Snippitts of Illusions

to almighty

i've singled him out because he has gone against one of the most fundamental amendments of the constititution; the 4th. the fact that he's carried out secret survellaince against american citizens is in direct violation of that amendment. no laws can give him the right to do that unless it's another amendment to the constitution itself.

firstly, before anything else is said, i do understand that these citizens are suspect terrorists. that does not however preclude them from having rights, and it would not have been difficult for the president and the officials who carried out these surveillances to have obtained a warrant (to my understanding, from everything i've read and listened to, it only takes about 24 hours at the most to get warrants from NSA court).

as for other politicians, yes, there are many others who are violating the laws, as for violating the constitution, i can think of a few potential canidates, but i'm throwing the ball back to you and asking for specific examples of these 99%. if you feel sincerely the way you do, cry out with the rest of us: it doesn't have to be against the president, i can't make you not support him any more than you can make me support him, but you can cry out against the other politicians that are violating and treading our rights.

to answer your question about kerry, no i think kerry would have had his own set of problems, probably just as awkward and as bad as bush. i do not think that we would be seeing the same issues with him in office that we see with bush in office.

as to the war in iraq, i agree with you 100%, now that we are there, we need to stick through this and see it out. we do owe our support to the troops who, regardless of who's in office, are doing thier duty, and i have the utmost respect for them. personally, i was never for the administration invading iraq (and you can ask several people about this, all my friends up here, joel can even vouch for it: i never once supported an invasion), but because the administration saw fit to invade iraq, we've litte recourse but to see it too the end. i have had family members serve in iraq also: a niece who is on inactive duty now, after having spent a year over there, and a nephew who has finished his time with the marine corp.

but supporting the troops does not mean that we should ignore the violations of our government. there have got to be individuals and watchdogs, alert and aware of such violations. the idea that we should all just keep our head down and support the president no matter what is ludicrous. it's that sort of thought that will enable the government to become big brother. it was that sort of thought that was rampant through communist russia during the reign of stalin (and no i'm not comparing bush to stalin).

no individual should have the powers the president has claimed to have, not him, not kerry, not mccain nor hillary clinton. the government was built on a series of checks and balances, what i see with the current administration (and it has happened in the past) is an attempt to seize power and ignore these checks and balances.

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 11:20 AM