DOJ Fights To Bury Court Ruling On Government Surveillance 100
coolnumbr12 writes with this IBTimes excerpt: "The Justice Department may soon be forced to reveal a classified document that details unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens. The Justice Department has fought to keep the document secret for about a year, but a recent court order demands that they respond to a formal request filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation by next week, June 7, 2013."
Thank you EFF (Score:4, Insightful)
The justification for "classifying" information is pretty much lost on people working in government these days. Keep up the good work, EFF! This classification of government crimes against the constitution nonsense has to stop.
Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same DOJ that's having Eric Holder investigate the crimes of... Eric Holder.
Sometimes I'm amazed at how much blatantly fucked, unconstitutional shit these assclowns manage to get away with... then I remember: bread and circuses.
Fuck.
Re:All hail (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't seriously expect republicans to be watchdogs over things like this. While they claim to want small government, they simply offer a different kind of big government than democrats; that is, one that starts wars at every opportunity, spies on its citizens, and makes exception after exception for large corporations. Of course, democrats have some things in common with them, but they're both just trash that can't be trusted.
Re:All hail (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they both spend too much.
But Republicans want to spend on wars in foreign countries.
Democrats want to spend on 'helping' Americans.
I don't like either, but since I have to take one, I'll take the latter.
Re:All hail (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very true. It seems to go kinda like this:
Republican: National security is at risk, we must curtail civil rights!
Democrat: Hey you can't take people's rights away like that....you have to do it like this...then you can get everything you want AND prosecute anyone who leaks on it
Republican: Ok Deal.
Democrat: Now lets raise taxes to pay for it
Republican: Not so fast, how about we backdoor a tax hike to make it look like something else, and make sure we can shield ourselves and our friends
Democrat: Ok deal.....oh and we can fight about it and suck up all the air time so nobody talks about civil liberties
Republican: Now you are getting it.
Re:If only... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, what needs to happen is a few senators need to clone Chuck Grassley's spine and attitude. That is what congressional oversight is all about.
Re:All hail (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All hail (Score:4, Insightful)
'helping' isn't always helping.
Re:All hail (Score:5, Insightful)
And replaced with what? Folgers Crystals?
Well, the crystals wouldn't be any LESS effective. Why not?
Re:All hail (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All hail (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends what you mean by a deal. Lots of things pass uncontroversially. Just this year, BEFORE the sequester debate came back, the pentagon's orders were reviewed, and where congress saw the Pentagon wanted 7 new C-130s, congress approved 14 of them. This was bipartisan....this is what they do all the time...in fact, over the life of the program, congress has approved 5000% more C-130s than the military ever ordered: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/10-6 [commondreams.org]
Then there is the whole issue of their fake fights. Someone first pointed it out to me a few years back. Chart the minimum wage over time against inflation. You will find that it follows inflation on a long term average. Everyone who watches the issue knows this. However, congress wont just bake it in because, every few years it gives them an excuse to drag it out and beat the drums.
The Republicans beat the "too expensive to do business" drum, and the money flows into their coffers from all manner of group against raising the minimum wage. Employers all over the country are falling all over themselves to throw money at the GOP.
The Democrats beat the "workers are hit hard" drum, and labor unions, and all of their associated groups fall all over themselves to throw money a the Democrats.
Then in the end....they all "grudgingly agree" to do what they all knew was going to happen from the start....and put the issue away for the next few years until they can dust it off and do it all over again.
Thing is, you see it everywhere. Abotion? ever noticed how often anti-abortion laws blatantly violate Roe V Wade? Ever wonder, why professional lawmakers, people who have had time to study the system and work with it, would propose something that they know can't survive? Fact is, the public's opinion of abortion is a near 50/50 split, and hasn't changed in while. Perfect issue for them.
Propose a law, knowing it will never have to be implemented seriously for more than a few weeks. Money starts rolling in to both sides. Law gets passed, law gets struck down, pro-life and pro-choice groups both see a huge windfall.
Then, they take the budget, come up with an agreement, but call it a sequester, really tiny fractional cuts in the increase in discretionary spending, coupled with a small tax hike, thats all it was. They agreed to it, but structured it so they could pretend to disagree and "try to avoid it" for months, then blame each other when it "hit".
But that isn't really how they deal, thats just how they suck up all the air.
For the deals, look at how the PATRIOT act got passed or renewed. Look at how FISA courts got gutted and how the torture program went unprosecuted. They make deals all the time, they just don't talk about those deals.