[Kingcoal]

I hear what you say, but how does any of it violate the Constitution? The individual rights outlined in the Constitution apply only to States and their citizens, that's what the Constitution is, a treaty between the States forming an organization called the United States. What I'm not hearing is where the feds have stepped out of their jurisdiction and violated the Constitution. The Constitution does not apply outside of the USA, hence Guantamino bay. Since it doesn't apply there, then the only law is international law and you know how that goes. Same goes for the war in Iraq. I don't know of any place in the Constitution where the Executive Branch is required to make all of their inner communications public.

I don't in any way mean to defend the GWB administration, but I really don't see where they are violating the constitution. Spying on international phone calls and emails is a grey area. Technically, since it is an international exchange, the Feds have jurisdiction, in the way that Customs has the right to search stuff going in and out of the country.

I don't agree with any of it, but face it, our beloved Constitution left a lot of open doors.

[seahorse]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat I'm not hearing is where the feds have stepped out of their jurisdiction and violated the Constitution.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse', '
')Domestic wiretapping is a violation of the Fourth Amendment..... We are facist.

[smallpoxgirl]

It seems to me that the form of government that the "founding fathers" had in mind, was more or less what we've got.

The Deceleration of Independence offered a really radical rethinking of the relationship of the relationship of government to it's people. I think the problem lies in the fact that the subsistence farmers come US soldiers took it at face value. The "founding fathers" always understood that it was more or less tongue-in-cheek. Within a very few years after the revolution, the state governments had become just as odious as the English government was. A group of farmers in Massachusetts believing the declaration would be honored, sought redress from their government. When the only redress forthcoming was a sheriff confiscating their lands and selling them for a pittance to Boston merchants, they moved to enforce their rights as citizens. The Boston Government found itself unable to raise an army to quash these "rebellious" citizens insistent on not being charged outrageous taxes and kicked off their land to further fatten Boston merchants. That crisis was the single motivating event behind the writing of the Constitution. The single need which motivated the Constitution was the need of the Government to be able to raise an army of citizens from one state and use them to crush and subjugate the citizens of another state. In fact the first major act of the newly formed government was to devise a tax scheme that transfer massive amounts of money from the subsistence farmers east of the Appalachians to the wealthy east coast merchants forcing the farmers into poverty and tenancy. When they resisted impoverishment George Washington raised an army, and crushed them. We now know it as the Whiskey Rebellion, but it was in every way the beginnings of income tax resistance.

When one understands the motivation that drove the Constitution, the current situation makes much better sense. The Bill of Rights are amendments for a very fundamental reason. People like Patrick Henry, understood fullwell the tyrannies that would be produced by this new document and argued vociferously against its adoption. The Bill of Rights was offered as an appeasement. "We don't want tyrannical power. Really. Pinky swear." The Bill of Rights is the strawberry icing used to hide the turd layer cake within. Unfortunately the axiom was as true then as now. The way to tell if a politician is lying is to see if their lips are moving.

It seems to me that there is this recurring phenomenon in American history where this or that faction of the population in some way gets awakened and starts to investigate it's situation. Invariably they come to this very indignant realization that they've been lied to, and the role of the US government domestically and internationally is nothing like what they were taught in school. The reality is that all this land of the free home of the brave business was a marketing ploy from the day it was said. It was a campaign promise to be brushed aside on whim when a more profitable course of action presented itself. The current tyranny was quite predictable by those who examined fairly the constitution, and frankly was not far from the reason it was written.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pup55', 'I') think the current action, that is to say "rope-a-dope inaction" by the democrats is a deliberate strategy.

They know that despite a 70 percent disapproval rating, the US public has no stomach for a Clinton-like impeachment trial that will probably fail and accomplish nothing except envigorate the right wingers.

They also know that if they bring the government to their knees, like Gingrich in 94, they run the risk of ticking off the public and getting thrown out.

Their real goal is to take both houses of congress by veto and filibuster proof majorities in '08, and the white house if possible. Then, they can un-do most of the bad stuff, do whatever investigations they need to right the wrongs, and move forward. If they get really "lucky", the stock market will collapse during the next 11 months, helping them even more.

What they do not know is that there is a sizeable population that is so ticked off at the current mess that they want to hang somebody, at least Cheney, that they will not vote for a Democrat for dog catcher because they appear too "spineless".

So the risk is, they will continue on with the "Nancy Pelosi Battered Woman" strategy, and the strategy will backfire. By being "accommodating" the public will relate it to "spinelessness". Their calculation is that they can win more votes by resisting minimally, and trying to convince the public that it was all the republicans' fault.

If this is the case, it will probably be one of the most gigantic political miscalculations in the last 50 years, and no one knows what a catastrophe it will be for the constitution and the general rule of law.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')I honestly wonder if the Dems have been infiltrated, their strategy is so lousy

[jato]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')omestic wiretapping happens all the time. Its been a key element of prosecutions of mobsters and others involved in criminal conspiracies for over 70 years. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that domestic wiretaps can be used in criminal trials. An individuals right to privacy does not include the right to engage in criminal conspiracies to commit crimes such as murder. The government has every right to collect evidence against criminal defendants and to charge them and try them for their crimes.

[Kingcoal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hat I'm not hearing is where the feds have stepped out of their jurisdiction and violated the Constitution.

[seahorse2]

Kingcoal,

Precedent for this war? Americans have never fought a war on terror. And, unlike other wars, there is no definition/description of who we are fighting, so it could be you. There is no precedent for all the "tools" necessary to fight this new kind of war, like domestic wiretapping of its own citizens, passage of the Patriot Act, and passage of the Military Commissions Act which denies the Fifth Amendment Right to Counsel and suspends the right of habeas corpus for "unlawful combatants."

Military Commissions Act

Here's a good article on the attack on the most basic of rights, the right of Habeas Corpus.

Baltimore Chronicle

Here's the ACLU's take on the Military Commissions Act.

ACLU on Military Commissions Act

Get real Kingcoal, there is no precedent for all this.

As Jato points out, what Bush is doing with domestic wiretapping has nothing to do with routine criminal wiretapping. Further, Bush/Cheney won't respond to Congressional subpeonas to get the documents.

Cheney refuses to produce documents

Here's the point that all this debate makes to me, and that is this: that people here, despite all the evidence to the contrary, still hold and hide under that Constitution like a child holding a security blanket, believing that somehow, that blanket will protect them from the dark. It won't.

[Loki]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse', 'O')ne thing I agree with the conservative talk radio hosts on is that people need to go all the way back to the Framer's intentions, and Kpeavey gave us a good starting point with Thomas Jefferson, but remember, he didn't have a real job, he was only a thinker and a writer.

[Heineken]

For a moment there I was hoping (praying) that the Ron Paul movement might take off. But it seems to be fading, and with it that slender hope for our Constitution. The mass media's interest was primarily in Paul's fund-raising powers, not his ideas.

As I stated earlier, I don't think the principles and liberties embodied in the Constitution can operate in a country as crowded and resource-constrained as the US has become (relative to the era in which the Constitution was framed). Technology has also played a big role in trashing our freedoms. Despite the pluses created by the Internet, technology has done so much to empower Big Government and its henchmen.

Although I'm a nature boy, another big reason why I have been so drawn to rural America is that some freedom can still be found there---primarily because it is less crowdy.

Personal freedom has an inverse relationship with population density.

[Kingcoal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse2', 'K')ingcoal,

Precedent for this war? Americans have never fought a war on terror. And, unlike other wars, there is no definition/description of who we are fighting, so it could be you. There is no precedent for all the "tools" necessary to fight this new kind of war, like domestic wiretapping of its own citizens, passage of the Patriot Act, and passage of the Military Commissions Act which denies the Fifth Amendment Right to Counsel and suspends the right of habeas corpus for "unlawful combatants."

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jato', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')omestic wiretapping happens all the time. Its been a key element of prosecutions of mobsters and others involved in criminal conspiracies for over 70 years. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that domestic wiretaps can be used in criminal trials. An individuals right to privacy does not include the right to engage in criminal conspiracies to commit crimes such as murder. The government has every right to collect evidence against criminal defendants and to charge them and try them for their crimes.

[Plantagenet]

The problem with wiretaps involves CIA wiretapping of FOREIGN calls. The CIA has put wiretaps on some phones in FOREIGN countries. However, the ACLU etc. claims that a call made from, for instance, Bin Laden's cave in Pakistan to one of his evil minions in New Jersey should be considered a domestic wiretap, and so should require a court order before it can be tapped.

This is an entirely new spin and a much more restrictive interpretation of wiretaps, as no prior wiretap has ever required a court order for the both the person who places and call AND the recipient of the call.....

[seahorse2]

Plantagent,

I find it hard to believe you know very much about the domestic wiretapping program of the NSA and others, since the Bush Admin has repeatedly refused to disclose its details, even to Congress. Its nice to see that sheeple have such blind loyalty to the shepherd.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('seahorse2', 'P')lantagent,

I find it hard to believe you know very much about the domestic wiretapping program of the NSA and others, since the Bush Admin has repeatedly refused to disclose its details, even to Congress. Its nice to see that sheeple have such blind loyalty to the shepherd.

[seahorse2]

Plantagenet,

In the famous words of Ronald Reagan, "trust, but verify" at least that much is demanded of our gov't by the Bill of Rights, in particularly, the 4th and 5th Amendments. But, in light of the recent outpouring of laws like the Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act, under either of which you or I could be a terrorist without a right to counsel or any other reserved right, and, in light of the fact that there is a domestic spying program going on that the Executive will not even diivulge the details to Congress, I can no longer believe that the Constitution affords any protection. It is a contract, after all, which both sides have to agree to. After a contract has been breached, it doesn't do any good for one side, the people, to scream they broke the agreement.

Now, Kingcoal, sure we fought pirates in the past, but do you really think that's anywhere close to what we are doing now? In the wars against the pirate, habeas corpus was not suspended by law, and that's a big difference.

However, the point of this thread for me is this, I know longer believe the Constitution guarantees us anything. I don't even care to debate the issue. A person sitting here reading this either agrees with me or they don't. The Federal Gov't has usurped its powers; it no longer acts Constitutionally; the king is wearing no clothes.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')I honestly wonder if the Dems have been infiltrated, their strategy is so lousy

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')
seahorse2,

I find it hard to believe you know very much about the domestic wiretapping program of the NSA and others, since the Bush Admin and the congressional oversight committee have repeatedly refused to disclose its details, even to you.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
') this abuse of power has reduced the power of the citizens of the U.S. substantially, since this time.