There are few things more annoying than the Republican who suddenly got
religion about the PATRIOT Act in 2009, but one of them might be the Democrat who
decided along about the same time that printing fake money to bail out
corporate fat cats maybe wasn't such a bad idea after all.
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16 comments:
Well, you know, it's ALWAYS been Okay if MY Side does it....
Which should prove Interesting over the next few weeks in the Senate. Guess Diane Feinstein is launching her "Assault Weapons Ban: the Sequel" today. And Harry "Ignore that Article and Photos in the American Rifleman showing ME standing next to Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox at the new NRA Range I helped them get built in Nevada" is allowing Sen. Patrick "Live Free or Die" Leahy of Vermont to start it off in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
So I wonder how many "Target Shooting former West Virginia Goobernors" in the Senate will go along with the Antis? And how many of the so-called "Senators from Clinger States" will be voting Against it before they vote For it?
This should be fun watching them all try to Tap-dance through the Minefield.
As long as they vote for one of them and against the other they can claim a win on both sides.
Popehat hits some of it on the head. The problem I have is that I had issues with the PATRIOT act when it was suggested, I disliked expanding Medicare, and thought we were spending too much money, yet every progressive I discuss things with points at how I supported Booosh...
Well yeah, compared to Al Gore or John Kerry I would have supported a Furby on crack.
I can't have conversations with some people because they point at Reagan and say something that's supposed to upset me, and then follow it up with a Bush slam. These men were not my father, they aren't my role models, they were people, both of whom did things that I liked and things that I did not like.
I don't take my dreams, thoughts, and hopes and pin them on some messiah, at least not politically. I have a template of things I'd like to see done, and I vote for the likeliest person to do those things, doesn't mean I agree with everything he does.
Hell, I love what Obama has done with NASA, at least the results. We're on the edge of a private sector space boom because of him.
Woodman said...
Well yeah, compared to Al Gore or John Kerry I would have supported a Furby on crack.
That's the funniest thing I've read in a couple of days.
I can remember wanting to ask Hanity how he would feel about the Patriot Act if Janet Reno was still the AG.
-Bubba Man. One of the Bubba's of the Apocalypse.
I know many people have said that phrase, but now you've gone and gotten Midnight Oil stuck in my head.
Happy Birthday!
Got no issues with Gitmo and will continue to assert that there is a significant and distinct difference between waterboarding and "torture".
Boat Guy,
FWIW, I'm finding the discussion on "what is torture?" down in the comments at the Popehat post fascinating.
There's some smart and level-headed conversation with good points being made on each side.
+1 on Boat Guy, having been waterboarded it is NOT fun, but also not torture either...
PATRIOT never really bothered me, because I read the damned thing and didn't see what I was supposed to be so pissed off about.
(I saw more than one report saying "Cops did this horrible thing and said PATRIOT act!" where my response was "well, the cops don't know what was in it, because that sure as hell wasn't".
Turns out that cops are kinda bad at knowing law, and love to give excuses for their mistakes and overreach, like blaming the Feds.)
Of course, that's why I didn't start opposing it when the President's party changed from (R) to (D) ... and because I'm an (I) of the (L)-ish variety.
Torture is what the other guy is doing to you. When you are doing it, it's "enhanced interrogation techniques". The entire "War on Terror" (like the "War on Drugs", "War on Poverty", etc.) is a Statist fraud. Common denominator: more Gubmint.
Sigivald,
"PATRIOT never really bothered me, because I read the damned thing and didn't see what I was supposed to be so pissed off about."
I read it, too, and I saw a laundry list of proposals that had been shot down as unconstitutional by Democrat and Republican congresses stretching back to the Carter administration.
It was bullshit then and it is bullshit now, and there's no tapdancing around that.
Sigivald: Get back to us once the NRA is reclassified as a terror-supporting organization.
The PATRIOT Act is one scary piece of legislation.
When they reclassify the NRA as a terror-supporting organization they may as well do the same for the ACLU or any other organization that opposes the government.
It is the opposition to their will that the government finds terrifying.
But will they in fact do that to the ACLU, since "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", to quote somebody or other from around 1984 (a year fraught with symbolism)
I'm fundamentally opposed to laws that need cutesy names to get the votes to be enacted. The problem with PATRIOT Act was that all those proposals became law, and now in order to have them be appropriately unconstitutional somone has to be injured by them and thus have standing to sue, and we've seen from Heller how long that can take.
My biggest annoyance is all those Dems who thought it terrible that Shrub was running a deficit, and then go on to vote for running a deficit 1000 times bigger with no end in sight.
Tam: Agreed on laundry list (and agreed that it's bullshit in that most of it doesn't do a lick of good against terrorism, which was its stated goal).
None of it smacked me as plainly unconstitutional rather than a waste of time and effort and money, though...
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