Bush and his law school dropout advisors have done this continually (violate the law - torture, transfering prisoners, illegal use of the Patriot Act, misunderstanding of the Geneva Convention, etc...) for no reason.
In this particular case, he is using the NSA to spy on communications that cross U.S. borders and (he says) only from people that have been found to have some type of contact with Al Qaida. Sounds almost reasonable except that the tired line of "just trust me" is wearing a bit thin. While the NSA's mission is somewhat changed with this directive, they also are obliged to turn over illegal activity information to the proper authorities.
Even that doesn't persuade some (as it's not just terrorists, but criminals as well). However, we have seen from multiple examples of what this administration can and will do and it goes well beyond simple spying on 'criminals'.
Do you think Dick Cheney really cares about your Civil Liberties? Do you think Rummy cares if we fundamentally change the ideals of America because of the possibility of a terrorist attack? Maybe they shouldn't, but we damn well better.
If the Bushites truly cared about such things they first would do more to strengthen our security (borders, airport, trains, food, medicine, nuclear power plants, etc..) than they have rather than spying on Quakers or discerning what book I checked out at my local library. I forgot...they don't have the money to do that as they've been too busy balancing the budget on students and the poor and making sure that that 1% keeps its tax cut...my bad.
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Date: 2005-12-20 04:36 pm (UTC)In this particular case, he is using the NSA to spy on communications that cross U.S. borders and (he says) only from people that have been found to have some type of contact with Al Qaida. Sounds almost reasonable except that the tired line of "just trust me" is wearing a bit thin. While the NSA's mission is somewhat changed with this directive, they also are obliged to turn over illegal activity information to the proper authorities.
Even that doesn't persuade some (as it's not just terrorists, but criminals as well). However, we have seen from multiple examples of what this administration can and will do and it goes well beyond simple spying on 'criminals'.
Do you think Dick Cheney really cares about your Civil Liberties? Do you think Rummy cares if we fundamentally change the ideals of America because of the possibility of a terrorist attack? Maybe they shouldn't, but we damn well better.
If the Bushites truly cared about such things they first would do more to strengthen our security (borders, airport, trains, food, medicine, nuclear power plants, etc..) than they have rather than spying on Quakers or discerning what book I checked out at my local library. I forgot...they don't have the money to do that as they've been too busy balancing the budget on students and the poor and making sure that that 1% keeps its tax cut...my bad.