The Bush Administration Trashes Civil Liberties of Americans

The BBQ Pit
181

Sure, be happy to. But why will it be helpful, given our different moral compasses?

The extant level of force the state can extert upon you is moral because nothing in it is immoral. There is no moral distinction between the government doing to you things that others could easily do to you.

In other words, if I, your neighbor, can go pick up your garbage, take it away, and pick through it, then you’ve got to know that your garbage isn’t private. If your phone call to Iran can be monitored by the secret police in Iran, then you’ve got to know that your phone call isn’t private.

There is no moral wrong in the government looking at things of yours that are already not private, just the same as a policeman strolling down the street and happening to glance in your open window. As long as he’s in the same position a member of the public could be, I don’t see any wrongness in it.

182

You can’t say anything you like. If you say something defamatory towards me, I can sue you. If you threaten to kill me, it’s a crime. “Fighting words”, or inciting to riot, are all prohibited.

The right of free speech is not absolute. That’s the law.

The government can search your car without a warrant. They can detain you and search you for weapons without probable cause.

If you want to argue that the text alone of the Constitution should prevail, that’s FINE with me, chief.

But the left is the proponent of the idea that there are emanations and penumbras. There’s no right to abortion in the Constitution. Case law puts it there. So don’t quote the text of the Constitution at me in this argument as though it’s the only authority. Case law interpreting the Constitution is just as important. And that case law says the Constitution forbids only unreasonable searches, where society is prepared to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy. THAT is the rule.

And in this case, society is NOT prepared to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in overseas phone calls.

The Supreme Court has already spoken on this issue. They didn’t exactly agree with your sweeping statement, did they?

You have no idea what you’re talking about here, and it’s a hijack to this thread anyway.

That may have been the guideline that was drilled into your head, and I’m glad it was. But the law allows a bit more flexibility than that.

183

I think it’s tremendously poor public policy, highly unwise. And I agree with you: if Congress knew the President was doing this, they might well have explicitly forbidden it already.

If THAT were the debate, I wouldn’t be debating.

I oppose the position that Bush’s actions were:

[ul]
[li]Illegal[/li][li]Unconstitutional[/li][li]Immoral[/li][li]un-American[/li][li]Evil[/li][li]Realistic grounds for impeachment[/li][/ul]

Do you see the distinction?

184

For those people that cannot, somehow, understand the distinction I’m making…

Let’s assume that in a highly publicized move, Congress decides to place an embargo on the sale of all computer technology to North Korea, an act heretofore legal. Not so much as a calculator can be legally shipped, sold, or in any way given to North Korea. The news is in all the papers. The House and the Senate pass the bill unanimously. It’s rushed to the White House for the President to sign.

Five minutes before he signs it, I complete a sale of computer equipment to North Korea, fully knowing of the impending legislation.

Am I a criminal?

185

Et tu, John?

The same rationale applies to the earlier resolution for use of force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, and that resolution was passed in September 2001.

186

Yes, Bricker. Everybody here simply hates you.

There of course is no possibility that you just might be thoroughly full of shit, that everyone else in this thread has been patiently pointing out exactly how, but that you’re no more capable of considering views you don’t already hold than your (non-paying) client, Mr. Bush, or for that matter, your apparent role model for your behavior here, december.

Indulging your last hypothetical, no, you have not committed a criminal act, but you plainly *have * committed an *immoral * one. It’s a pity that you can’t distinguish between the concepts, as illustrated by your constant mixing of the terms. Just look at your previous post - you acknowledged that you wouldn’t be debating here if you (as the last holdout) were convinced Bush’s actions were actually illegal. But that doesn’t, in normal definitions, have any connection with your other topics, to wit “Immoral, un-American, Evil, Realistic grounds for impeachment”, does it? Not unless you don’t *have * a moral compass outside the narrow letter of the law at all, or even recognize that there is such a thing. To repeat, we have a great deal more to fear from the likes of you than from the likes of Bin Laden.

187

What or who is this december of which you speak?

188

Search the user name and “banned”.

189

But that’s not the law you cited in the post I quoted. And I’ve already noted that earlier resolution :slight_smile: :

190

For a President who vowed the following:

…it certainly seems odd that nearly everything he does comes down to some niggling argument by a minion of his as to what is the legal definition of this or the tortured interpretation of that.

191

Why does policy like this always have to turned into some Orwellian conspiracy rather than the government actually trying to protect us? Why must the potential for abuse assumed to be SOP? If you’re innocent you’ve got nothing to worry about. Fucking relax.

192

You’re fucking kidding, right?

193

So the argument boils down to one thing … the governmen can do anything it wants, at any time. They do not have to support the ethics or legality of it. They make it legal and constitutional simply by doing it. Isn’t that the same argument Nixon tried to use? Isn’t that the argument in the “Yoo doctrine”? If that IS the case, then we don’t need any laws on the books. We don’t need a Congress to fight over and write laws because, again, everything the government chooses to do is legal. We don’t need a Supreme Court, because the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and anything the government does is legal, again by the “Nixon definition” and the “Yoo doctrine”. Just let the government do whatever. After all, if they do it, then by definition it is legal. I have issues with that. Big isues.

194

Nope.

195

As conservatives here are so wont to do, let me give you some electoral advice: Please encourage the Republicans to run on this platform.

196

Why? Why should we fucking relax?

People think oppression shows up in dramatically, suddenly, in full-fledged regalia so that all can recognize it for what it is. Actually, it develops slowly and incrementally, through legal precedent. Excused by hand-waving rationalizations and juvenile eye-rolling.

If Bush is given a pass on this, then it will become SOP. Maybe Bush really is on the up-and-up and wouldn’t take advantage. But what about the next guy who comes along? The guy after that?

We have, under this Adminstration, been made aware of secret prisons.

American citizens have been held without evidence, indefinitely, with no access to lawyers, in undisclosed locations.

We now know about FBI-compiled watch lists that include pacifist groups like the Quakers and community anti-war groups.

And now espionage on American soil, potentially on American citizens.

I’m not a paranoid person and I’m doubtful of most conspiracies. However, this is all very unsettling for me. Bush says the spying has only been done on international calls, but that sounds very convenient. Like a lie to muddy the waters a bit, to confuse the whole legality question. How do I know that my phone calls–the ones I make to my leftwing, uber-radical mother on Sunday nights–were not tapped? How do I know that I won’t be someday whisked away and taken to a secret location, tortured, and denied trial, lawyer, and presumption of innocence? The precedents have already been set. There would be nothing I could do to save myself.

I haven’t done anything wrong, but it wouldn’t matter. People like you would assume I was guilty simply because the government said I was. The same government that said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The same government who said that the Iraqis would embrace us as liberators and saviors.

How do you know that you are protected? Do we really want to revert back the days of McCarthy? To the days of Salem, Massachusetts?

The soup de jour is terrorism. Tomorrow it may be another -ism. You might just be the target. And it will be too late for you to cry “unfair!!” People will tell you that depriving the “guilty” of rights has always been the American way.
So why don’t you fucking get angry and stop being such a sheep!

197

Then you’re a fucking moron.

Here’s a clue: If the government can do it to suspected terrorists then they can do it to you. And if they’re allowed to get away with it, they will, sooner or later. Perhaps not this administration, but someday.

198

Hmph. They do it all the time. Nixon ran on law & order twice, second time got hisself re-elected in a landslide. 'Cause, you know, if you were innocent, you had nothing to fear from him. Nothing at all.
It’s kind of entertaining to see a lawyer attempting to come up with a rationale for unlimited dictatorship within the law of the land, btw. This kind of sophism is the inevitable result of having a President with a big military and not a lot of places to use it. There have been and always will be people around who crave absolutism, and having a large military sitting around is the perfect way to give them what they want. Get rid of that, and you get rid of a lot of this problem. Leave it, and you’ll be dealing with this BS forever.
Carry on.

199

He’s no sheep. Jeff Jackson explains the attitude here:

200

Some of us don’t need or want this sort of protection. Some of us don’t want “secret” agencies spying on us. “If you’re innocent”??? Yeah right. That is a ridiculous argument. We are all presumed innocent until proven guilty. That is the law. So is any argument that any policeman can search me or property or my effects at any time, without a reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or search warrant. He can’t do a single thing, just cuz he feels like itThere are still laws against Unreasonable search and seizure. This is not a police state. The police and the government have to follow laws. They can not do whatever they please.

From the NY Times:

So, we already know the “system” will be abused, just from past history. From this article, we can gather that there is still the worry inside the government, that all this may very well be illegal.

Read FISA.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sup_01_50_10_36.html
Note what it allows the President to do, with and without FISA warrants, and what it does not. Pay particular attention to section 1802 and the definition of “United States person” in 1801. Now, read section 1809, providing for criminal liability for violating FISA. While the President may have some inherent powers to gather foreign intelligence, FISA limits those powers as applied domestically. The President authorized electronic surveillance of United States persons within the United States without FISA warrants.
As I have been saying, a warrant is required. The president never bothered to get those warrants.

Again, the requirement to get a warrant was upheld. It revolved around the Fourth Amendment, just like I already said, further up in the thread. The Fourth DOES apply.

I don’t feel like getting into any moral or ethical “thing” right now, except to say that both morally and ethically it is wrong. Meanwhile, I wonder… Friday, Bush would neither confirm or deny all this spying. He said it would compromise security or get us terrorixzed (or something). Then Saturday, he blabs the whole thing. What made it less “security dangerous” over night? Why was it super special double secret one day and not the next? He also blasted the news for “leaking” it. while he is gabbing and gabbing about it. Never mind that the Times had sat on the story for at least a year, at the request of the White House. Never mind that the worst security leaks have come repeatedly FROM the White House.