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In reply to the discussion: I AM A JOURNALIST. SO ARE YOU. [View all]questionseverything
(11,851 posts)The dishonest corporate strategy of passing "protections" to dismantle the Constitution
Last edited Sat Sep 21, 2013, 12:38 AM USA/ET - Edit history (16)
This is the new despicable game the corporatists are playing, and it is a dangerous assault. They are advancing what they call legislation to "protect" our Constitutional rights, in order to dismantle those rights.
The game? Take a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution. Pretend it doesn't exist. Pass a law to guarantee some portion of that right or to outlaw some specific violation of that right. And voila. You have established by default that any violations NOT covered by your law are legal by default ... or that any protections not guaranteed by your law do not exist.
They're working on it now in at least two areas of assault on the Constitution: laws that appear to protect us but which actually assault the Bill of Rights:
1. They will do it with the NSA, to convince the public that they are addressing concerns about spying. Already, any public statements we hear about the NSA involve possibly "scaling back" the programs to please a complaining public, rather than acknowledging that they are unconstitutional.
Keep in mind that the mass spying and storage of data are already unconstitutional by default. We should not need laws to *limit* the programs, because they already violate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee of warrants and probable cause. The mass spying should be eliminated on Constitutional grounds alone.
But the corporatists will create legislation to "protect" us that makes a grand show of limiting the spying in some small ways. They will be praised by the corporate media for "reining in" the NSA in these limited, most likely cosmetic, ways. But by passing laws outlawing just certain types of spying or access to the data, they establish a given that anything not covered by the law - the larger spying programs - are legal by default./////
because you explained it so well