The Constitution Exists To Protect Us From PRECISELY The Type Of ABUSE

[Beetwasher]

Of Power that Bush is apparently guilty of. By circumventing the law in the manner that he has, so cavalierly, so disdainfully and secretively and wiretapping citizens w/out warrants, procedure, judicial review etc. he has violated one of the most fundamental protections we have. It is a very serious and heinous crime and abuse of trust. It is in fact one of the worst crimes and breaches of trust and abuses of power a President can commit. It is clearly, if true, one of the most blatantly impeachable offenses that has ever been committed by the office. It's unquestionably inexcusable and indefensible.

[PDJane]

1. Yes. It is.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. The only fair thing is that we now spy on our employees, the

U.S. government. If they work for us, then we have the legal right to scrutinize EVERYTHING THEY DO, just like in a real business, where your emails, phone conversations etc. are fair game... there is no difference.

[jokerman93]

36. true except that

True except that the paradigm has been turned on its head. George Bush is the CEO of Amerika, inc. This country is being run like a huge, monstrously corrupt corporation. As you said, it's common practice for corporations to spy on their employees - recording all phone calls, emails, web addresses, even keystrokes made by employees while on the clock.

This so called government doesn't work for us. They never have. They regard U.S. citizens as less than employees, but more as raw material resources for their "ten year" plan. The citizenry has being dumbed down and reduced to basically three categories. The soldiers are the cannon fodder for their hostile take-overs, the consumers are the servant class that fuels the machine of a non-productive service economy, and the indoctrinators - well they're coming to a school, church, court, police department and media center near you - now aren't they? It's one big corporate top down structure.

***

Something I heard on NPR yesterday made my blood run cold and drove the spirit of this home to me. They were having a discussion about torture, and from the Republican side was some unctuous snake with a manipulated tongue who explained that the reason Bush cut a deal with McCain was that they had done a cost benefit analysis on torture as a method of getting the results they desired, and after looking at the matter closely for some time the Bush administration had decided that the amount of resources dedicated to the maintenance of such practices had been determined not to yield results with value commensurate with invested costs.

Or some such cold blooded shit.

We ARE in trouble.

J.

[tocqueville]

3. the problem is that it is not good enough...

nobody has really checked that problem. Textbooks which are 230 years old have to evolve.

[BR_Parkway]

21. But the 'strict constructionalists' think the Constitution hasn't evolved

so it should mean just what it says, right?

Freeper heads are gonna be exploding trying to justify this one.

[Gregorian]

4. Oh, but "it's a post 9/11 world now."

I think that's how Scotty put it.

I'm far more affraid of this administration than I am of terrorists.

[havocmom]

5. Well, the damned weasel took an oath regarding the Constitution after 9-11

And, I deeply apologize to any real weasels in the audience tonight.

[driver8]

6. That's right. "9/11 changed everything." These people are

scared of their freakin' shadows!!

Anyone who doesn't walk, talk, think, or look like them is a threat. They use 9/11 to allow them to spy on those they fear...

[Gregorian]

9. But it didn't change the 4th Amendment.

They must have thought they could pull this off. Previous rulings, or something. The country wasn't in a state of emergency. We weren't at war.

And I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering how this Executive Order was justified.

[lonestarnot]

13. He's nuts that how!

<>

[TahitiNut]

32. As a proud nut, I take exception to the association.

:silly:

[lonestarnot]

37. Sorry TahitiNut

:silly:

[indepat]

31. But that raises the question as to why, with $30B intelligence apparatus,

we failed to thwart these attacks.

[in_cog_ni_to]

7. And apparently our Democratic congress people knew

what he was doing and didn't speak out a year ago either. I want to know WHO knew what and when and why the FUCK they let him continue doing what he was doing. Why are the Democrats now acting so outraged? They KNEW. THEY KNEW TOO! I'm speechless. WTF are these people doing to our country?


on edit...here's where I read that tidbit of info :(

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Times_admits_it_...

On the second page of a report which reveals the White House engaged in warantless domestic spying, the New York Times reveals that it held the story for a full year at the request of the Bush Administration, RAW STORY can reveal.

The Times also reveals that senior members of Congress from both parties knew about Bush's decision to spy on Americans who were making international calls or emails, without warrants.

Further, the Times notes that they have omitted information in the article they did write, agreeing with the Bush Administration that the information could be useful for terrorists. Excerpts from the Times' article follow.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.ht...

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

[Marie26]

19. Sen. Bob Graham denies this

He was on the Intelligence Committee & he basically accused the Administration of lying about this on Nightline. He said that the Administration did update them about this program, but they were told it was only to monitor calls between foreign operatives that were going across lines owned by US companies. He says he was never told that this program would allow the secret wiretaps of Americans w/o a warrant. He seemed very angry & outraged.

[in_cog_ni_to]

27. Oh THANK G-D!

Thank heavens Bob Graham was there and spoke up. What a relief! So they LIED AGAIN. Surprise, surprise. I should have know better. :spank::spank:

[Golden Raisin]

8. What is it going to take?

Where does the demarcation point come into play? When does the American public, Congress and the media (fat chance there!) say, "ENOUGH!" They all still cut BushCo so much slack. How obvious does it have to be for the collective public lightbulb to turn on and flash "DANGER"? What degree of outrage will finally trigger public action/impeachment? Does Bush have to get dressed up in a Nazi uniform & a Hitler mustache and goose-step on the balcony of the White House? Or does he have to publicly set fire to the Constitution & our Bill of Rights while declaring martial law, or making himself "President for Life"? Does he have to nuke Iran or Syria without consulting Congress? Does he have to start rounding up people who oppose him or groups he doesn't like and ship them to internment camps (Michelle Malkin is already cheer-leading for that course of action and the government had a nice dry run/rehearsal shuttling large numbers of New Orleans Katrina refugees.) History frequently repeats itself. We need to look long and hard at Germany in the 1930's.

[Beetwasher]

10. .

.

[cantstandbush]

11. Bush: "The Constitution is just a G-D piece of paper!" n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

12. Who here doesn't believe the little dictator wannabe said that now?

Anyone need any more proof than Pinhead**'s decision re: spying on us?

[sproutster]

14. Hahaha watching my firewall

Usually I get about 4 DoD pings a day. Today while reading this board I have at this moment - 9! and that's just this morning.

[lpbk2713]

15. You must be one of them dayum godless hippie commies.

Keep up the good work.


:thumbsup:

[Hubert Flottz]

16. I could not agree more.

The country is in one Hell of a fix!

[YankeyMCC]

17. Protect and defend..

the Constitution...that's the oath he took.

There's a reason the oath isn't to protect and defend "the people of the United States" or some similar language. You can't point to something that is "the people" and it is the people who are supposed to protect themselves. The method the people have chosen is through a unified government codified in the Constitution. So the president is supposed to defend the people only indirectly by defending the Constitution.

The founders understood that that to swear to protect the people is to vague and open to interpretation - who decides what is good for the people, only the people themselves can decide that - and the claim of "protecting or defending the people" is to often used to justify tyranny and oppression.

It was also expected and it was true in the first century of US history at least, that the President would use his veto power to stop bills that were unconstitutional...rather than use the veto as a tool of his or his parties political agenda.

This joker in the white house doesn't even make a pretense about claiming what he wants protects the constitution...he just says we need to make "compromises" or something like that to "protect the people"...Not you F-ing job A-hole! Is what I say. The president shouldn't be "compromising" anything concerning the Constitution.

That alone should get him booted out of office.

Unfortunately many Americans seem to under-appreciate what our Constitution really means.

[Jawja]

34. Yes. Thank you.

It's to "protect and defend the Constitution." So many times, this little shit has said his job is to "protect the 'Murkin People." He needs to be reminded that his job is to protect that "goddamned peice of paper."

[Joey Liberal]

18. Bush is a criminal tryant of the worst sort

AWOL Bush is in the same league as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. The only difference is they had more brains than Bush.

[Protagoras]

20. apparently the word should be "existed"

I can't describe how I feel about these bastards.

[TahitiNut]

22. People should LEARN from their behavior. (Here's the not-so-obvious.)

They're behaving in EXACTLY the same way executives of global corporations behave. Think about it. They've taken a "business attitude" and infected the political process with it. For a corporate executive, it's not a matter of 'right v. wrong' and using ethical and legal guidelines to ascertain the difference. It's solely about gaining greater and greater dominance in the "market."

Every action is guided by a risk analysis. Take the cost of being caught times the probability of being caught and compare it to the benefit of doing it. As long as the benefit exceeds the risk, it's done. In today's legal system, the risk is getting lower and lower. Thus, there's virtually no rein on their behavior.

Pay close attention to what the Moral Retard said. He said they (their coven of lawyers and political advisors) looked at the risk and found that they could argue (until the cows come home) that he could get away with doing whatever he wanted.

There are no limits! There is only risk ... and a very small risk. After all, so what if Congress starts impeachment proceedings? There's always Cheney. After him, There's Hastert. So what? They can keep replacing people faster than they can be impeached. The difference between one impeachable offense and 100 impeachable offenses is one hundred times the 'benefit' at exactly the same cost -- the mere loss of a job.

Just what does impeachment mean? Does the Smirking Fuck really even care if he gets impeached? Hell no!! Even more pertinent, do the powers behind him give a flying fuck whether he gets impeached? That's even a bigger "Hell no!" How many impeachments could this country even contemplate in the next three years? Even if they were impeached every 6-9 months, so what? Impeachment doesn't mean shit to them! It's a cost of doing business!!

Just like senior executives and board members go from one criminal corporation to another, these folks couldn't care less. No matter what the fuck they say!

Until they're imprisoned for the rest of their lives we haven't even gotten close to turning back the corruption and criminality that infests both government and business!

[ninkasi]

24. I completely agree, TN

I remember wondering back in 2000 why the hell anybody would WANT a CEO type president. Even before the Enron scandal, I never thought of CEOs as examples of people who make decisions based on what's good for the public. Why should the government run by businessmen be any different? They will get away with anything they can, and find a way to justify it.

Business executives are used to being surrounded by yes-men, and refuse to tolerate any opposing opinions from lesser mortals. Bush is exactly the same. He doesn't care about what's legal, or morally right, he only cares about doing whatever he wants to do. He gets quite snippy and impatient when anybody questions him, too.

These businessmen have run our country into the ground, but they've all got their own "golden parachutes" locked up quite nicely. They have used the power of government to line their own pockets, and set themselves up for quite a few lifetimes. Think Halliburton...and Gilead, the pharmaceutical company Rumsfeld has an interest in...Tamiflu, isn't it? They are sending our kids to fight and die, or be maimed, to enrich themselves further.

They have cut taxes on their own income groups, and paid for these cuts with poor kid's lunch money, and heat and medicine for the poor and the elderly. Everything they do is tainted with the very worst kind of self-interest possible, and the worst thing of all is that they use US, the ones who are getting screwed, to enforce their actions. They can't be gone soon enough for me. For any fool who thinks that just because he's the president he can do as he pleases, I wonder what tune they would sing if the president were a Dem?

[Beetwasher]

26. Stellar Post!

Yup yup yup. :thumbsup:

[glitch]

28. Well said.

And K & R to the OP.
:dem:

[BuyingThyme]

23. This is not a matter of "circumventing" anything.

It's not a loophole or an oversight.

This is a high crime at the highest level of government. The government is knowingly committing crimes against the people.

[Mr_Spock]

25. Liar, War Criminal, Common Criminal. Worst. President. Ever.

He's so bad for this country, we may not survive another three years.

[proud patriot]

29. Our Duty is to enforce the Constitution

:grr:

[texpatriot2004]

30. You are so right about this. n.t

[Barad Simith]

33. "apparently"? ... "if true"?

the cocksucker admitted to the crimes on national TV

[Beetwasher]

35. Yes, There Is That

My qualifier are way to generous, I'm sure.

[Beetwasher]

38. A Kick for a Line in the Sand

n/t