bulldogg
Milforum's Bouncer
DISCLAIMER- Incoherent rant to follow.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9939709
That in a nutshell is the reason I left the US to live overseas. Why stay in the land of the free when those freedoms are being eroded? Might as well travel and live abroad where the freedoms have already suffered the "salami method" of wiping them away years ago. Its really really disturbing to me to see these broad unchecked police powers. I have nothing to hide but it makes me wicked uncomfortable knowing people are being held without being charged and without knowing the evidence against them...argh. Do you really feel safer being spied on by your own government? I honestly feel safer outside CONUS on my own. The problem is that I know this is an impotent rant and I am, like the rest of us, truly powerless to affect any sort of change in the governance of the US or any country for that matter... :roll:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9939709
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
That in a nutshell is the reason I left the US to live overseas. Why stay in the land of the free when those freedoms are being eroded? Might as well travel and live abroad where the freedoms have already suffered the "salami method" of wiping them away years ago. Its really really disturbing to me to see these broad unchecked police powers. I have nothing to hide but it makes me wicked uncomfortable knowing people are being held without being charged and without knowing the evidence against them...argh. Do you really feel safer being spied on by your own government? I honestly feel safer outside CONUS on my own. The problem is that I know this is an impotent rant and I am, like the rest of us, truly powerless to affect any sort of change in the governance of the US or any country for that matter... :roll: