Bush Burns the Constitution
If you think that you are safer today than you were eight years ago then you are a fool. Only a fool would believe that our government is looking out for our best interests and personal security. When you here someone tell you that if you have nothing to hide when losing any right guaranteed to you under the Constitution is nothing to worry about. That is someone to be very afraid of. That person is the same kind of person they had in Germany in the 30’s and 40’s that thought the greater good meant some sacrificed lives were for the best. The greater good outweighed the individuals right to exist. Given that fact some six plus million people had nothing to worry about but disappeared off the face of the Earth.
This nation was not built on the principals of a police state to protect its people. It was built on fundamental freedoms. It was founded on an individuals rights. That is something that President Bush and his boys that know what is best for all of us have gambled on to make you forget what true freedom is. For the sake of safety your rights are being stripped away and when it happens from within the government then there is a problem. HUGE PROBLEM! Telling you what to be afraid of and why you need to forsake your individual rights is easy, fighting for your rights is what our cemeteries across this nation is filled with. They died defending the nation they loved and for those of us left to live the American dream it is a shame on our society as a whole to let this continue.
Over at the Washington Post they have the latest intrusion of rights based on drop a dime theories from Mine Fuhrer Bush…
Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request
Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable CauseBy Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 23, 2007; Page A01Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.
In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.
Such requests run counter to the Justice Department’s internal recommendation that federal prosecutors seek warrants based on probable cause to obtain precise location data in private areas. The requests and orders are sealed at the government’s request, so it is difficult to know how often the orders are issued or denied. - Washington Post
I’m of the belief that the F.B.I. has worked for generations under the laws of the land and they had no problem snaring mob gangsters and secretive crime families without breaking the law. How is changing or corrupting our laws going to keep us safer from supposed terrorists? Unless of course our F.B.I. is totally incompetent and if that is the case then it should be shut down. That is common sense for law abiding elected leaders of our nation or is it not?
If this scenario as written by the WA PO is true then you need to get yourself an egg timer so you can judge how long it will take this to trickle down to the local level. Too late, it’s happening in Boston with the introduction of a plan to ask people to allow police to search your homes without a warrant because your son or daughter may have a gun or weapon. That would be search and seizure. Granted, crime in Boston by gangs is at an all time high but this opens up Pandora’s Box when it comes to your individual rights. Who is to say the neighbor you pissed off does not drop the dime on you? You stole his parking space on the street, just for giggles he or she calls the police and makes up a sham.
Boston police launch program to search homes for guns
THE ASSOCIATED PRESSBOSTON — The Boston police will ask parents in high-crime areas to allow detectives to search their children’s bedrooms for guns without a warrant as part of a new anti-crime program.
During the next two weeks, Boston police officers assigned to schools will go in plainclothes in groups of three to houses where they believe teens have guns, and ask their parents or legal guardians for permission to search. - Herald Tribune
Getting back to the reason for this post. My good friend over at the Gun Toting Liberal touched a nerve with his latest post and I understand his outrage over the Washington Post article.
There were once THREE “Separate But Equal” branches of government — the Judicial Branch, the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, where there were two houses of Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate. One house would propose legislation to the other and the result would be either a new LAW or a STALEMATE. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the proposed Democratic Republic of our Founding Fathers and it actually WORKED for awhile.
But then — somewhere along the way — the Legislative Branch gave some of it’s “Separate But Equal” powers to the Executive Branch. They allowed a president “KING” by the name of “Forty-Three” to negate their hard-fought bills, after being ping-ponged back and forth for days, weeks and months, by signing them into laws with HUGE ASTERIXES known as “signing statements” - Gun Toting Liberal
Both GTL and I do not trust the latest stunt by our government to protect us because we both know that the precedents to expand the powers is far greater an intrusion on individual rights. That is what this is all about. Freedom of our people should not be based on the whole. Each individual has the right to define freedom as it should be. Many a soldier, sailor and veteran fought and died for that belief.
One of the things I find ridiculous in a political argument is the fact that the Democrat’s were in charge of two houses of our government for forty or so years and no rights were lost to our citizens to protect us. Wars were fought, civil rights were created and our society grew because our minds were free to explore new possibilities. Pro or con against our government. Twelve years of Republican rule and we are tossing our rights out the window like the bath water for the baby. Baby included! There is a reason why FDR, Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, and Clinton did not bust the Constitution, they swore an oath to uphold it. That is not the case with George W. Bush.
Fight for your rights. Vote for your rights and vote the people that are corrupting your Constitutional rights out of office! Then tell the rest of the clan in corporate America to get the hell out of Dodge or Washington D.C. as the rest of us know it. Take back America!
Papamoka
November 24th, 2007 at 12:45 am
[…] to my great friend Matthew O’Keefe for referring to this post at both of his gigs — Bring It On! and Papamoka’s Straight […]
November 24th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I have mixed emotions reading this post. First, I too think the government has too much power and abuses this power in the name of doing it for our own good. The same kind of power that parents assert when they are searching your room for your own good or at school searching lockers for the same reason. The problem here is that we are not children and the government is not supposed to be our parental figures. However this is nothing new. Our rights have been bent for the alleged greater good since the beginning of government. This line from the post is just plain naive:
“I’m of the belief that the F.B.I. has worked for generations under the laws of the land and they had no problem snaring mob gangsters and secretive crime families without breaking the law.”
I am not of that belief. Look at the pervasive illegal wire tapping of alleged communist. Like when JFK and his brother RFK decided that they would have the FBI wiretap MLK.
“The FBI and Martin Luther King
On October 10, 1963, U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy committed what is widely viewed as one of the most ignominious acts in modern American history: he authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to begin wiretapping the telephones of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy believed that one of King’s closest advisers was a top-level member of the American Communist Party, and that King had repeatedly misled Administration officials about his ongoing close ties with the man.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200207/garrow
Here is a great website that details what the Kennedy’s and FBI director Hoover did in their efforts to stop the communist and what they called the “negro” movement:
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/churchfinalreportIIIb.htm
It is interesting to note that the FBI had wide latitude for wiretaps in the interest of national security before these procedures were changed in 1965. From the article about MLK:
“The FBI’s use of wiretaps and microphones to follow Dr. King’s activities must be examined in light of the accepted legal standards and practices of the time. Before March 1965, the FBI followed different procedures for the authorization of wiretaps and microphones. Wiretaps required the approval of the Attorney General in advance. However, once the Attorney General had authorized the FBI to initiate wiretap coverage of a subject, the Bureau generally continued the wiretap for as long as it judged necessary. As former Attorney General Katzenbach testified:
The custom was not to put a time limit on a tap, or any wiretap authorization. Indeed, I think the Bureau would have felt free in 1965 to put a tap on a phone authorized by Attorney General Jackson before World War II. 130
In “national security” cases, the FBI was free to carry out microphone surveillances without first seeking the approval of the Attorney General or informing him afterward. The Bureau apparently derived authority for its microphone practice from a 1954 memorandum sent by Attorney General Brownell to Director Hoover, stating:
It is clear that in some instances the use of microphone surveillance is the only possible way to uncovering the activities of espionage agents, possible saboteurs, and subversive persons. In such instances I am of the opinion that the national interest requires that microphone surveillance be utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This use need not be limited to the development of evidence for prosecution. The FBI has an intelligence function in connection with internal security matters equally as important as the duty of developing evidence for presentation to the courts and the national security requires that the FBI be able to use microphone surveillance for the proper discharge of both such functions. The Department of Justice approves the use of microphone surveillance by the FBI under these circumstances and for these purposes…. I recognize that for the FBI to fulfill its important intelligence function, considerations of internal security and the national safety are paramount and, therefore, may compel the unrestricted use of this technique in the national interest. 131
The Justice Department was on notice that the FBI’s practice was to install microphones without first informing the Justice Department.”
In other words the FBI was spying on Americans frequently without warrants or approval from the AG.
The FBI went even further with MLK and actively tried to discredit him. This is detailed at length in the article and an interesting aside is that Bill Moyers, who was special assistant to the President, aided in this effort after MLK was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Government interference in the name of National Security…. 40 years ago.
In the 1990’s, under the Clinton administration the wiretap ablilty of the FEDs was given a boost with the passage of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcment Act) in 1994. From Wired Mag:
“The law that makes the FBI’s surveillance network possible had its genesis in the Clinton administration. In the 1990s, the Justice Department began complaining to Congress that digital technology, cellular phones and features like call forwarding would make it difficult for investigators to continue to conduct wiretaps. Congress responded by passing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA, in 1994, mandating backdoors in U.S. telephone switches.
CALEA requires telecommunications companies to install only telephone-switching equipment that meets detailed wiretapping standards. Prior to CALEA, the FBI would get a court order for a wiretap and present it to a phone company, which would then create a physical tap of the phone system.”
Then there was the physical search of Aldrich Ames the CIA mole working for the Soviets. The search had no warrant and was argued by the Clinton AG office that FISA did not require a warrant for physical search for “foreign intelligence purposes” Warrantless searches ok for national security. Under Clinton.
Ames was a bad guy so was this justified? Would you rather we have greater protections that would also benefit the truly bad among us? Where do we draw the line with giving up freedoms for protection? It is my opinion that I would rather live in a less safe but more private world and therefore share you outrage however
you are incorrect to think that we were safe from government intrusion prior to Bush.
The increased amount of government intrusion into our lives is bad, but not new. It has increased as technology has advanced and will continue to do so.
The next president will have even more power to look at your life, and you can bet that he or she will use to “protect us”
Wait until we turn our health care management over to the government so they can have even more data on us. You will have to be careful what you tell your doctor. Big brother does exist, however you have it wrong if you think his name is Bush. His name is government and he is not here to help you.
November 24th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Holy Crap Manapp99! You must have spent ten hours reseraching your comment. Well friging done my friend!
I do have to point out that most of your comments regarding the FBI was almost fourty years ago. Again, I must say that if they are unable to work with in the law without you or I losing our Constitutional rights then they should be put out of business.
I take it from your comment that you too are against anyone stealing our rights out from under us by showing a shiney object over here while they slowly turn America into a total police state over there.
November 25th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
With the help of our friends at google the research did not take that long. The fact that the FBI comments were old was the point I was trying to make. Government intrusion is new to Bush only as far as technology has changed. Government intrusion in the name of the greater good has always existed and always will. This is why we as citizens must always resist alowing the government to “solve” our problems. I understand that there are areas that we will always have turn to government for but it is like turning to the Mafia for protection. You may have to do it but you can bet the price will be high.
We as society have to decide what price we are willing to pay to retain our freedoms. For instance if we disallow no knock raids or searches due to “reasonable suspicion” we retain more of our freedom from police intrusion but also give the true bad guys an edge. If we abandon the seat belt and helmet laws you retain the freedom to drive/ride the way you wish but society will have to pay more for injuries. If we allow true freedom of speech we cannot disallow the right to incite a riot. If we allow true freedom of gun ownership we cannot disallow fully automatic weapons.
I am against anyone stealing anything from me especially the government. A bumper sticker I have seen a few times says “Don’t steal. The government hates competition”.
November 26th, 2007 at 11:13 am
“We as society have to decide what price we are willing to pay to retain our freedoms.”
The War on Terror has nothing to do with retaining our freedoms. Terrorists do not threaten our freedom. Period. Only we can do that to ourselves.
JMJ
November 27th, 2007 at 10:03 am
From a societal point of view, the war on terror has everything to do wtih retaining our freedom. I agree that the terrorists do threaten our freedom any more than drug dealers, car thieves or even your garden variety murderer. It is the WAR on these people/activities that invovle tactics which impinge on our freedoms. Again I say, We as a society have to decided what price we are willing to pay to retain our freedoms. Look at it this way. If we had no laws we would have the ultimate amount of freedom. Do what you want good or bad. The more we initiate laws against activities the more we take away individual freedoms. We make muder illegal even though to a sociopath murder may be considered a good or even necessary thing. The sociopaths being in the minority are out voted and muder is made illegal. Then we need enforcers of the law and they feel they need certain license to protect the rest of society from the sociopaths. The camels nose is now under the tent and your freedoms start dimishing one by one.
Society as a whole (through our elected officials) has decided that the war on terror is worth giving up some of our rights. Right, wrong, agree, disagree, it doesn’t matter. (just like the war on drugs) What matters is the reality of the situation.
If you don’t like wiretap laws, fine but you will have to define your postion. Do you want all surveillence done away with? What level of spying on your fellow americans is acceptable? If the cops park on the curb to watch a “known” bad guy isn’t that an infringment of his freedom to live without the government watching him? If a cop stops a driver swerving down the road but hasn’t hit anything, isn’t he stepping on the freedom of the driver to drive bad?
What it really boils down to is that we actually have no freedoms we only have rights granted to us by the government. They decide what we are free to do and if they decide to take all of them away the only freedom we have is to rebel. Which of course would be illegal.
November 27th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Whoops, This line:
“I agree that the terrorists do threaten our freedom any more than drug dealers, car thieves or even your garden variety murderer. ”
Should have read do NOT treaten our…
November 27th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
We have the Constitution and the vote, Manapp. We do control our rights. We simply have to stand up for them.
JMJ
November 27th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Intriguing blog post about Bush Burns the Constitution! I love this articles!
March 13th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Bush is on record as having yelled at his staff to quit waving the Constitution in his face when he wanted to do things that violated it and as saying it’s “just a goddamned piece of paper.” (Google came up with a bunch of links to news stories on it - here’s one): http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
He has shown no regard for the oath he swore to uphold and defend that “goddamned piece of paper,” a document composed and amended over many years with great care by a lot of wise people whose asses he isn’t fit to wipe.
As for the threat posed by terrorists, they could indeed do some things that would kill or hurt a lot of people, in the U.S. or other countries friendly to us, but they couldn’t take away our freedoms or rights as a people. Only the government that supposedly works for us could do that. The government is supposed to be doing all it can to protect both our lives and our rights, but it’s doing neither - take a look at the cuts to federal funds going to help out local law enforcement and other first responders; look at the lack of effort to secure likely targets like harbors, chemical plants, nuclear power plants, etc.; then look at the time and energy they’ve put into pushing for unlimited power and how they’ve used what power they’ve got so far. This administration and the neocon/fundamentalist movement behind it appear to be the biggest threat to the continued existence of our democratic republic in that form since the attempted “business coup” against FDR in 1933, (see this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot#_note-2 ), maybe even since the Civil War. It won’t be enough to get them out of office. We need to undo the damage they’ve done and emplace safeguards to try to keep them from getting in the saddle again.