“Do we want security . . . or do we want to get in a twit about our civil libertarian rights?” Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Thursday, dismissing concerns about the National Security Agency’s database of the phone records of millions of Americans. Excuse me? Making sure the government isn’t violating the Constitution and is following federal law isn’t “a twit.” Neither is expecting the courts and Congress to properly oversee this spying.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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30 Comments
Spoken like a true hand-in-the-till career politico-weasel!
So Senator Lott believes in spying on law-abiding Americans? I used to think Lott had good political instincts, but his decision to continue acting as a concubine for the Bush Administration demonstrates otherwise.
Lott is just like Grandpa Pat. I can hear the Republican wagons circling as we speak.
It’s a lovely sound.
Jim,Problem is, they only got one wagon to circle!
Its funny that conservative republicans often claim to want smaller less intrusive government. But in practice are nothing but lapdogs of the government supporting any intrusion by the government into peoples lives, illegal wire taps, montioring phones, extra police power for searching etc.When was the last time republicans reduced the size and scope of the government, or cut taxes for anybody but the wealthy.Allowing the CIA, FBI to do what ever they want is not limiting government but expanding it.
And one horse – fear.
No Phillip,
I am sure Lott cares about our civil liberties. He just thinks that the reaction to what the NSA is doing from the whiney left is a twit…
The Right–bedwetting and fascist, all at once.
Have any of you Bush Bashers considered that a similar program has been in place since Clinton started it? Are you all aware it has been briefed to Congress since day one? (Not to the known leakers, of course) Are you all also aware that sedition is illegal? And that includes both the leaker and the Media folks that knowingly print SECRET data. This is another example of the anti-American mindset of the Left and another security tool rendered impotent.
It would be redundant to quote Ben Franklin again about security and liberty, a lesson lost on some I fear.but there is a valid point made, not all violation and wrong thinking has been due to Bush: When I first heard about the fee on every phone bill that covers the cost of wiretapping your phone. I thought that was just some wild imagining of a conspiracy nut. Then some years ago, ten to be precise, I got slammed on my phone bill. (charges for services I had not authorizes) I was going over my phone bill with a rep from SBC.When I started asking about all these little fee I was paying, I asked about this one that was only a few cents. It was explained to me that the Federal government had mandated the fee to cover the cost of wiretapping my phone. Though it did not mean that my phone was being tapped it just covers the cost should the Government need to. And that all phone users pay this fee, but the title of the fee is so disjointed and unsuspicious that no one really pays any attention to it.
I was shocked! That is so un-American, so wrong that I could not believe that the government would do that! It seems there is a lot that OUR government does that we do not know of nor pay any attention to.
Bushbots just regret that they don’t have more civil rights to sacrifice for the cause!
Per http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/12/AR2006051200375.html
“The new survey found that 63 percent of Americans said they found the NSA program to be an acceptable way to investigate terrorism, including 44 percent who strongly endorsed the effort. Another 35 percent said the program was unacceptable, which included 24 percent who strongly objected to it.A slightly larger majority–66 percent–said they would not be bothered if NSA collected records of personal calls they had made, the poll found.”
You libs, inlcuding and especially The Wichita Eagle Editorial Board, are more interested in supporting an Al Qaeda/Iranian/Islamic extremist Bill of Rights than doing what it takes to fight terrorism. Oh, that’s right, there is no terrorism in your world. Well, inlcude me in the majority who welcomes ‘perceived’ loss of civil rights over real loss of lives from terrorists.
“Half–51 percent–approved of the way President Bush was handling privacy matters.” Now Bush would call that a mandate!
Lott is a Twit. That’s why he’s the former speaker of the house.
“You libs, inlcuding and especially The Wichita Eagle Editorial Board, are more interested in supporting an Al Qaeda/Iranian/Islamic extremist Bill of Rights than doing what it takes to fight terrorism.”
Okay, as a “lib” I resent the hell out of that, ID. Asking the President to honor the constitution in no way makes me a terrorist sympathizer.
Silly me, I think the best thing to stop terrorism would be for Bush to follow through on taking out Bin Forgotten.
But monitoring phone calls is a lot easier, I’ll give them that . . .
THIS JUST IN–ROVE INDICTMENT IMMINENT
According to Jason Leopold at truthout.org
See open thread for link.
ID-
I’m embarassed for your post. Drivel comes to mind.
You’re kinda new here gster. Let me introduce you to ID.
ID is a dittohead. The most amazing thing about his last post is that he did not quote Rush Limbaugh verbatim, as he often does. He did, however channel him quite well.
ID and his ilk like Trent Lott are for SOME civil liberties. Those some include only those that do not get in the way of their scare to win agenda.
But back to our “friend” ID. I wonder how ID feels about a little thing called the fairness doctrine. That was a now repealed statute which required equal broadcast time be alotted against the lies that are IDs gospel. To whit, his master Rush would have to share the airwaves with others who are not trying to scare Americans into surrendering their liberties for “security”.
What say you ID? Free speech or no?
Phil is right about this problem. The NSA, which is commanded by self-serving politicians, is not going to decipher the average WE Blog poster’s calls, including mine, because we aren’t terrorists, and we are unimportant.
BUT, would they follow phone records to find out who NY Times, Washington Post and LA Times reporters are talking to? Like maybe leakers who aren’t trying to destroy this country, but are trying to preserve our democratic republican form of society. Which society can only survive if little people are informed, and can make informed decisions.
This is the problem. This is a system that the KGB would have LOVED. To say, “Oh they wouldn’t follow domestic calls for any purpose but to fight terrorism,” would be stick-your-ostrich-head-in-the-sand naive.
The Muslim extremists are not that dangerous. They killed 3000 people four years ago. That’s like a MONTH’s worth of traffic fatalities. It is less than the number of people killed in a month through hospital/medical errors. EACH and EVERY month.
If our leaders were REALLY concerned about this threat, what would they do? Deport every Middle Eastern immigrant. They’d say, “Sorry we have to do this, but you’re not essential to our economy, and you could be a risk to our national security, so you have to go home.” Or they could say, “Okay, you can stay for the time being. But if we suffer another Muslim-led terrorist attack, you are going home. So you better figure out who among you is a threat to America. The radicals among you threaten your ability to stay in America. You decide whether you want them to make you deportable.”
Look at the absurdities here. Grandmother’s being semi-stripped searched at airports in 2002. Bookstores being required to report who bought almanacs. These are really high-yield terrorist-finding moves. Not!
In this decade we are going to see several catastrophic hurricanes striking the Gulf Coast and Atlantic from Texas to North Carolina. Their damage to American lives and property is going to dwarf that from terrorism. So why is our money being squandered on NSA database mining?
Heartland made some very valid points in that the actions of the Administration do not equal the most important measure that should and could be taken. And begs the question as to just whom are they seeing the enemy to be? The warrant less wiretappings that are said to be only against terrorists do not follow the law. But if the administration is telling the truth could be justified in the public mind. Though it still begs the question as to why if given several days could they not have used the established procedure and have stayed within the law?
But several other actions have no such direct link and on the face of it appear to not have a direct link to the war on terrorism. They come off more like “Hey nice watch…I need it to fight terrorism! Man cool car….I need it to fight terrorism! I need to find out who is calling whom…Oh yeah it is to fight terrorism!They seem to use the phrase “to fight terrorism” to justify about everything and any thing as if it is a police badge they have found and use it to get free coffee and food at a restaurant (yeah I do get away from the computer once in awhile to watch “My name is Earl”). It does appear that Bush&Co. are fighting some one and something….I just wonder who they think they are fighting against?
Lott looks like the poster-boy for Botox.
ID,
You seem more concerned with supporting an unconstitutional Presidential power grab than in defending the separation of powers.
I love it when Wingnuts throw around the weasel word ‘Islamofascism’ in order to distract attention away from their own, plain-as-day endorsement of the Bush Administration’s fascist dictatorship.
Republicans: the Culture of Collaboration.
Remember the post-911 period when the Patriot Act spawned a slew of draconian measures? We were in a new World War–the War on Terror.
Interestingly, despite a host of potential attack scenarios, there hasn’t been a single incident, despite porous borders, despite the impossibility of achieving 100% security at airports, in ports, in factories, at dams, in downtowns, et al., particularly in the first few months after 911. That doesn’t really make sense. For example, despite decades of War on Drugs,with billions spent on counter-measures, drugs are still getting into our country from South America and Mexico.
The reason for no further terrorism attacks cannot plausibly be that we eliminated the Taliban and al-Qaeda, because Afghanistan’s ambassador flatly said yesterday that the Taliban is still largely in control of Southern Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda’ists are still living in Pakistan. Many have reportedly dispersed elsewhere in the Middle East as well.
Afghanistan is also still growing opium poppies and smuggling heroin into Western countries.
If there were truly a massive wave of terrorism attacks planned five years ago, we should have suffered at least a few attacks in the past five years.
On the other side of the coin, the administration has said that several planned attacks have been foiled due to the new programs. Yet not one has actually been described to the public. When a handful of Germans who had landed on Long Island to carry out acts of sabotage and terrorism were caught in 1942, the feds broadcast this to the nation, to show the American people that the government had effective measures in place to protect them (one planned attack was to bomb Macy’s to incite fear, just as Jimmy Doolittle’s daring B-25 bombing raid on Tokyo was carried out for the same reason).
So, the lack of a single attack in America in the last half-decade, in the face of a putative huge massed global terrorist force bent on our destruction, and the complete absence of any hard evidence of foiled attacks being shown to the American people, seriously call into question the actual threat level.
In sum, the proposition that we face a huge threat, combined with the proposition that we have been 100% effective in combatting it, is not plausible. Have we been 100% effective in ousting a poor nation’s dictator, and establishing an orderly government and society? Have we been 100% effective in reforming Afghanistan? Were we 100% effective–or even 80% effective in–in protecting New Orleans, knowing for years an inevitable major risk, including dikes in state of serious disrepair? Were we 100% effective in evacuating NO? Has NCLB been 100% effective, or even 60% effective in meeting the planned timetable for the improvement of poor children’s test scores?
100% effectiveness in government programs is a contradiction in terms. Yet we are supposed to believe that in the War on Terror alone, 100% success has been achieved. This proposition seems far less plausible than the alternative proposition that the alleged level of threat has been blown out of reasonable proportion.
It is arguably better that in a condition of uncertainty in the wake of 9/11, the threat level was greatly overestimated, rather than greatly underestimated. Under this condition, a temporary suspension of peacetime civil liberties was historically normal.
But now, we must reassess matters and restore American liberties, including rights of privacy. This is the conclusion that tens of millions of Americans, and a majority of the American press are reaching. The administration it would seem, may be inhabiting a different universe from the American populace.
Lott didn’t think civil liberties were important when he was keeping African-Americans “in their place,” why should he care about anybody else’s civil liberties?
Wire taps and data basing, sure, may be tools to fight the “war on Terror”. You might say assassinations, bribes to other contry’s leaders,torture,illegal wars, holding people without chargers are also tools to fight the “war on terror”. Is that the way we want this Bushytail administration to conduct it’s self while protecting our country?
Good post Guy.
Got to meet guy from up north today. The nic was always sorta suggestive to me of a Canadian! I can assure you he is not. And if man of his years and wisdom finds the activities of the bush administration troubling, we might do well to listen.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t seem to mind the govt. collecting the phone numbers they call. They have no idea the amount of extemely personal information a data mining program can unearth from that information, and when combined with all the information that private number crunchers already have, and are sharing with NSA, none of them have any secrets right down to the snake tatt on their left butt cheek. When the full extent of govt. snooping (and the way it’s being used) is finally known, those poll numbers will be considerably altered.
ID is a scared little person who is always looking for security. He/she would probably function much better in a society where all the decisions were already dictated to him/her. North Korea sound like the perfect place ID has been searching for.
Heart,Yes, searching grandmothers and looking over bookstore and library records is absurd, but it’s visible. It’s Bushie showing us he’s actually doing something, and to try to convince the public at large to watch those colored warning signs he posts before elections. It’s his way of looking busy.