After mowing the lawn and taking care of some business-stuff, I surfed. Here’s what caught my eye:
Secrets to becoming an eBay millionaire
N.Jersey protestors clash over illegal immigration.
Didn’t I, just the other day, say "Third world, here we come"?
When Israel objects to some peacekeepers in Lebanon it makes you realize why they don’t have more support. Apparently the only people they want involved in what is essentially an arbitration are arbitrators who are on their side.
I’m not sure I see the link here. "President Bush said Saturday that his administration’s determination to remain in Iraq and its efforts to end violence in Lebanon are key to protecting the U.S. from future terrorist attacks." Perhaps now would be a good time to remind the President that "9/11", London’s 7/7 attacks and the recent scare at Heathrow were committed by radical Islamic factions with roots based in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan… not Iraq nor Lebanon, nor Syria nor Iran for that matter. What are we doing there these days? If you want to target a real threat to U.S. citizens, I suggest taking some action against PETA or perhaps violent anti-abortionist Evanglical Christians.
Not really pertinate to most people’s lives, but I think it’s interesting that Pluto may be demoted from it’s ‘full planet’ status pending the arguments from astronomers around the world.
And finally, regarding the court’s ruling that the NSA’s unwarranted wiretaps are unconstitutional, read the article, but also read the comments. Just as many of the commentors do, Bush and many Republicans, when faced with questions regarding this, keep telling us how important the effort is in the ‘war on terror’. We keep hearing about how important it is that the government be allowed to perform this kind of surveillance.
I think that only a few are really concerned with the privacy issues here. Rather, the controversy is whether the Bush Administration broke the law in doing so. There is a law (FISA) on the books to deal with exactly this situation. Whether the wiretaps were the right or wrong thing to do to protect the American people, we are a nation of laws. Breaking the law, even for the most justified of reasons (or being ignorant of it) is still ‘breaking the law’.
Anyway… my point here is that you should keep the real controversy in mind when you hear politicians speak of it. They need not justify secret surveillance, because I think most of us agree that at times it is necessary. What they need to justify is why they did so contrary to FISA and the Constitution.
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