White House Wants Phone Records Without Oversight 302
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration's Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the US without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy."
Re:LOL, you got GWB again! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:LOL, you got GWB again! (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of us who aren't so anti-government realized this even earlier.
Each side tries to do what they think is best for America, whether that's promoting human rights, economic security, or international stability. Each administration tries to make decisions based on what they believe to be right. For advice in that regard, they turn to expert advisors (usually chosen for their general views, rather than opinions on specific issues) and the public. Of course, when only a tiny fraction of the public actually cares enough to state their opinion, the administration's ability to make an informed decision is severely crippled.
When was the last time you complained to your representatives about defense spending? Or the education budget? Or the overreaching power of the FBI? This is your government. Participate in it.
Re:LOL, you got GWB again! (Score:5, Interesting)
Some years ago I complained to my Representative about H1B visas.
He actually wrote back! But he twisted my complaint. Bragged how he was doing all he could to stop the evil Latinos from illegally swarming across our southern border. The government was building a fence! Great-- they were going to waste more of our money finding out that fences don't work well enough to be worth the trouble. Certainly I don't want totally uncontrolled borders, but that wasn't what I was complaining about.
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a member of Congress... But I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Interesting)
Can we now dispense with the myth of the 2-party system? There is one party -- the party of you're going to get fucked and you're going to like it.
That's actually not true at all. The problem is that the 2 parties in Congress aren't Democrats and Republicans. They're the Bribed Party, and People's Party. The Bribed Party is focused on getting their next round of campaign contributions and paying off the industries that get them into office. The People's Party, on the other hand, actually tries to figure out good policy.
The challenge of this sort of system is that since no reasonable ordinary citizen would vote for the Bribed Party, the Bribed candidates spend a ton of money trying to convince you that they're actually part of the People's Party. And because both the Democratic and Republican Parties are heavily controlled by the Bribed Party, the role of primaries is almost always to try to ensure that members of the People's Party don't make it to a general election or gain national prominence. So by the time you get to a general election, the reason the two purported major parties are fielding identical-sounding candidates is because they're actually both part of the Bribed Party. (As proof of what the goal of the primaries really is: People's Party candidate Ned Lamont beats Bribed Party candidate Joe Lieberman in a primary, and the Democratic Party leadership enthusiastically supports Joe Lieberman.)
The good news is that occasionally a People's Party candidate slips through, and some have established themselves quite well in Washington. A couple of examples of those guys are Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, who led the effort to vote against the Patriot Act renewal just last week. There by all appearances are at least 148 members of the People's Party in the House, and they definitely deserve support even if they're hopelessly outnumbered and even more hopelessly outfunded.
And what if I call Osama every other day? (Score:4, Interesting)