America's #1 Online Cigar Auction
first, best, biggest!

It's sort of like line item vetos et al. When in power it seems like a good idea to increase power. The argument against is often but what about when you are not in power? You may be the most upstanding great summich ever to walk the planet but the next guy may not be.

Lets pretend Bush was great and only wanted to get the bad guys.... and of course his plan here was much more measured..... the next guy may very well suck and not be so measured. Short term vision vs. long term vision both blinded by partisan my party is better than the other fog.

The Line Item veto is only necessary because our government has become a fking JOKE.

We write and vote and enact laws that include absurd provisions unrelated to the intent of the original bill.

We should require signatures next to every line item, detailing who added it.

So when we look back at a "save the children bill" and learn that line item #798 says that all senators get lifetime free haircuts, we'll know which bozo thought of it.

bs. I specifically posed the question to someone (can't remember who) how they would feel about this law once the "evil democrats" came to power again.



This isn't extreme. This is the problem. This is all legal. This is all covered by the law. Ass-clowns gave carte-blanche to our politicians because it was too much effort to draw limitations on the power.

I didn't attack it because it was bush. I said VERY CLEARLY that this was a bad idea because eventually a politician was going to come by who was going to abuse the ever loving sh$t out of it. Didn't expect it to happen under obama, but I definitely expected it to happen eventually.

Victor, this IS extreme.

Like most laws, they are passed with a certain intent.
If the wording is vague, we get some who question it and others who will test it to see where it breaks.

This bill was designed for protection but has become a legal means to keep tabs.
Just because the government can legally do these things does not make it any less extreme. And what makes it worse is the cloak and dagger secrecy. Snowden is being chased just for exposing it. Yet we sit here and discuss how it's completely legal.
If it's no big deal, then Obama's transparent government should have no problem with us knowing about it.

This is dirty and un-American.

And those who hated Bush screamed bloody murder even when it was being used as per the original intent. Yet they now want Snowden to burn at the stake for exposing the ABUSE under Obama that far exceeds the original intent.

We don't need "I told you so".
We need outrage that results in a changing of the guards in DC.

I don't think it exceeds Bush's original intent. I also hate the program. That said if three branches state it is legal, and it carries a security clearance, I can't just disclose it because I disagree with it and not expect repercussions.

I like this one:

RICKAMAVEN Offline
#72 Posted: Fri, May 12 2006, 7:14 PM
Favorites | Quote
Joined: 10-01-2000
Posts: 32,825

when all is said and done, we have a corrupt administration that is acting above the law with no oversight. they have refused to testify under oath and when bush was called for information he brough his big daddy with him,

years ago i mentioned two things of major importance to the survival or downfall of this country, impeachment and martial law.

what will come first.

do you think that if this administration is certain they will lose either the senate or the house, they will start a war with iran and/or declare martial law to prevent the 06 elections. soon it will be kristallnacht. i can hear the glass breaking as i type.

who will stop them, when people on this board are willing to accept the destruction of the fourth amendment, with the idiotic rationalization, that
it is good for the country.

somewhere madame lafarge is knitting.

rug. don't even waste your time responding directly to me. anyone that doesn't believe there is global warming has nothing to say of interest to me.

I think TG is overplaying things because he is a little embarrased he let a police line touch his junk to make sure he wasn't hiding a Chechnian

Now the **** is going to start a huge uproar with us and CHINA!

you misspelled "probed"

Going in this direction is the equivalent of giving up, but you just can't let go.

We can debate how the Patriot Act became corrupt. We can even debate when and under which administration.
I understand your point of view. But your angst is once again misplaced.

The people who abuse the power granted by this poorly conceived law are the ones we should be directing our anger towards.
Your insatiable need to let people shirk responsibility is alarming.

I'm sure le hockeydad has a flag you can borrow.



I don't know what a flay is.
Fixed it.

He charges too much.

It's largely been forgotten by our entire nation.

The thing I find so f-ing sad and hilarious about the entire thing, is that it's played out almost as a mockery of the same sh$t you'll see in literature.

It's like no one has ever read a book.

I didn't post in that linked thread so it never happened.

When I got up today I was a bit anxious and having problems urinating. So I stuck my thumb in my ass and yelled SNAKE.

Renaming my thumb NSA.

That name is da BOMB! OBAMA would laugh at that CONSERVATIVE joke.......

That would all be fine, if 90% of our 3 branches of government weren't warmongering, corporation-owned, totalitarian control freaks.



I say hero AND patriot. If we can't depend on our government to tell us the truth, it's up to whistleblowers with large testicles to step up.

Some patriot.

Hong Kong (CNN) - U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking computer networks around the world for years, apparently targeting fat data pipes that push immense amounts of data around the Internet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday.

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden said, are thousands of computers in China -- which U.S. officials have increasingly criticized as the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. China has denied such attacks.

The Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The English-language news agency, which operates in Hong Kong, also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also "point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets," the newspaper reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as "direct theft of United States property."

Snowden's allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country's cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, "our critical infrastructure's preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience," he said.

In the Morning Post interview -- published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden -- he claimed the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes located around the world.

"We hack network backbones -- like huge Internet routers, basically -- that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

We didn't forget so much as insist on clinging to the cultural paradigm that 'it can't happen here'.

Most Americans refuse to believe that they would ever have anything to fear from their own government.

The ACLU has already filed suit over this matter. It simply happened to be on the right side of this set of issues- for the very first time ever- since its inception.














Generally see: http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/aclu-files-lawsuit-challenging-nsas-patriot-act-phone

I thought we were blaming the Nips.....

I heard Boston is the test market

Romney rounded down to 47%...

Yes, but some of us voted for Ron Paul and others. 48.93% voted for someone other then dear Leader.

Master Dubya has decreed & given permission that his heir Jeb be elected.
Unfortunately for him, the electorate is hungering for yet another novelty candidate to elect- a slick woman with cankles.

Hillary's cankles overshadowed her scruples.

cankles = (too much) scrapple?

Correction: Elected four times.