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Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

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Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#201

Post by AutoCorrect »

leephillips wrote: post #101
mchusma wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I've always thought Lincoln (and this quote supports the idea) that he was so obsessed with keeping the union together that he was willing to actively go against morality. For example, keepin the union together is of dubious intent by the people of that time. States petitioned to join, why shouldn't they get out? Seems reasonable to me. If I join a club I expect I can leave. Ok the other hand, he did thi…

First, I am very weak in history, so I won't try to engage deeply. But I think some things to consider would be these: Lincoln believed that slavery would die out within an intact US in time, and that pretty much the only thing the federal government could do was to keep it from spreading to states where it did not already exist. Unlike today, in those days the idea that the Federal government actually had limited po…

riiight, he was forced to blockade the CSA after they seceded...

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#202

Post by mullingitover »

rayiner wrote: post #166
john_b wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should politicians in a democracy cater to the pet issues of an ideological minority? From a human and Constitutional rights point of view, they have an obligation to respect the views of those ideological minorities when their main agenda is defending their rights (right to privacy, free speech, or whatever it may be). A pure democratic system is little more than a (usually peaceful) mob rule, but in a represe…

> they have an obligation to respect the views of those ideological minorities when their main agenda is defending their rights Ideological minorities don't get to make up "rights" and then demand the government defend them. The government has the obligation to defend free speech rights, even against the wishes of the majority, because there is ancient recognition of that right along with explicit adoption of a broad…

I was under the impression that the Constitution explicitly granted the federal government certain powers, and the 10th amendment clarified that if a power wasn't granted to the fed in the Constitution, it was because the power was retained by the states and the people. So the Constitution wouldn't need to grant the people a right to privacy. It was implicit, and even further emphasized by the 4th amendment.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#203

Post by bcoates »

lr wrote: post #179

The Office of the President of the United States is controlled my the machinery of government. At this point, the person you put in there does one thing that we need to pay attention to: appoint judges. Everything else is just nuance of a system so entrenched, even the staunchest Green Party candidate would have problems doing anything he/she claimed as a candidate. Once the person is elected, "realism" kicks in, and…

This isn't true at all, Obama has been extremely effective at getting whatever he wants done. Lots of presidents in recent memory have made sweeping changes in how the government operates. He has enormous and specific powers relevant to most of the things he promised (and the things he didn't promise but his voters imagined he did), he just doesn't actually want to do them so he doesn't.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#204

Post by brown9-2 »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #114
jbindel wrote: post #46

Is the headline trying to mislead? A) Phone records are not wiretaps. B) They weren't warrantless. However, secret warrants can be misused, and gathering data on domestic calls needs further scrutiny than this collection of every call.

No, it's not, you're apparently just not fully aware of what's going on. They don't only have access to phone records ; they also have access to our communications, and they have had that access for at least the last 6 years without a warrant, not even one from a FISA court.

"they also have access to our communications" is too ambiguous for a discussion like this, it helps no one.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#205

Post by Nursie »

bpatrianakos wrote: post #103
edw519 wrote: post #36

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…

Carlin was a great comedian and I'm a big fan but I'm not about to agree with this simply because the late great George Carlin said it. This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. In the end, this is what it is, a joke. If you don't vote you have done nothing to even try to elect someone who you, in good faith, believe will do what you deem the right thing. Yeah, politicians are…

Your vote is your mandate.

If you so choose not to give your mandate to anyone, that is up to you.

It is the only political power I have, and even though the statement is ignored or interpreted as apathy, the statement that you don't believe in any of those arseholes is just as valid as the statement that you do.

I, personally, cannot stand the "then vote for the least worst because at least the other guy won't get in" argument either. To me that's the root of the terrible politics we have in the UK and the US now.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#206

Post by gnaritas »

ihsw wrote: post #72
astine wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

George Carlin is (was) a right fool. The whole problem is that people don't have enough control over the government. Not voting only allows those who would have control over you to have more power. Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote.

> Even a protest vote or a third party vote is worth more than no vote. Actually, it's not. The US election process operates under the Electoral College[1], so a state majority vote changes all votes to that majority vote (eg: Democrats win majority in Illinois, so all votes in that state end up voting for Democrats in the presidential election). The disparity between the electoral vote and the popular vote is usuall…

> Actually, it's not.

Yes it is.

>The US election process operates under the Electoral College[1]

No, the US presidential election process works that way; that's one election for one office, there are many more offices you vote for than just president and all that voting matters and is absolutely worth more than a no vote.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#207

Post by iy56 »

SEMW wrote: post #182
codex wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? The only records taken from Internet companies pertain to non-citizens living outside the U.S. Even then, a secret court order is needed.

> The only records taken from Internet companies pertain to non-citizens living outside the U.S As a 'non-[US]-citizen living outside the US', I'm a bit disturbed by the implication that it's somehow less bad for the US government to demand any data they like about non-US citizens (from private companies based in the US) than data about US citizens. Non-US citizens do make up 95% of the world's population, and they u…

It is less bad. The US government doesn't have any obligation to protect the rights of citizens of some other country not living in the US. If your government disagrees, tell them to sign a treaty.

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#208

Post by Fixnum »

agwa wrote: post #148
bpatrianakos wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carlin was a great comedian and I'm a big fan but I'm not about to agree with this simply because the late great George Carlin said it. This is totally backwards and you have to do some mental gymnastics to believe it. In the end, this is what it is, a joke. If you don't vote you have done nothing to even try to elect someone who you, in good faith, believe will do what you deem the right thing. Yeah, politicians are…

> Those in power want you not to vote No, those in power very much want you to vote. Voting is a great feel-good process that gives the illusion that the people are sovereign when in reality we have practically no power and the government can do whatever the hell it wants as long as both parties agree on it. If this wasn't a democracy it would be quite clear where the power really lies, but since it is a democracy, t…

I was involved in marking a standardized test for high school students and one question involved inventing a story on an (unspecified) election. What shocked me the most, aside from the poor writing ability, the unintentionally unbelievable facts of the stories, and the surprising amount of confusion and internal contradiction within the students' responses, was that although remarkably few students demonstrated much awareness of politics or the political process, despite having taken a mandatory course on this subject, nearly all of the students regarded voting as a mystical or near-spiritual experience of civic involvement, social communion, and individual empowerment.

Some students were probably 'sucking up'. But nearly every student?

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#209

Post by night815 »

edw519 wrote: post #36

"I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain,' but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up,…

"The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing"

Re: Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me (2008)

#210

Post by Spearchucker »

kunai wrote: post #168
geoka9 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth." No joke. These are not idle words. I grew up in Eastern Europe looking up to the great US of A, where hippies stopped a war and abolished the draft, where people can sue the government and win, where privacy and human rights are enshrined in the Constitution, which more than 200 hundred years ago prompted other nations to adopt something similar many years lat…

It's just the nerve that gets me. "We can tell our children this day" --stop it right there. That's bullshit, and he knows it. A president can't do anything without Congress, and when Congress is crap, nothing but a downward spiral is going to be the outlook.

The president can, and does do things without congress. Dig into FISA for an example.
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