Quote :

"The State of NC seems insistent that I select from a wet noodle on TORTURE or a wet noodle on SPYING ON ME. Sure, there's always Nader, but I'd honestly rather smear my own feces on the ballot than vote for somebody I don't think is up to the task. So, rather than accept my counterproposal--voting for someone who satisfies my conscience--North Carolina would rather disenfranchise this lifelong resident by tossing out his ENTIRE FUCKING BALLOT."

Well, there's always Bob Barr, who's pretty good on both issues. Is he going to win? Hell no. But at least a strong marginal showing might send a message, especially if that margin is greater than the margin of victory for one of the candidates for NC.

And, incidentally, it also helps the LP secure future ballot access. So, win-win there.

7/10/2008 11:33:15 AM

I'm writing in Spider-Man.

7/10/2008 12:19:41 PM

i dont get why people think the telecom companies should be able to be sued for doing what the government asks of them

7/10/2008 12:23:33 PM

Uh, because the government was asking them to break the law? Breaking the law isn't wrong when it's the government doing it now?

7/10/2008 12:27:57 PM

Obama really fucked this one up. I think he killed a lot of enthusiasm about his candidacy over the last two weeks.

7/10/2008 12:33:06 PM

^^breaking the law in what way?


imo the gov is like yo give us phone records so we can try to get terrorists etc and now all the sudden people are like hey lets sue the telecom companies


its like going from a to c without stopping at b first

7/10/2008 1:50:00 PM

Please just get the hell out of this section.

7/10/2008 1:56:20 PM

7/10/2008 1:59:00 PM

Quote :

"^^breaking the law in what way? imo the gov is like yo give us phone records so we can try to get terrorists etc and now all the sudden people are like hey lets sue the telecom companies its like going from a to c without stopping at b first"

You cannot be fucking serious.

Let's have a little Civics lesson, shall we? You see, there's this thing called the "Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution" and this little document says that nice folks like police need something called a warrant when they execute a search on a U.S. citizen. Now, smart old guys in black robes have discussed this one for awhile, and they came to the conclusion that this rule applies even when it involves tapping peoples' phones or getting records of their phone calls.

Now, there's this law called "FISA", which lays out what steps federal police have to go through when tapping phones and listening to phone conversations between citizens here and citizens of other countries. But President Bush didn't think he needed to abide by that law, or by the Fourth Amendment, and so he just told phone companies to ignore the laws. And so they did. Why bother going to a judge and having to get a warrant signed, which takes so much time, when ignoring the law altogether and just "agreeing" to hand over phone records is so much easier?

Alas, then some judges said, once again, that this is against the law. You can't simply hand over the records of private citizens without a warrant - apparently they have rights or something. Stupid citizens.

And noooooow the Senate has gone and said, "Oh that's okay telephone companies, it's okay that you broke the law, we're going to make it so that there are no possible consequence to breaking the law, because the nice president asked them to do it. And, as Richard Nixon once told us, it's not illegal if the president does it."

And that's how we turned back into an absolute monarchy.

The end.

7/10/2008 2:39:01 PM

so just to clarify if a citizen does nothing wrong then they have nothing to worry about right?

7/10/2008 2:56:14 PM

Yeah, uh, sure. I mean, why bother with the whole Fourth Amendment formalities and such? I mean, if you have nothing to hide, why should the police require a warrant? Don't only the guilty need fear? Are you sympathizing with the terrorists?

Clearly, innocent people have never, ever had reason to fear the over-reach of police powers. Ever.

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 2:59 PM. Reason : .]

7/10/2008 2:58:21 PM

hmmmm ok i guess i see your point but i'm also guessing you are one of the ones that have never been affected by this?

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 3:01 PM. Reason : forgive me if i'm wrong..you dont strike me as someone who got arrested for saying bomb on telephone]

7/10/2008 3:01:28 PM

No, I haven't. I just really don't like the idea of a federal government off its constitutional leash. Bad things happen when it's left unchecked.

Worse things happen when we give blanket amnesty to people who flagrantly break the law.

7/10/2008 3:03:41 PM

oh great...another one of those constitution people...you people are so fucking lame sometimes

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 3:20 PM. Reason : ps- just what we need...more bullshit lawsuits]

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 3:20 PM. Reason : and more american idiots filing them]

7/10/2008 3:12:38 PM

Oh, right. Those horrible people who believe that the Constitution exists to protect our rights. The horrors!

And more lawsuits! Egads - the idea that we should sue people who should so happen to break the law.

Send me a PM when you decide to shack up at the local state prison with all of those unjustly prosecuted rapists and murderers. Otherwise, shut the hell up.

7/10/2008 3:47:30 PM

Quote :

"the Constitution exists to protect our rights"

Let me pretend to be an anarchist for a minute and fan the flames of this statement - The constitution exists to encapsulate and limit our rights not give us anything we don't already have the ability to do.

7/10/2008 3:49:49 PM

^^that makes absolutely no sense...a rapists and murderers are bad people

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 3:51 PM. Reason : and thanks for wanting to clog up the court systems even more douchebag]

7/10/2008 3:50:39 PM

It may help if you knew that the old FISA laws allowed the government to eavesdrop on calls for 72 hours without a warrant provided they were in the process of getting one. Also note that the FISA court RARELY ever denied a warrant.

You may not give two shits about what makes (well...made) America different and better, IMO, than monarchial Europe, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. The courts exist, you'll remember, to check the power of other branches--in this case the Executive--in order to protect YOU from their abuses. The Constitution may strike you as trite, but it's all that stands between us and a dictatorship.

I'd prefer to be able to speak to my mother on the phone (who lives in Canada) without wondering if anything I'm saying is being construed as a terrorist threat against the US by the NSA. Given the political content of what we discuss, it's not that unreasonable for me to assume my own privacy rights have been violated. I fully support the ACLU's dedication to this nonsensical afront to civil liberties and filed a complaint about this years ago.







[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 3:53 PM. Reason : ...]

7/10/2008 3:51:07 PM

^the last 2 pics are good but the first one sucks

7/10/2008 3:52:08 PM

::facepalm::

7/10/2008 3:54:08 PM

Quote :

"Let me pretend to be an anarchist for a minute and fan the flames of this statement - The constitution exists to encapsulate and limit our rights not give us anything we don't already have the ability to do."

Well, I'd argue it protects our rights in the sense that it narrowly proscribes the domain of governmental intrusion therein. Inasmuch, it doesn't create any new rights, but simply enshrines them against unlimited intrusion by the government. Like a social contract, if you will.

Quote :

"that makes absolutely no sense...a rapists and murderers are bad people"

Oh, so people who flagrantly ignore the law and violate your rights are okay? As opposed to those other people who flagrantly violate the law and violate your rights.

Quickly now, DNL, fly to their rescue! All these lawsuits over "criminals" who violate our rights are simply clogging up the courts for more important things. Like, uh... right.

7/10/2008 3:54:14 PM

I guess if the executive branch doesn't respect the laws or your rights, why should you respect them either?

::sigh::

7/10/2008 3:56:17 PM

I've got a brilliant idea. Let's bug DNL's apartment this weekend. Claim it's about protecting him from the turrirists.

I mean, he obviously should have nothing to hide, right? And since we're protecting him from the turrirsts, clearly he would have no reason to go "clogging the court system" with his pussy complaints about us violating his privacy.

Who's with me? Weekend project?

7/10/2008 3:57:48 PM

i'm pretty sure there isnt anything yall could say that would make me change my mind on this to be honest

unless you said like "i dont think the telecoms should be held responsible for doing whats asked of them"

is this like one of those partisan kinda things? are repubs cool with this? the dems view on it is annoying and making me not want to vote dem(which has been happening a lot recently)

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 4:02 PM. Reason : i mean even obama fucking knows what the deal is]

7/10/2008 3:59:47 PM

i don't want the government spying on me either, but i also don't think they're carefully listening and watcdhing 300,000,000 peoples' every move...i don't think they give a shit that you're going to Dave and Buster's for example

7/10/2008 4:06:42 PM

The point isn't that they are, it is that they can. That's enough for me.

7/10/2008 4:10:34 PM

this whole situation is disgusting. its a direct violation of our constitutional rights. im sick of the government trying to scare us into giving up our rights to catch all of these "terrorists"

cant wait for a few months to see fox news report on a huge terrorist bust made possible by this bill.

I was voting for Obama until I found out about this but I think I'll just waste my vote on Paul instead.

7/10/2008 4:26:49 PM

^^i've just always thought they could do it (illegally and secretly) already if they really wanted to

if they really really really want dirt on you, they'll just do some black ops shit...fuck going through the proper legal channels...at least thats what i think they can and have done for decades

7/10/2008 4:30:54 PM

Of course they can do it - as this case already proves. The question is whether they should be allowed to do it without any checks whatsoever. Which, it would appear, DNL is perfectly cool with.

Even the original FISA bill (before the recent debacle) required going to a secret FISA court and getting a tap warrant - and this was for foreign surveillance. The Bush administration didn't even bother with that - for domestic taps (where the requirements are even more stringent). The Telecoms aren't stupid, and their lawyers certainly knew this was illegal when they did it, but they played along anyways.

Now they got caught red-handed doing something illegal at the behest of the administration and people like DNL want to give everybody blanked forgiveness for flagrantly violating the law. Probably because he saw it on 24 or something. Brilliant.

7/10/2008 4:34:26 PM

They can. And I have no doubts that they do.

It's not the same thing, but if they're doing this...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2930944

They're already 'listening' (through nifty NSA supercomputers, anyway) to our phone calls.

Hope you keep this in mind, drunknloaded, next time you consider fapping to TWWer pics...

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 4:37 PM. Reason : ...]

7/10/2008 4:36:21 PM

I'm sure they've always had the ability to, but if we really wanted to catch all of these terrorists, we'd just streamline the process for obtaining warrants or somehow modify the process.

Just shows how the Dems are such pussies and that if you really want to do something in this country just become a lobbyist. In my mind, I can't see any other explaination

7/10/2008 4:38:08 PM

Terrorism FTW

7/10/2008 4:52:22 PM

Quote :

"i don't want the government spying on me either, but i also don't think they're carefully listening and watcdhing 300,000,000 peoples' every move...i don't think they give a shit that you're going to Dave and Buster's for example"

Quote :

"Hope you keep this in mind, drunknloaded, next time you consider fapping to TWWer pics..."

trust me...i'm willing to bet the government cares about a lot more things than this

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 5:28 PM. Reason : .]

7/10/2008 5:27:01 PM

As we all know, the government never makes mistakes. And never abuses its power. They never violate the privacy of private citizens for arbitrary reasons.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/04/passport-workers-snoop-in-files-of-famous/

No, the federal government is always perfect and benevolent. Right, DNL?

[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 6:17 PM. Reason : .]

7/10/2008 6:17:37 PM

Quote :

"The constitution exists to encapsulate and limit our rights not give us anything we don't already have the ability to do."

The Constitution recognizes our pre-existing rights, and limits the gov't from infringing on those existing rights.

Quote :

"The Constitution may strike you as trite, but it's all that stands between us and a dictatorship."

Everyone should sew this on a pillow.

7/10/2008 9:43:13 PM

I have to agree with DrSteveChaos on all points





[Edited on July 10, 2008 at 10:40 PM. Reason : .]

7/10/2008 10:39:12 PM

^^ agreed.

Obama's response on his website about why he voted for the bill is pretty weak IMO.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/rospars/gGxsZF/

I want to believe that he does want to reform the bill if/when hes president. Ultimately think he didn't want to seem weak on terrorism by voting against it. But he's pissed off the rest of us who don't buy into scare tactics.
Whatever your feelings are on the Consitution, the fact is our rights are laid out in it and are supposed to be unconditional. I realize that there can possibly be different interpretations of the Constitution, but in this case there's no wiggle room. They're just openly violating our rights and are yet again using national security to justify it.

[Edited on July 11, 2008 at 11:33 AM. Reason : durr]

[Edited on July 11, 2008 at 11:35 AM. Reason : double durr]

7/11/2008 11:28:38 AM

barack just needs to plead his case for no immunity to all 57 states to get a constitutional amendment passed banning it

7/12/2008 5:13:30 PM

If I were a McCain supporter, I'd probably refrain from harping on Obama's occasional verbal flubs.

7/12/2008 6:44:33 PM

me too

7/12/2008 10:16:19 PM

^^ Occasional? Really?!

Obama seems to be stepping in it on an almost daily basis anymore. And this would get much more attention if it weren't for the media's crush on him--consider, say, his merci beaucoup remarks. That was an absurdly framed statement from Obama who, according to the Washington Post, doesn't speak a second language.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/11/AR2008071103141.html

Obama also said this:

Quote :

"Obama brushed off the criticism today, saying that immigrants should learn English but that Americans should learn a foreign language as well. 'You know, this is an example of some of the problems we get into when somebody attacks you for saying the truth,' he said, 'which is we should want children with more knowledge.'"

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/07/11/politics/fromtheroad/entry4254480.shtml

Unbelievable! Wanting children with more knowledge is about as risky a position as Tim Calhoun being against dinosaurs.



I would like to know if Obama's children have been learning a second language.



[Edited on July 13, 2008 at 5:43 AM. Reason : .]

7/13/2008 5:41:06 AM

Quote :

"Obama Defends Comments On Learning Other Languages DAYTON, Ohio -- Sen. Barack Obama wishes he spoke Spanish -- or some other language. "I said something the other day down in Georgia, and the Republicans jumped on this. I said, you know, absolutely immigrants need to learn English, but we also need to learn foreign languages," he said here Friday. ". . . I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!" While campaigning in Georgia earlier in the week, the Illinois Democrat had called for Americans to learn more foreign languages. "It's embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German," he had said. "And then we go over to Europe and all we can say is 'Merci beaucoup.' " Conservatives ridiculed Obama for the remark, but the senator seemed eager to defend it here, as the question he was asked was about the No Child Left Behind education law. "

SCANDALOUS!!!

7/13/2008 7:41:16 AM

bump

6/17/2009 5:55:57 PM

Which one of you dickheads is gonna be the first to make an Ebonics crack?

[Edited on June 17, 2009 at 6:04 PM. Reason : A YEAR LATER]

6/17/2009 6:04:14 PM

Feingold: Asking Obama To Reject Bush

http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/06/feingold_asking_obama_to_reject_bush.php

6/17/2009 6:04:53 PM

Quote :

"remember, to check the power of other branches"

Do not forget the 4th Cheney branch of gov't that is neither executive or legislative.

6/17/2009 6:23:09 PM

FISA is OK as long as it's Obama who is using it

6/18/2009 8:20:36 AM

bump by request

6/19/2009 5:17:13 PM

did you really need to bump this, duke? I posted yesterday, lol

6/19/2009 6:25:30 PM