Tuesday, June 2, 2009

We hold these truths to be self-evident ...

In reference to: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/wiretap-deadline/

"Walker is the same judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit targeting the nation’s telecommunication companies of being complicit in Bush’s once-secret spy program. Congress, with the vote of then-Sen. Barack Obama, legalized the spy program last summer. ... The legislation authorizing the spy powers also immunized the telcos from being sued for their part in Bush’s eavesdropping program. Walker is entertaining a constitutional challenge to the immunity legislation."

Phone companies shouldn't get a free pass, I know congress legalized it, it just feels dirty.

Don't get me wrong - if there's the slightest suspicion someone is talking to bad people then by all means get the information! But really how long does it take to get the right warrants in a case like that? Wouldn't any patriotic judge gladly wake up at 3am to sign off on something like that to make it all legal?

I like how the judge got creative with the administration's "dare" a few weeks ago to reveal the document so if they lost they could appeal, and if they lost the appeal the state department could just destroy the document. I'm down for national security, but none of this would be an issue if they just did it legally.

I'd bet the farm that security people are getting real time information on overseas phone call records, couldn't they just use the record of that phone call as enough cause to legally tap the conversation?

I'm not some hippie ya know! I'm just saying we have all this great stuff in place to get the bad guys and protect everyone's liberty. I always felt liberty is what set us apart from the rest of the world. I know financial undercurrents are the real reasons behind well, mostly everything but the ideology of putting liberty front and center is priceless.

I always felt like that feeling of being free in many ways leads to innovation, a feeling of limitless potential. I think our country will always be tested as a society, but we're so free and diverse I think we'll always continue to adapt and come up with new solutions to harder problems at every level. I know this comes at great cost, but the cost should never be what makes us great.

Feeling like this entry is automatically being routed through some government server and is being archived for analysis makes me feel violated, it just doesn't feel constitutional! There are countries in the world that spy on it's own people, that limit the flow of information and suppress anything negative. (China's version of Google)

So you tell me, how's the innovation, evolution and quality of life in the part of the world where liberty isn't a founding corner stone?

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" - Benjamin Franklin

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

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