A Snippet From Paul Phillips

[strategy 4]

It's almost like he's a typical politician, not a breath of fresh air after all.

during the campaigns, yeah, he pretty much is. it's called winning, I don't know if you're well-acquainted with it!

[Nimue1995 1]

I think BigD and copernicus should have a contest to see who can disagree with the most people in a certain period of time. that would be exciting.

Lol it's no contest - LMD for the win!

[hblask 1]

This spying on phone call thing is the number one reason to vote against Republicans this year. The intrusion of privacy under W is appalling.There was an article lately that the spies who have been monitoring international calls under the guise of looking for terrorists have been passing recordings of these calls around the office. Did they find the terrorists? No, these were people who were already cleared, but had loved ones in other countries. The tapes they were passing around were being passed around out of prurient interest and for the purpose of mocking people who had the misfortune of being separated from their families and were just trying to connect emotionally over the phone.This is a program that needs expansion? The people who did this (the mocking private conversations as office entertainment) should be sent to jail, and I'm not being the least bit facetious about that.

[hblask 1]

Ron Paul ascribes to an economic policy that has never succeeded in the history of the world.

Yeah, what a miserable failure America was from 1776 to the 1930s.

[hblask 1]

the slippery slope is that it will be used for other than intelligence purposes. And if youre on the NSA radar for some reason and talking to someone in Germany, I dont give a damn about your privacy, and you should be more concerned about why youre on their radar. NSA can listen to my overseas and domestic communications for all I care.

I'm assuming you are not really this naive and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. The govt's abuse of power like this is long and sordid. People get on govt shit lists all the time. The govt uses the IRS to harass it's opponents all the time, and this program has already been abused. As I always have to tell the Dems on social issues, let's not play pretend here. The real world matters.

[copernicus 0]

Yeah, what a miserable failure America was from 1776 to the 1930s.

Not even close. If you think it is read RP or read some history.

[copernicus 0]

I'm assuming you are not really this naive and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. The govt's abuse of power like this is long and sordid. People get on govt shit lists all the time. The govt uses the IRS to harass it's opponents all the time, and this program has already been abused. As I always have to tell the Dems on social issues, let's not play pretend here. The real world matters.

Again, I dont believe it is or will be used to listen to domestic calls. And if it is, I dont care, and I dont trust people who would care.

[hblask 1]

Again, I dont believe it is or will be used to listen to domestic calls. And if it is, I dont care, and I dont trust people who would care.

So someone in the Obama camp reads your posts here (thanks to the illegal spying software that monitors negative comments about King Barry), and they tape all your calls and play them around the office, and use every misspoken word as a reason to turn your finances upside-down.... this is a good thing? And no, you don't get to pretend this doesn't happen, because every spying program in our history has been abused to a similar degree. I suspect that the only reason you support this is because you are betting on the fact that *you personally* will never become a target of their attacks. But some innocent people will become targets of unwarranted attacks under this program. We must learn from history -- this power will be abused, and innocent people will suffer.

[strategy 4]

Again, I dont believe it is or will be used to listen to domestic calls.

cop, it's been used to listen solely to domestic calls before. that was the outrage to begin with: bush & co. wanted to give the telecoms immunity from any repercussions for tapping hubs that had no international traffic, and some of us wanted to hold them accountable for this blatant abuse of trust.

[copernicus 0]

So someone in the Obama camp reads your posts here (thanks to the illegal spying software that monitors negative comments about King Barry), and they tape all your calls and play them around the office, and use every misspoken word as a reason to turn your finances upside-down.... this is a good thing? Who said anything about using the information against me as an innocent person. If it were attempted I would be a millionaire from the lawsuits.And no, you don't get to pretend this doesn't happen, because every spying program in our history has been abused to a similar degree ORLY. Why not provide 1 example from every spying program. . I suspect that the only reason you support this is because you are betting on the fact that *you personally* will never become a target of their attacks. But some innocent people will become targets of unwarranted attacks under this program. We must learn from history -- this power will be abused, and innocent people will suffer. Slippery slope rears its ugly head once again.

[Nimue1995 1]

Again, I dont believe it is or will be used to listen to domestic calls. And if it is, I dont care, and I dont trust people who would care.

You might want to read a little history from the 1950's Cope. In particular pay attention to the McCarthy hearings. Any time power is given to the government it MUST come with oversight.

[strategy 4]

cop, it's been used to listen solely to domestic calls before. that was the outrage to begin with: bush & co. wanted to give the telecoms immunity from any repercussions for tapping hubs that had no international traffic, and some of us wanted to hold them accountable for this blatant abuse of trust.

please stop ignoring this point, copernicus. FISA has been abused, repeatedly, by both the right and left.

[copernicus 0]

please stop ignoring this point, copernicus. FISA has been abused, repeatedly, by both the right and left.

Links or it didnt happen.

[Balloon guy 158]

You might want to read a little history from the 1950's Cope. In particular pay attention to the McCarthy hearings. Any time power is given to the government it MUST come with oversight.

You want to know the dirty little secret about McCarthy?There actually were communist acting in influencial sectors of the US government for the ultimate goal of overthrowing the democratis republic.McCarthy stopped them.Went a little overboard, and became the poster child for abuse of governmental powers.Just like Nixon, he didn't have anything to do with watergate, he was guilty of covering up John Dean's role after making Dean a special adviser

[vbnautilus 48]

Slippery slope rears its ugly head once again.

You continue to misuse this objection. A slippery slope argument claims that A is bad because it initiates a long chain of causal in-between steps that ultimately leads to X: A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D, etc... the structure of this argument is fallacious because the intermediate contingencies are not established. When the federal government is granted a power, expecting them to use it does not require the postulation of many in-between contingencies. The position is that the government should not have the right to spy on its own citizens without judicial oversight. Your response amounts to "just because they can doesn't mean they will", which is uncharacteristically naive and also irrelevant: the government's powers should be limited by law. The citizens of a free country must have legal protection from the intrusion of the government into their private lives. EVERY power of the federal government should have legal oversight. They cannot be allowed to exercise whatever power they want in secret and with impunity.

[copernicus 0]

You continue to misuse this objection. A slippery slope argument claims that A is bad because it initiates a long chain of causal in-between steps that ultimately leads to X: A leads to B, B leads to C, C leads to D, etc... the structure of this argument is fallacious because the intermediate contingencies are not established. When the federal government is granted a power, expecting them to use it does not require the postulation of many in-between contingencies. The position is that the government should not have the right to spy on its own citizens without judicial oversight. Your response amounts to "just because they can doesn't mean they will", which is uncharacteristically naive and also irrelevant: the government's powers should be limited by law. The citizens of a free country must have legal protection from the intrusion of the government into their private lives. EVERY power of the federal government should have legal oversight. They cannot be allowed to exercise whatever power they want in secret and with impunity.

We disagree and jsut going around in circles at this point.

[hblask 1]

Who said anything about using the information against me as an innocent person. If it were attempted I would be a millionaire from the lawsuits.

You seem to believe that you can file lawsuits against federal officials and have a chance of winning. Maybe naivete is an issue here.

Slippery slope rears its ugly head once again.

It's not a slippery slope if it is already being abused. THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM is already being abused. How is that a slippery slope to claim that in the future, it will continue to be abused?

[copernicus 0]

You seem to believe that you can file lawsuits against federal officials and have a chance of winning. Maybe naivete is an issue here. Its been done.It's not a slippery slope if it is already being abused. THIS PARTICULAR PROGRAM is already being abused. How is that a slippery slope to claim that in the future, it will continue to be abused? Still waiting for links.

[Nimue1995 1]

You want to know the dirty little secret about McCarthy?There actually were communist acting in influencial sectors of the US government for the ultimate goal of overthrowing the democratis republic.McCarthy stopped them.Went a little overboard, and became the poster child for abuse of governmental powers.Just like Nixon, he didn't have anything to do with watergate, he was guilty of covering up John Dean's role after making Dean a special adviser

So you like Cope are an "ends justify the means" kinda guy. Sorry but I don't buy it. Cops before civil rights laws were enacted probably caught a lot of criminals but that didn't mean that they didn't abuse people just because of race or other differences. We can't condone someone's illegal or wrongful actions.

[hblask 1]

Links or it didnt happen.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/...el-edmonds-casehttp://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5987804&page=1http://www.reason.org/commentaries/summers_20060530.shtmlPlease, Cop, naivete does not look good on you. Leave that to Checky.

[vbnautilus 48]

Still waiting for links.

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics...amp;oref=sloginPost-9/11 Order Bypassed Special Court: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1600021_pf.htmlthe bush administration admits it: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20...20051219-1.html

[strategy 4]

Links or it didnt happen.

the relationship between AT&T and the NSA is well-established, but the actual goings-on have been obscured for reasons of national security and AT&T's concerns over giving up proprietary tech secrets. wish I knew how to insert a "citation needed" into an article in wiki, because the one on this has a quote essentially saying what I did: "The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA is or was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies' major interconnect locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic." the best we had was leaked documents from the case, which seem to have been removed unilaterally. here's one article about it on wired, complete with missing images of the text...

[vbnautilus 48]

the relationship between AT&T and the NSA is well-established, but the actual goings-on have been obscured for reasons of national security and AT&T's concerns over giving up proprietary tech secrets. wish I knew how to insert a "citation needed" into an article in wiki, because the one on this has a quote essentially saying what I did: "The exact scope of the program is not known, but the NSA is or was provided total, unsupervised access to all fiber-optic communications going between some of the nation's major telecommunication companies' major interconnect locations, including phone conversations, email, web browsing, and corporate private network traffic." the best we had was leaked documents from the case, which seem to have been removed unilaterally. here's one article about it on wired, complete with missing images of the text...

Yes, and its to the point where AT&T has gotten congress to grant them immunity since they know their participation in the whole thing was illegal.

[hblask 1]

http://blog.bobbarr2008.com/2008/10/10/gov...cent-americans/

[Nimue1995 1]

You guys are wasting your time because Cope won't admit any of the links are factual since they don't line up with his beliefs. And Cope you can deny that all you want but I've seen you do it before.