QUESTION: What did you think the Patriot Act authorized?!?!

[uponit7771]

A. Bake sales
B. Cookie Raffles
C. The viewing of kitten pictures on the internet
D. More government powers to watch crap inside of US
E. Other


Thx in advance for any input

[hobbit709]

1. Why do you think I call it the Enabling Act of 2001?

[1-Old-Man]

3. Shusssh, someone might figure out what comparison you are making

That it was, sadly that it was ...

[hobbit709]

5. Let them. I'll give them my mother's phone # and she'll tell them all about it.

[KansDem]

2. As the name suggests...

"Patriotism"

It would help us act like Patriots...





[p align = "right"]

[uponit7771]

4. +1

[woo me with science]

6. QUESTION: What does the Fourth Amendment protect? nt

[uponit7771]

7. The ability of fudr to encourage delayed poutrage?

[woo me with science]

8. Namecalling. Check.

That's about the caliber of the arguments from the Third Way.

[uponit7771]

9. I've called no one names and Obama wasn't born in Kenya....sorry, usually I have to tell

...conservatives that they've just spit out made up crap

[woo me with science]

10. Wow. Meltdown.

I didn't think the question was that challenging.

[ProSense]

12. President Obama

"QUESTION: What does the Fourth Amendment protect? "

...actually got a warrant. He went through the FISA court. He complied with the law, and even critics of the program will acknowledge the actions were legal (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022959738).

Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979) - No warrant required for call metadata
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022966764

That thread sank like a boulder. Still, the Obama administration took the appropriate legal route.

Obama administraton releases details on Senate briefings
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022974680

ACLU: DOJ Tells Court It's Reconsidering Secrecy Surrounding Patriot Act's Spying Powers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022973455

[woo me with science]

13. Like a broken record,

you keep arguing that it's "legal" (which is highly questionable anyway,...but that's another post), as though that means it is justifiable. Authoritarian governments specialize in *making* legal what they want to do.

The point is that the government of the United States of America has no fucking business collecting and STORING surveillance information like this on the American public in the first place.

Let me repeat that. They are scooping up and placing into databases the private communication information of Americans, en masse. Read the court order, which documents the government's demand for the phone records of MILLIONS OF AMERICANS:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order

This is the sort of infrastructure that totalitarian governments build, with files and histories on the activities of their citizens. This is exactly the type of government abuse that the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution were intended to prevent. And this is exactly the sort of authoritarian bullshit that Obama promised he would stop when he became President.

I strongly recommend that every DUer read these important threads and posts on the implications of this type of behavior by governments:

Stored surveillance information and preemptive silencing of dissent
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2975053

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022970768

The Mass Surveillance program is to protect the government FROM the people.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022962685

All The Infrastructure A Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy Of Bush And Obama - TheAtlantic
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022973186

This is gravely serious stuff, and not partisan. The Verizon information is just the very ugly tip of a massive iceberg. For the very first time since 9/11, we are finally, at long last, getting some media and thus public attention to the outrageous, constantly escalating assaults on our Constitution and civil protections by our own elected politicians. We must seize this moment and come together as Americans to demand a deep and thorough investigation, accountability, and change.

[ProSense]

15. Please

"Like a broken record, you keep arguing that it's "legal," as though that means it is justifiable. Authoritarian governments specialize in *making* legal what they want to do. "

...spare me. I mean, you asked: "QUESTION: What does the Fourth Amendment protect? "

and I cited: Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979) - No warrant required for call metadata
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022966764

Again, President Obama actually got a warrant. He went through the FISA court. He complied with the law, and even critics of the program will acknowledge the actions were legal (http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022959738).

If it takes a "broken record" to counter denial, so be it.

Meet the Carnivore system
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022972777

This whole NSA story is nothing more than recycled outrage. Glenn Greenwald didn't break shit.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022967844

[woo me with science]

16. Nonresponsive.

As per usual.

[ProSense]

18. Denial, ongoing. n/t

[DisgustipatedinCA]

22. Obama was cleared by a FISA cout that approved every single secret request in 2012

Obama's spy program has some legal protections that I don't believe should be in place.
Irrespective of that, Obama is morally and ethically wrong, and he's lied to the hundreds of millions of Americans who are the victims of his scheme. The lie is one of omission--he didn't want his hundreds of millions of targets to know they were targets. So he hid the largest spying program in history from the citizens whose lives he wanted to spy on. He's still doing this--it's just not quite as hidden anymore. Obama could have stopped this anytime he chose to. He has not. People like you are tasked with making all of this seem ok, but what you will never be able to understand is that cheap propaganda will never work with principled people when they feel their backs against a constitutional wall. It's not negotiable. It's not something that can be self-referentially linked away.

But take heart. There are enough people like you in the Democratic Party who don't mind a Soviet spy state--and the Republicans damn sure don't care. I think that in the end, you'll "win" your political battle. I hope you're happy with the results.

[Autumn]

11. A. Bake sales. Shortly after that I started seeing a lot of bake sales

to benefit a person or child that needed help meeting their medical expenses and then bake sales to help out Veterans and so on. Oh and the jars on counters to help out people that needed health care and now I go to the store and they are there asking for donations to help disabled or homeless Veterans with housing and stuff like that.

[woo me with science]

14. The very best answer on this train wreck of a thread. nt

[Autumn]

19. Just another commentary on the bush years, bake sales to take care of

basic human needs and begging for charity to take care of wounded warriors from bush's wars. While our government lies and tries to terrify it's citizens into being just fine with a surveillance state.

Fuck the patriot act and it's enablers. It hasn't kept us safe,it's just for fucking control.

[uponit7771]

24. Train wreck = your ad hominem attacks after link and quote posts....noted

[Bluenorthwest]

17. It was rushed through by Bushco and Republicans and centrists, so I assumed it was bad law

as well as poorly constructed law. My own Senator has been warning us for some time that the executive branch is using an interperatation of that Act that is not at all the same as what the law really says.
Are there other Bushco policies that you are so supportive of that you go around posting disengenous OPs to promote them as excellent law? Or is it all Bushco policy you dig? Did you support Bushco when they made this law? How about the invasion? Were you all trembing from the word 'yellowcake' and willing to put cameras in your own bedroom in case you were the terrorist and did not know it?
Basically, anyone who wishes to conduct a conversation about issues this important with snark alone shows a disdain for debate and for democracy.

[jazzimov]

20. Which one?

Since the original, parts have been allowed to expire, parts have been re-authorized, and parts have been modified.

[DFW]

21. It sure as hell didn't authorize anything of which a true patriot would would approve

But that's just my humble opinion. Maybe I'm just a bad patriot.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

23. The freedom of the government to chase imagined bogeymen by spying on us.