At 11/2/09 05:25 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:
At 11/2/09 03:10 PM, RightWingGamer wrote:
and you're saying that islamic terrorism ISN'T a good reason?
There's no good reason for warrantless wiretapping. We've dealt with THIS SAME GROUP before and under Clinton we didn't expand government power this much.
yeah, look how that turned out. if weak-ass clinton had cared more about safety than BJs, he could have adequately prepared us for the attack.
There IS NO REASON TO SUSPEND WARRANTS!!
by that logic, there's no reason to declare war, imprison criminals, or censor extreme opinions (e.g. if bin laden were to appear on CNN)
You can get a warrant to tap a guys phone? Fine, that's within the legal framework I find acceptable. But to tap anyone at any time because they MIGHT be a terrorist? No way, it's unnecessary, it's using people's fear to expand your own governmental power.
dude, if they suspect you might be a terrorist, it's for a reason.
this is a crisis, i would much rather perfer to have the government listen in on my calls than to experience 9/11 all over again.
How is this a crisis? How many times have we been attacked since 9/11? How many really?
zero, thank god. but that's because we are more careful nowadays than we were before.
why do you think they don't even mention catching Bin Laden or terrorism that much anymore? Because he's a useful bogeyman to scare people like you into letting the government intrude into their lives and suspend their liberties.
no, it's because there are more pressing issues to deal with right now. bin laden is off the radar, when he gets back on it we'll shove a nuke up his ass, but until then we have bigger problems.
also, other than the "OMG, THEY'RE TAKING OUR RIGHTS" hysteria, how does wiretapping actually effect us in any way, at all?
These are powers the government wanted for years, 9/11 just gave them a situation where people would role over for it.
oh, please. it's one thing to say "bush wanted it", but the entire government?
with the exception of nixon, none of those had anything to do with wiretapping. and nixon was busted before he could misuse the information he had gathered.
But it proves my point about how you cannot trust the government to always do the right thing.
no, you can't, but 99 times out of 100, they really do have the best intentions. that's not to say that i ALWAYS agree with them, but once again, i perfer to give them the benefit of the doubt in such a time.
That was my thesis, you're point was you felt you could trust the government, I showed you why you shouldn't.
you didm't "show" anything, you're just taking a few examples and overblowing them.
P.S. what have you got against gitmo?
Oh come on...torture,
they earned their ticket the milisecond they decided to start hijacking planes.
suspension of due process
there, you have a point, we always need habeus corpus.
that place is like giving people like Osama a Christmas present because they use that to help their recruiting drives. "see? See? Americans torture our brothers and violate their own rules and supposed morals...surely now you see how evil they are and that they must be destroyed?". I don't want to become an animal in order to stop animals, and I have never heard a persuasive reason as to why we need to do so.
we are not the ones gunning down civilians in the streets or suicide-bombing skyscrapers. but if, to prevent it, we have to use unorthodox treatment of prisoners that, according to the geneva convention, don't even qualify as legal combatants, then be it.
no, it doesn't. it proves that there's occasionally gonna be one person who isn't trustworthy.
These were all Presidents and most of their immediate staff's implicated. They are what people think of when they think of the government.
no, people think of the CURRENT president when they think of the government. not some asshole from ancient history.
the government as a whole, although it really doesn't know how to use tax dollars efficiently, can be trusted with this sort of thing.
You're basing that on what? You're own personal beliefs?
and you AREN'T?
in fact, all of this was most talked-about during the bush administration, and tell me, what did bush ever do that ever put our core rights at risk?
Patriot Act.
how does that effect you DIRECTLY?
Susension of Habeas Corpus,
although i agree that you have a point there, didn't lincoln also do that? didn't he become our second greatest president (first being washington)?
the warrantless wire tapping.
again, DIRECTLY?
If you were/are suspected of terrorism, you're rights disappear. How does that NOT violate or take away from our core rights?
because unless your idea of a good time invovles bombs and infidels, it doesn't affect you AT ALL!
if anything, the government's too benevolent for it's own good, always handing out money left and right.
The banks had to be saved or else it was depression time.
and what would you call this? prosperity?
But the other bailouts I did not agree with. I also have some serious issues with the way government operates and spends money on certain programs and what not. So depending on the things you disagree with them spending money on, we may have found some common ground here.
i disagree with welfare, bailouts (all kinds), public healthcare, etc.
it's not a loss of privacy, it's a desperate measure. if we had done this before 9/11, we may have had a shot at preventing it.
You can't prove that, and there are lots of things we could have done before 9/11 to have prevented it.
like? (before you answer, consider the fact that we knew almost nothing at the time)
This does not help the case for wiretapping without warrants at all.
alright, let me put it this way: let's say that every phone in america is tapped and listened to, what's the worst that could happen that DIRECTLY results from that?
See qoute by Ben Franklin. If you're willing to trade away your essential rights and liberties...you deserve whatever consequences you get from it.
i don't consider that to be an essential right, i consider it to be a privilage, a reward for a time of peace and prosperity. but until then, it is a very small price to pay in return for protection of my OTHER essential rights #1 being the right to life.
you and i BOTH know that Benjamin Franklin was referring to martial law, similar to what the british imposed at the time, when he made that statement.
But that doesn't make it not true in this instance. If Franklin could look at America now, in my personal opinion he'd say exactly the same thing.
actually, he would laugh in your face. in his time, the british government was doing unspeakeble things to the colonists. if you were to ressurect him and say "i use my telephone to talk to someone, but now the evil government can hear what i say to him" what do YOU think he'd say?
You assume all their listening for is terrorism. What stops them for listening for other criminal activities?
wouldn't that be a good thing?
Or even extending the rule to looking for people who are just basically dissenters to the government?
because there's plenty of dissent nowadays, if they were gonna do something, they would have already.
That's the potential slippery slope you put yourself on by allowing a government to subvert the law this way.
i'd rather a "potential" threat from the US government, than a very real threat from islamic extremism.
Because this is such a vague "emergency" and there's absolutely no indication they will stop doing it ever, in fact all they've shown is they want even MORE power in this and other such sensitive areas.
that doesn't mean that they're gonna misuse it.
