forward to your consistent appearance.

-- Modified on 12/21/2005 12:25:06 PM

I never made those assertions.

How's that for coherent?

Chowder, I Can't Hear You!

"""Since you mentioned abortions, I want to know, (because I'm standing in for Santa Claus today, and I have this letter from Ted Nugent, and he wants a D-30 for Christmas, because he wants a good multipurpose tool for bagging deer, Canucks and the swarthy natives of Detroit) and he wants to know how much of what types of ammunition the 2nd amendment allows him to stockpile;""""

Yopur question has nothing whatsoever to do with abortions. Perhaps the incoherence you seek is that which is rattling around in your head.....?

Or perhaps, you are the one with all the drinkin' buddies....?

Whatever..keep up the good work.

Chowder, I Can't Hear You!

the bushaters grief is too much to be around for long.

i come here and within minutes i'm putting a muzzle to my noodle....

that's not good, especially when i use hollowpoints...

Chowder,,,,you know the rest..

Thanks for that heads up.  I was confused.  Probably just the pre-holiday drinking on my part.

loaded with hollowpoints, and still do no damage, you must be about as competent as the Bush administration.

guaranteed firearm is perfectly capable of an abortion.   Besides, why should incoherence bother you?  Looked to me like that was your goal.

your questions are a new subject.

I have no interest in abortions, etc.

why the Bush administration isn't looking for Islamofascists, instead of willy-nilly trying to piss off ordinary ragheads enough to kill Americans?

Let's invade, oh, Egypt.  We should be able to nuke Cairo and whack a lot of them right off the bat.  They're Islamic, enough of them are fascist, let's just do it.  

The fact that indiscriminate warfare is the best possible recruiting policy for the terrorists would not be lost on a Vietnam veteran.   But the Vietnam veteran left the Bush administration, so it must be alright.

How many of our own people do we have to kill before we figure out that standing in a kill zone is not the brightest idea that even a Republican ever had?

that's something the previous admin could only do with interns.....

gotta love that trailer trash now,

dontcha?

Just sharing.