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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Another Post In My Tireless Defense of Your Civil Liberties

Even though I'm sure you guys are sick of me moaning about how the Government doesn't care about your rights, I'm linking this story to show you how bad it has gotten. You know it's bad when politicians don't even pay lip service to your rights anymore.

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen.
John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits
on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Russ Feingold* (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster
against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of
the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

He called Cornyn’s comments “a retreat from who we are and who we
should be.”

*Nice response by Feingold - he of the horrible McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law that is an absolute affront to the 1st Amendment. Anyway, this is one of those instances where I'm siding with the Democrats - even though they're only complaining because that's all they ever do where George Bush is involved.

Also, has anyone else heard the rumor that George Bush was recently heard to say: "The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper"? If that's true - WOW.

Kid H

And in lesser tales of Tyranny of the nanny state (I won't even put in a lede) other than you'll find this hilarious - despite its social implications.

Update (to respond to comments) - First read this about how the President's wiretapping decision is completely unnecessary. Essentially, the Govt. already had the power to get the same information without stomping on the Constitution. Then read this post from Hit & Run, which is at least tangentially related.

Update #2 - What the heh, while I'm at it, Hit & Run is on a roll today.

3 Comments:

Blogger Rhino-itall said...

obviously that Bush statement is not true, if it was it would have been the headline in every newspaper in the country, and it would have led every news show on every network. Also feingold and schumer would be grandstanding about it right now to oppose the patriot act. As far as the wire tapping, it was legal, it has been done before, and it was and is necessary.

9:12 AM  
Blogger Kid Handsome said...

Rhinoculous - I don't know how to link articles from within the comments, so I added an update to a Hit & Run post that addresses your wiretapping point.

Also, the reason the Bush quote isn't on the front page of every newspaper could be because it was leaked, but that no one who witnessed the comment would dare risk their jobs or even entire careers to come out and say yes it happened.

11:07 AM  
Blogger Kid Handsome said...

Also, explain to me how the wiretapping "was legal" because I'm a lawyer and I don't buy any of the arguments I've seen - though Condi Rice's explanation can at least be stretched towards legality.

Then explain to me the difference between law and ethics.

Thanks.

Oh, and there are plenty of Senators who are already opposing the Patriot Act - the Patriot Act is not a very good law - and yes, I know that 90% of it isn't that controversial - it's the 10% everyone cares about. Plus the 90% of it is not bad is a pretty stupid justification for it.

11:16 AM  

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