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Edited on Tue Apr-21-09 06:08 PM by originalpckelly
Why is it that they find it to be their business wiretapping anyone who's an American without a warrant?
How many other members of Congress have been wiretapped, and what kind of dirty laundry does the NSA have on them?
How has this affected the checks and balances of our government?
I don't care that Alberto Gonzales said to ignore it, this kind of information shouldn't be used in a court or as the basis of any investigation. That apple fell off a poisoned tree, all the other apples in that tree will just be as poisonous. The reason this would be so, is that there is a greater concern with a government that would do this, than any particular act of criminality on the part of one person.
It's sort of the same reason we'd agree to give immunity to someone who committed a crime, in order to get a bigger fish. The bigger fish has committed more criminal acts, it's law breaking is more serious and more severe.
The system that wiretapped this woman without a warrant is a system that's lawless, and is capable of anything...like torture in secret. Oh wait, it did that too.
On DU, from time to time we've wondered if Members of Congress have been blackmailed with wiretap information. The fact that they "accidentally" collected communications involving this Representative opens up the door to anything. They accidentally the wiretap, is this bad?
It doesn't even matter if that's true, the fact is that this system has been proved a liar, and it cannot be trusted anymore. If President Bush's administration could lie to us, and conceal facts materially important to public debate, then the Obama administration has the same ability. The only reason it wouldn't happen, is that President Obama is a good man.
We shouldn't have to rely on the goodness of a single man, or the other people in his administration to have the rule of law. To do so is to allow the President of the US to become the law. The law is king, not the people who enforce it.
A system that doesn't have to tell the truth for one president, and requires a new president to have "change" is not really different. It's the same broken lying system, just with a different person in there.
We do not have to accept despotism, even if it is benevolent despotism. This is supposed to be a democracy, a system based upon the idea of popular sovereignty. That means we are the ones with the power, and we decide to hand it over to the government. A despot who is benevolent is perhaps more dangerous than one who is malevolent. Kings do not become the norm with people we do not like, they become the norm with people we like.
Would you be willing to hand over unchecked power to a bad guy? I don't think so, none of us would. To a nice guy? Yes, unfortunately.
We must be intelligent enough to realize what's going on here, and to realize how damaging the idea that someone has unchecked power and decides to be nice really is. There is really no benevolent despotism. All actions have unintended consequences, and I suggest that when the people taking those actions are ignorant of basic facts, they can make terrible decisions. How is it possible for a person you've never met in your life to make decisions for you better than you can? If you've never met the President or most of his cabinet, how can they make decisions for you?
Not only that, but let's think about the unintended consequences of someone taking unchecked power, even if they do intend to use it in a benign manner. That in and of itself is the most malignant act. It opens the door for the things we witnessed during the Bush administration, and can lead to things like full blown mass abductions, rapes, torture and murders such as during the regimes of Hitler and Stalin and Mao. If one president can have unchecked power, the legal precedent has been set that all presidents may have unchecked power. Even presidents like George Bush.
There is a very real war going on right now, and the future of this nation, and possibly the world hangs in the balance. What other nation in the world is so close to democracy? What other nation is nearly as powerful as the US, and is committed to real democracy? I'm thinking of Russia and China. Those two countries are so far removed from the ideas of democracy, it's a very hopeless proposition to hope that they will take care of this problem, if we don't. You might count the EU, but it's not really a nation, and it has fewer nuclear weapons than does Russia.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is our burden. We must bear it, and we must guide this nation to a soft landing.
We must restore the rule of law in America. That means that we don't have to accept despotism of any kind. We do not have to accept a government that tells us what information it sees fit to disclose to us. It doesn't have that right. If it does, then this nation is simply not a nation based upon popular sovereignty, but a nation based upon the sovereignty of a small group of people, or even a single person.
The problem with any system that's based upon the "sovereignty" of a small group or a single person is that it's the absolute opposite of reality. How dare any government lie to its people, to get them to think that they don't have any power, and that the government is the source of power. We pay taxes, that's the main way we hand power over to the government, we also vote in elections, that's another form of handing over power. Without either one of those, an elected government doesn't exist, or will not exist for long, because it won't be able to finance its operations.
They need us, without us, they're just a bunch of people doing cute little things like passing laws and trying to enforce them with no money. No money, no guns/bombs/missiles/nukes or people to use them on behalf of them.
We do not need to respect the false claim of authority by the government, because we are the source of authority for the government. Without us, all they have is their own authority, which is limited to how many people they have.
Back to Congresswoman Harman. She's just one crook, do not let yourself be tricked. This story just magically appeared, she's a peace offering. Do not make peace with a crooked lying system that wiretaps people without warrants and thinks it doesn't have to be open with the source of its authority, the people.
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