Wednesday, February 13, 2008

POLITICS- Welcome to the USSR

If you give a damn about freedom, the constitution, or America you should be appalled that the senate has passed a law granting retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies for assisting the Bush administration with their (IMHO illegal) wiretapping program. And if you think the Democrats are any better than the Republicans this is another wake up call for you that they really march to the same drummer. Given a choice between protecting Americans from their government and protecting the government from Americans, both Dems and Reps decided that protecting the government from the citizens was more important than the reverse. Of course, that's what it's about. Immunity means that all the court cases will stop and we'll find out what the government is doing when it decides to tell us. It was really about keeping the citizens from finding out just how much snooping the government has done and how much technology has been implemented to ease further wiretapping. Now we will probably never know what's behind this door.

Congress has let it be known that if the government comes to you and asks you to do something that you probably shouldn't, at least they will take care of you. Telecoms can no longer be held accountable for breaking the law to assist the government to break the law. If Jonah Goldberg wants to know what fascism is, here it sits.

Both of our Tennessee senators voted for it, being the faithful Party members that they are. So did Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. But the surprising news is that Hillary Clinton didn’t vote for the measure, she voted “present”. Something she had dinged Obama for earlier in the campaign. An interesting vote. She didn’t vote against the telecoms, she abstained. I wish I knew how much money she’s gotten for her campaign from them. I wonder how much Bill got. I’m no Google magician. I can find out how tall she is, but I can’t seem to find out how much money she’s gotten from the telecoms The difference between the illusion of ubiquitous information and the reality.

Obama voted against immunity! There’s your choice right there. Only one of the Democratic presidential candidates thought that finding out just how deeply our government is spying on its own citizens would be important to Americans.

There’s your choice. Of everyone running for president only one candidate thinks your privacy is worth protecting.

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