This is ridiculous ... they'll tell is it's to make us safer. I wonder if the IRS will be using the information to target people.
None of us should be surprised by this - especially with the recent backdrop involving the irs and ag holder. maybe this is what is meant by transparency. lol
of course they tell the public its for safety. thats the out for them. simple. the IRS is already targeting people - and has been for years.
You might want to look at the Republican votes in Congress that made this legal. You will find while it had bipartisan support, the Democrats were at least split on allowing this. The Republicans in both the House and Senate were overwhelmingly for it. You can blame a President for using this power. I blame the Republicans for making this power the law of the land. I suspect the fake outrage from the right on this to be as balanced as usual.
Why does this need to be a democrat vs. republican or left vs right thing? This is simply an infringement on our rights as Americans and we should all be outraged by it. I don't care if Ronald Reagan made it possible. The government is completely out of control.
I'm guessing AT&T is even more compromised than Verizon. The Patriot Act needs to go away. Empowering the King's men in this way should only be done in a national emergency and by definition the norm is not an emergency however threatening it may appear to the powers that be.
Outraged? I don't remember the libertarian's on this board who think owning a machine gun protects their rights saying crap about the police State the same Republicans legislated overwhelmingly with virtually no debate. This is a left right thing.
This is like any other issue coming out of the Bush years. The right was quiet as a church mouse when their champion was trampling the Constitution and now they are outraged when their foe is continuing the same path. I'll repeat, the Patriot Act just needs to go away. It has allowed scoundrels with no respect for the Constitution at all to wrap themselves in the flag while they trample our liberties at will. It takes leaks like this to bring the issue to the forefront because the government has so thoroughly insulated itself against the oversight and observation that democracy requires to maintain itself.
I personally never liked the Patriot Act and I thought Bush was the worst president I ever saw - until Obama. The government is out of control. I think people get too caught up in party lines and forget what the point is ...
This bill was passed overwhelmingly when Bush was President and the Republicans voted to extend it when Obama was President. The right supports this having nothing to do with Bush. The point in case you're missing it is so called Libertarians who support a huge defense department, an oxymoron if there ever was one, and law and order Republicans have aligned to fuck over the American Public.
The bill would never have been proposed in the first place under a Democratic administration. It was pure Cheney machinations, trying to give the government a technocratic hammer to wield over the free flow of information and dissent. The Patriot Act was the ghost of Richard Nixon come back to haunt us.
Hard to buy that based on how the current administration has decided to use these powers. Liberals have generally been less supportive of a police state than the right but the WW2 generation is just about dead and buried. I'm afraid the modern day left and right are perfectly aligned when it comes to the police state.
Smart Americans today, don't waste money on private universities. They get bullshit state university degrees or join the military (really smart Americans Navy, Air force, Coast Guard or make sure your MOS is some bullshit support job); Pay cheap college loans or have the VA pay for college entirely and collect; get bartender and service industry jobs (where 90% of your earnings are made under the table); claim $15- $20k a year; save for 6-8 years (safety deposit box cash and small bank accounts, nothing over $9999); get a loan to buy their own business; never report cash transactions and bank. Most of my friends have chosen the "system" route and are paying oodles for student loans. How's that Master's degree working out for you now? worthless. My friends the "bartenders" have more money than any of us, work 3-4 days a week and are now buying and renting homes. Collect cash, beat the system.
biggs i dont have to look at any votes on this matter - it doesn't matter to me what party or parties have voted on it. you can blame whomever you prefer, IMO its all a sham. no doubt the bush years were a cluster fuk and they were/are ruthlessly criticized for it. the obama years are turning into a cluster fuk, however IMO, are getting a major pass - at least until now. there was no reason for bush to tout transparency cause there wasn't any.....BO touts transparency from day one - and there still isn't any. whats worse??
so what do i tell my 14 year old who is preparing for her regents exams and sporting a decent GPA as a frosh in high school??
Your signature is extremely appropriate in the context of this discussion. The government absolutely has the ability to specifically target people / organizations / etc that it wants to focus its investigation efforts on. This use of the Patriot Act is not that, it is fishing. The entire act should be tossed and if necessary recreated with stricter guidelines providing more transparency and allowing the MINIMUM necessary powers for the authorities to do their job appropriately.
I went the "system" route and am under the exact circumstances you're describing. I'm being absolutely crushed by student loans, and even though my job and salary are not bad on their own, I still live paycheck to paycheck and can barely afford a burrito much less the ability to purchase a house with my wife.
