Edward A. Falk wrote:
In article ,
John R. Carroll wrote:

Yeah, and they are asking, unlike the Bush administration which
would just have had NSA begin a pattern search analysis on private
citizens in secret.

That's the ironic part. The Bush administration implemented
unprecedented spying on innocent Americans. Illegal warrantless
wiretaps courtesy
of AT&T. Ordering librarians to report on patrons book-borrowing
records and forbidding them to even tell the patrons that they were
being spied on. A "national security letter" is a document from
the government ordering an ordinary citizen to spy on other ordinary
citizens. Google for "patriot act abuses" and get an eyeful.

No need. While it is illegal to disclose even the existence of an NSL, I
believe I have been the subject of just exactly that.

Tom Gardner complains here occasionally about someone he encountered on
Usenet that spam bombed him.

He's lucky. There really are some worked up nut jobs in the world.

What we are currently seeing from the Republican party is fear. They know
that if the economy turns smartly, health care passes and people realize the
benefit, or America moves towards an energy solution that really has the
promise of turning the stranglehold imported energy into a sort of Mexican
stand off - they will suffer the fate Republican's suffered once America
began to emerge from the carnage of the 30's.

America has been stripping away the protections wrought during the Roosevelt
years from the beginning. They didn't have real success until Reagan assumed
office and have dismantled the protections of out financial systems one
piece at a time since. "Free the Market's!".
OK, how did that work out for ya'?

We are looking dead on into the abyss and the only reason we aren't over our
heads in tar right now is a group of very good men doing their best using
tools that were created after the last failure of capitalism.

Republican's can't run on the issues or facts on that basis so everything is
a moral crusade. That is how you get people to consistently vote against
their own best interests and cheer while they do it. You couldn't explain
Sarah Palin and her kind any other way and this has been going on as an
increasingly preferred approach for nearly four decades.

--
John R. Carroll