WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court split along ideological lines Tuesday in dismissing a challenge to an expanded federal law that allows interception of electronic communications between foreign targets and people in the United States.The NSA grabs everything. Not just communications between here and foreign nations, but everything. There are only two ways that you can communicate with another person without the NSA listening in: Face to face or by writing it down, on paper, and delivering the actual written word to the recipient.
Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote for the conservative majority in saying the lawyers, journalists and human rights organizations that brought the suit cannot prove that they have been caught up in the surveillance, and therefore may not challenge the law's 2008 expansion.
The "conservatives" on the Supremes are telling people that they can only file suit if they can prove that the government actually listened to them. Which is as surrealistic as when Lindsey Graham asked Chuck Hagel to prove that the defamatory rumors about him weren't true.
But there is something else going on here: A contentment that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has with handing the Executive branch the tools of tyranny. It's as though they're saying: "We'll let them be as tyrannical as they want to be, but if you don't like it, take your rifles out and do something about it."
I just don't get where this Right-wing trust of the government not to listen in on their communications comes from. The same folks who quote Ayn Rand as though she personally wrote one of the books of the Bible have no problem with the Feds monitoring their emails and telephone calls?
Do the anti-government folks really believe that they aren't being monitored? Are the people who screech about "Second Amendment solutions" really confident that their communications are not being analyzed? When the Feds infiltrate informants and agents provocateurs into their groups, how do they think the Feds came to learn of their existence?
But that's OK with the Right. It's OK with them that the same government that they don't trust to run a health care system is a government that they trust with wiretapping everyone, tracking everyone, and having broad access to their mental health records.
How does this make any sense?
Nobody in, or aspiring to, government cares one whit about anything except power and money. Those on the 'right' paying lip service to whatever ideals are merely keeping the methods of control open for when their side is back in power.
ReplyDeleteMyself, I have no problem stating the government has declared itself my enemy, this was their action, their statement, not mine, but anyone talking about violent solutions is an idiot.
I think both 'sides' in the gov't are egging on the nutcases to foment an incident so they can really crack down on all us silly nuts who think we have rights, and think that the gov't is responsible to us, not the other way around.
My memory is getting shaky as I age, but I seem to remember that once upon a time, the early supporters of a right wing attempt to take over a government, who were proponents of rather violent means (I think they were known as "brown shirts"), ended up being disappeared when the leader of that right wing bunch actually took power. I'm pretty sure that leader's name was Adolph Hitler.
ReplyDeleteThat the tparty folks and the rest of the right wingnuts and conservatives show no concern about what SCOTUS has done and is doing to America have no memory of history (or shit for brains) or see nothing wrong with Nazi methods of government.
+1 on XR!
ReplyDeleteI concur with your sentiment exactly The problem is both sides want power so much they are both guilty of the same crimes and as such they PROTECT each other!...
ReplyDeleteAll The Best,
Frank W. James
"Divide and Rule."
ReplyDeleteThe way I see it, the purveyors of power are playing us.
They've got 1/2 of the populace concerned about these assaults on our 4th Amendment Rights (which is framed as a "liberal" cause), while the other 1/2 is worried about loss of our 2nd Amendment Rights (which is framed as a "conservative" cause). And not too much is heard about what's happening to our 1st, 5th and 8th Amendment Rights as well as Habeas Corpus.
By keeping us divided, they are getting away with shredding ALL our Rights.
This blog is one of the last bastions where people are concerned about all of our Rights. That is, TRUE PATRIOTS.