80, huh? Glad he's still around and up for traveling visits.

If it won't blow his blood pressure, ask him if he thinks being PC lops 20, or 30, points off your IQ.

I'm not disagreeing with you.  [Wiki, "Patriot Act"]

What I am saying is that the PatriotAct2001,  Rep J Sensebrenner (R-Wis 5) who apparently is sponsor, offered a bill that may have been too broad and gave the President too much power. Just don't blame PBO for powers that were given to the Office of the President. Didn't anyone think it was odd that such a comprehensive bill giving the President such powers was signed into law by GWB (who apparently had no qualms) just 45days after 9/11

If,  Rep Sensenbrenner,  believes in some illegality by PBO, then he either oughta bring up charges, introduce changes in the law, or shutup. House members need to decided where they stand now because in another 12 months they will be in full campaign mode.

Boehner has  to love this because this distracts from the  budget bill and deficit authorization. Just continue the status quo to the next Session 2015. 

i can safely say that Eric Holder did not out Valerie Plame. 

Do you want the Net strengthen, left as is with its holes, or dismantled? The President, whether GW or PBO must take power reins because the reins were given to them by Congress. The President must show that reins are in competent hands. Congress must decide what it wants to do, in any outcome, Congress is going to be on the short end.

Meanwhile, don't worry. Be Happy.

I want a lot of things, lp. I want old ladies and little kids to be able to get on a plane without wetting themselves because a TSA goon/goonette ran fingers up their privates, I want to profile the crap out of young males converting to Islam/hanging around mosques/making overseas trips, and I want O's apparatus (IRS, NSA, Holder's Justice and ATF, for starters) to get it's snout out of my butt until they prove my type, distasteful as it might be, is more of a threat than the muslim one.

(Maybe all I'll get though, is a washlet bidet, so I can go all Confucian about being diddled, too.)

btw: You might reconsider some of your thinking on this though, since Sensenbrenner says the president's a criminal. No ifs, ands, or butts about it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/abuse-patriot-act-must-end

edited to add: Hope, I think your quote - something, anyway - might could use a little bit of trimming. It might get the screen width back towards something like usual.

    http://t.nbcnews.com/technology/facebook-forensics-what-feds-can-learn-your-digital-crumbs-6C10240840

I can't seem to do links on my ipad. Anyway, point is, gov't can learn lots and lots about citizens without having to obtain FISA approval--without listening to content.

More than we learned about our kids from their phone and text records. ;)

From front page of Times today:

American laws and American policy view the content of communications as the most private and the most valuable, but that is backwards today,” said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington group. “The information associated with communications today is often more significant than the communications itself, and the people who do the data mining know that.” 

Obama ("no one is listening to your phone calls") doesn't know that ? Stupid or disingenuous? 

-- Edited by hope on Sunday 9th of June 2013 06:51:59 AM

-- Edited by hope on Sunday 9th of June 2013 06:58:36 AM

It's simple.

Always assume that you are being watched and tracked. 

Obviously there are still a lot of holes in the system. The Boston bombers, and the racin mailers got thru. Do you want the Net strengthen, left as is with its holes, or dismantled? The President, whether GW or PBO must take power reins because the reins were given to them by Congress. The President must show that reins are in competent hands. Congress must decide what it wants to do, in any outcome, Congress is going to be on the short end.

Meanwhile, don't worry. Be Happy. 

I'm not sure what some here are getting at. Are you seriously implying that this is political criticism and nobody would have a problem with it if GW were still president? 

Criticism is bipartisan on this. Lindsay Graham, David Brooks,  Ari Fleischer think it's all just a fabulous idea.  Lots of progressives and liberal congressman are outraged.  Mark Udall and Ron Wyden, both D's have apparently been trying to call attention to this for years.  

"No one knew" ( the public )because it was supposed to be kept secret, and the press in this country have given up doing their jobs.In fact, the admin will be going after the leaker(s) big time. 

NSA seizing Verizon records in new scandal Udall has long hinted at.

Another major Washington scandal is breaking and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall is right in the middle of it.

On Wednesday, Britain’s Guardian newspaper published a classified federal court order showing that the National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of customers of Verizon.

hope "There are secret interpretations of the Patriot Act and FISA in Washington that ordinary Americans don’t know about,” Udall said. “I think the White House has a responsibility to be honest with the American people about its views on what it’s allowed to do when it comes to balancing our national security with our civil liberties.” "

----------------------

If I remember, MOC, were not able to read the entire PatriotAct2001 at its presentation-It was Secret. The Act was vetted by the Intelligence Committees (simple majority needed) and the good faith in the writer and the Administration. 

The President GWB did things (admitted) that were not exactly legal but in the name of being President and a 'nation under attack.'

The Patriot Act made what was illegal, legal. So if any President is presented with a law that allows him to fulfill his oath, why would (s)he use that law? And what happens if you then abridge that law and the Nation is attacked from within (Boston, Racin, hackers), would the Nation take the time to debate the issue or give the President immediate powers? Once Congress gave away its Rights to the Office of the Presidency, How does Congress regain those Rights? 

Hope, Obama can't really ask us to trust the government.  Only someone who actually knows what the government is doing can ask that of us. Obama has pretty much told us that he has no clue what's going on in his government, and none of his advisors do either.  But that's ok, it's the government, what could possibly go wrong?

The public did not know. The Guardian, not the American press, broke the story. The American media did not want to know, and many members of congress are too lazy to care.

Most Americans thought only international calls were being monitored.  That's the impression I was under. And NO ONE knew about Prism. This is a Huge deal. 

Of course the President comes out and tells us today that if we don't trust The government we have a Problem. Yeah, we have a problem alright.  Glad to hear that "at some point in the next three and a half years" he'll be leaving though. :) That might help our problem.

Give it up, lp. Even the NYTimes has admitted O has lost all credibility on this issue. Time to jump the Bush's Fault ship.

The Public didn't know? or did not want to know?

Our MOC didn't know? or did not want to know inorder to get reelected?

Where have you been since the Patriot Act? Head in the sand?

Osma bin Laden was correct. USA, USA, will destroy itself in order to defeat him. 

Our President:

Now, having said all that, you'll remember when I made that speech a couple of weeks ago about the need for us to shift out of a perpetual war mind-set, I specifically said that one of the things that we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy because there are some tradeoffs involved.

I welcome this debate and I think it's healthy for our democracy. I think it's a sign of maturity because probably five years ago, six years ago we might not have been having this debate. And I think it's interesting that there are some folks on the left but also some folks on the right who are now worried about it, who weren't very worried about it when it was a Republican president.

You know, what would be fun would be to split-screen some our hypocrite-in-chief's pre-inaguration writings and speeches alongside the day-by-day revelations of what his administration has been doing. You know, the old "were you lying then or are you lying now, deal. Probably both, sad to say.

doesnt anybody remember the issue about FBI and the Librarian? The Govmt, by PatriotAct, can demand the library to see your book and computer use record without court order. Governmt in 2002 said, ridiculous concept. But what people failed to know that by extension they could demand to see your phone records too. USWest CEO refused government when asked. 

Wikipedia, Joe Naachio

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and granting of a new trial [edit]

Joseph P. Nacchio was the only head of a communications company to demand a court order, or approval under theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in order to turn over communications records to the U.S. government.^[14][15]

Nacchio was granted a new trial due to a witness being prevented from testifying on this issue of illegal government spying.^[16]

Joe,  however ended up end jail for some stock fraud (?) 

------------------------------------------

Blankmind: Put a L after the B and you  get ' bladder' . GW was with Rice at UN meeting. GW wrote a note to Rice asking her when will the meeting end because he needed  to "PEE" 

-- Edited by longprime on Friday 7th of June 2013 11:16:09 PM

But all those serious people elected Obama to stop this sort of thing, not expand on it, longprime.

And nowhere in his campaigning do I recall his saying he was going to use/allow the IRS to squelch dissent.

Come to think of it (and a lot of news outlets seem to be thinking of it), I don't recall his promise to find an AG that would name a reporter a co-conspirator just for doing his job.

Contrary to his papers, he doesn't seem to be a very liberal liberal at all.

your medical records are subject to inquiry by persons unknown. 

your credit cards

your banking

Doesn't anyone watch reruns of "24" and "Bourne", "Missing (Ashley Judd)" , and the numberous Tom Cruise movies?

Nobody on LinkedIn, FB, Google Maps, Zillow?

Why the sudden concern for Civil Liberties and Government truth telling? 

IBM became big because they were able to build mainframe computers for the national security agencies. Mellon Institute got one of the first supercomputers because the associated university had a great computational faculty that also dabbled in linquistics. DS grad school was partially paid by government (Canadian) for communication research. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

"Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of

whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it

has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists

are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are

not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights."

"Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s

phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who

once promised transparency and accountability."

Transparency.  Indeed. 

This is politics. When the R's was in power, the D's complained. When the D's are in power, the R's complain.

There's comfort in looking at it all like that, true, but consider this: There's one political side that's much better known for saying that "we can't profile because that would be Un-American." Well known enough to not even be debatable and it's colored and shaped so, so much of our response, the bipartisan portion by very definition.

Instead, we'll just spy on every mother-loving one of us and take pressure cookers off the shelves.

So, does anyone think that 11 years (became law on October  28, 2001) is long enough for Congress (regardless of Party) to change the Patriot Act? Congress didn't make many changes in 2011. 

Give power to the Presidency, you give up power. 

[edit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act

From widespread panic felt among Americans from both the September 11 attacks and the 2001 anthrax attacks, Congress rushed to pass legislation to strengthen security controls. On October 23, 2001, Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner introduced H.R. 3162 incorporating provisions from a previously sponsored House bill and a Senate bill also introduced earlier in the month.^[5] The next day on October 24, 2001, the Act passed the House 357 to 66,^[6] with Democrats comprising the overwhelming portion of dissent. The following day, on October 25, 2001, the Act passed the Senate by 98 to 1.^[7]

Opponents of the law have criticized its authorization ofindefinite detentions of immigrants; searches through which law enforcement officers search a home or business without the owner’s or the occupant’s permission or knowledge; the expanded use of National Security Letters, which allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order, and the expanded access of law enforcement agencies to business records, including library and financial records. Since its passage, several legal challenges have been brought against the act, and Federal courts have ruled that a number of provisions are unconstitutional.

No tracker, longprime.  No sat visuals, either.  

I am more worried about the unmarked white panel truck with sat dish on top that has been parked around the corner from my house for the last three months.  Not that I have anything terribly interesting going on, but still.  It's...suspicious.  

I call bull****, longprime.

This is more than just a partisan issue.  When the IRS can target people merely for their politics, and Homeland Security can routinely get a cheek swab, well...just because you are a suspect, and the AG can hack phone records of reporters and target them for additional harrassment, it is more than just politics.  

Yeah, flush your toilet.  For sure.  

Worry about your job and taxes, absolutely.

But this is a bigger deal.  It's called a massive invasion of privacy, intimidation of groups based on their political belief systems by the organization that can harrass people and garnish their wages.  

If Pres Bush did this in the Patriot Act, people would be freaking out right now. There was ALREADY too much given up in terms of privacy through the Patriot Act back in Bush's first term.  

Ironic, somehow, that the IRS targeted folks based on the word "Patriot" in their name, eh?  

We are giving up our rights, little by little, to a government getting bigger and badder by the minute.  

To say that I am even a little afraid to post on my own message board these ideas gives me pause, knowing that I can be targeted by ABUSE by the government that should be there to protect our freedoms is, to say the least, a bit chilling. 

This is new or is it new to you? 

All this was known in the Patriot Act I and II. No one bother to read it, because it was thick, and parts was super secret that only the intelligient committee members knew of the previsions. Assistant AG, John Woo, admits to gathering all the proposed abridgement to civil liberties and enclosed them into the Patriot Act. If I remember, Rep Ron Paul (T)was the only R to vote against the Patriot Act. 

This is politics. When the R's was in power, the D's complained. When the D's are in power, the R's complain. 

And an odd majority announced Big Sis can swab your cheeks if they happen to be molesting you for any other reason.

Seems like it was just yesterday when the biggest threat to civil liberty was going to be Arizona asking where you called home.