Wednesday, August 08, 2007

What do new FISA rules mean?

Russ Feingold explains what the new FISA rules mean for Americans here. The comments which stand out to me are this one:

The bill the president signed yesterday gives free rein to the government to wiretap all the communications of anyone who happens to be outside the United States, for whatever reason, without court oversight. That includes U.S. citizens living or traveling abroad, U.S. service members in Iraq, or journalists reporting from overseas. And that includes the calls and emails of anyone outside the country to people in the U.S.

and this one:

The sooner that Democrats realize that standing tough on national security doesn't mean giving into the administration, the better off they - and the country - will be.
I am not as willing as Russ to attribute the failure of democratic representatives to perform their oversight duties to bad political advice or misplaced trust in presidential good faith. I think they're systematically building something in Washington that has been seen in the world before. I think fascism is rising. In Kansas the loyalty committees are already forming.

I don't buy this type of argument which posits that democrats in Washington are being led around clueless like horses with blinders on. They have to know what they are building. The only question is why?

The life you lead
You're like a black hole in the noon-day sky.
You're like a flash of fear in a young girl's eye.
And it's hard for me to understand why,
Anyone would care when you die.

You pretend you aren't human at all.
You'll see too late after your fall,
That what you are is what you do,
And not a living soul loves you.

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Foot Quotes

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

Charles Darwin