Re: "smoked salmon socialists"

"usual suspect" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
<snip>
> *Any* power exercised by government has the potential for abuse. The law
> has Congressional oversight provisions built into it. The judiciary,
> too, will retain its check and balance. I know many people don't like
> the FISA court, but this is something with which we've lived for 25
> years now.

I just wonder if in all this fervor to get the bad guys that we're not
putting our own privacy at risk. I don't really have anything to hide but I
don't want my private life ending up on some kind of gov. document either.

<snip>
> That's something which we'll likely learn about as abuses occur, just
> like any other law. One instance that's already been described as an
> abuse is use of Section 314, authored by Senators Sarbanes and Daschle
> (both Democrats), in an investigation of political corruption in Las
Vegas.
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103812,00.html
>
> I'm not convinced yet that this constituted an abuse. I'm also not
> convinced that using Patriot Act provisions to gather information on
> anti-war protestors constitutes an abuse, but I'm of the opinion that
> Congress should never have repealed the Sedition Act of 1918.

I think they were using the Patriot Act as a shortcut, a convenience. Those
people weren't terrorists. This is just one example.

"The administration presented the Patriot Act to the Congress two years ago
as a carefully tailored and limited piece of legislation specific to
targeting terrorism. And now they're using it for purposes that are
obviously and completely unrelated to terrorism," Barr told Foxnews.com."

The Sedition Act was a bad thing because it prevented people from having
free speech. How can we criticize a bad move if our government does make
one, if we can't speak out against it without facing being treated as
criminals?

Do you think that we should still be hunting down the commies in this
country too?

<snip>
> Every law has that potential. Even the absence of law has that potential
> -- just look at how the Supreme Court interprets matters these days. The
> Tenth Amendment is meaningless thanks to majorities of robed rogues.

State's Rights have been eroded to almost nothing. But what would you
propose if they did have more power? There were times I joked about seceding
again when Clinton was in office.

One thing that I noticed that gets on my nerves quite a bit is that there
are no national science standards. If there were, we might be able to stifle
a lot of the creationists who go state to state, trying to wedge in ID.

-Rubystars