TheWorx

Hell, that's an easy one. Nowhere else can a lawyer utter specious arguments and not be ridiculed by a judge. Case in point from the few minutes that I allowed myself to be subjected to Senatorial arguments on the Patriot Act on C-span: McConnell says that the U.S. Constitution is null and void (my words) with regard to NSA surveillance because the U.S. Constitution pertains to our person and our personal effects and the phone records? Well, they belong to the phone companies (who are obviously not people in this particular case). I see, so, the moment any information leaves your person or your home, they are fair game. OK, so we are to leave school records, medical records, military records, and anything else no longer under our lock and key at the purview of the NSA? Sound good to you? Earlier, I heard Senator Coats say repeatedly that only metadata was to be collected (phone, time, and duration) and that "time was of the essence" when it came to collecting possibly...

Did McVeigh or any other domestic terrorist change our society by what they did? Did their acts result in the trampling of our Bill of Rights? What is so different about the foreign bogeyman? While some may argue that the devastation of 9/11 was not comparable to anything that happened before or since, I argue that normal intelligence channels--w/o   present-day eavesdropping--did manage to warn the powers that be who, for reasons we may never fully know, chose not to act on it. The same thing happened with the Boston Bombers--no one was paying adequate attention.   Some may argue that widespread surveillance may catch domestic terrorists. But we need to remember the crucial aspect of the surveillance process as it is now promulgated. It is necessary to first become aware of an overseas terrorist and his phone numbers without which we cannot tie domestic players with foreign enablers. Here in the states, the NSA would first need to have known of McVeigh's membership in...