More clueless Liberal blathering nonsense

Constitutional scholars fairly evenly divided along party lines about the legislation. From an historical perspective it was laws exactly like this that provoked the Revolution, unlawful searches and seizures, billeting of soldiers and taxation for things not wanted. Like it or not, the coastal economy and even the national economy in the late 18th century was to a fairly large part based on smuggling that led to much of the conflict that eventually erupted. If you read the Bill of Rights it is effectively a smugglers and a vociferous democrat's bill of rights. Amendments 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 protect people who's livelihoods may not bear closest scrutiny. Now smuggling was endemic in all seafaring cultures, European as well as the colonies, but the idea of smuggling as an act of civil disobedience was also taking hold. Please note that the kind and amount of smuggling was relatively small (so was the population) and benign (the worst that could be said is that they smuggled in Brandy without a tax stamp). Britain was trying to download the cost maintaining and administering the colony onto its inhabitants and those inhabitants accustomed to freedom from taxation opposed that attempt. The Brits also billeted soldiers partially as an attempt to find out what was going on, partially as an attempt to free itself of the cost of their maintenance and partly to impose penalties on those suspected of being either rebellious democrats or engaged in the business of contraband.

Amendment 6 is one of those which served double duty. No more dragging somebody before an English appointee as magistrate and being sentenced to 20 years. A free and fair public trial by a jury of his peers in the state and county wherein the offence was discovered means that a person was tried by a jury of people who may have known him, may have been engaged in the same business as he was, who may well have been in sympathy with his views. I'm sure someone has done the statistical analysis on conviction rates, and while ordinary criminal convictions stayed the same, I'm willing to bet that crimes like smuggling, and posession of contraband dropped like a stone. You can be equally certain that those same offences quickly became unpalatable, because they became thought of as unAmerican and inimical to the American economy and faded away considerably, though never completely. Free money is after all free money.

The President's legislation and the Department of Homeland Security, besides sounding like a translation from the German, is an unweildy sledgehammer being used to try to crush a very quick flying, and quick-changing insect. A dozen fly-swatters would do better than this horrible bureaucratic joke. In fact the bureaucracy we had before was more responsive than the current one and it couldn't respond, despite the right information (though missing the whole plan) at the right time. There were people who reported on unusual activities in flight schools and the like, but they were ignored. Why not shake up the existing system and insist on better coordination rather than create a more massive government, less responsive than the previous one, but sucking down vast amounts of tax dollars. Of course if you have the Military and the CIA and the NSA and the Dept of Homeland Security all competing for funds, what chance does Education (remember, this is the "Education" President we're talking about) or Social Services or AFDC or a myriad of much smaller much cheaper parts of the government have for funding. This is social engineering by stealth, the new Conservative agenda, the crippling of most of what was enlightened in the United States by the dead hand of sheer weight of expense of large programs. How much security has the expensive US military budget bought? You now spend as much as the entire rest of the world combined, and you're still trying to defend against the indefensible. A ship, a large sailboat, a cargo container, an individual with the right relatively simple ingredients. It ain't the bureaucracy that'll save you, it's boots on the ground.

To answer some of your points:
1 the larger the budget the more inefficient the program, check with the GAO. Social Programs are so far down the list they're invisible.

2 anything that helps people survive, have better health and live reasonably in retirement are not wasteful, and cost fractions of the amounts involved in the programs you like. This is a total red herring and a grape versus pineapple comparison. The current rage for National Security is the pineapple incidentally, large, prickly, painful, and expensive. I reccommend it be inserted into the orifices of those who came up with this ill-conceived scare in the first place, jaggy bits first.

3 of course there have been intrusions, you can't have warrantless wiretapping without intrusions. You can't trawl through Millions upon millions of phonecalls without intrusions. You can't warrantlessly go after dissidents and people who don't like the legislation, or even don't like the United States without intrusions.

4 I don't think the "Liberal Machine" trusts the Supreme Court in view of some of its recent rulings, I also think they're waiting for just the right case. Inaction proves nothing, especially not agreement with your ridiculous thesis.

5 Irrelevant, so other people have access to things they shouldn't, we'll get to them. But they don't have the power to put you in jail or "extraordinarily render" you to some 3rd World Hell hole where they'll happily beat you senseless for a fraction of the cost in the United States, and without all that messy litigation and Habeas Corpus.

10 when it contravenes the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, of course it's UnAmerican. Joe McCarthy was UnAmerican, much of HUAC was unAmerican, many of the activities of the Hoover's FBI were unAmerican until they were reined in after Mrs. Hoover's death. There are lots of short-term unAmerican acts in American history, what is not unAmerican is opposing them and exposing them for the lies and the scams they are.

Rob

Yep, it's Marcia again, attempting to toss out a bit of ''Stop and look at how you are trying to get your point across.'' I know I am a PITA for many of you, BUT(T) when the originating post and/or responses are so incredibly like the reasoning used by my 11-year-old (who happens to be getting better with age, unlike some adults I am acquainted with), then I jump in with the ''Awwww, geez! Do ya' just gotta' do the:

YOU SAID IT AND I DIDN'T LIKE IT, SO I'M GOING TO DO THE SAME THING, THEN I'M GOING TO TELL YOU THAT IF YOU CAN DO IT THEN I CAN TOO, BUT AS SOON AS YOU DO IT AGAIN AND TELL ME THAT SINCE I DID IT YOU CAN DO IT, AND ....... (the convoluted reasoning that invokes the response of ''What the He!!?'' is exactly how these threads read.)

Get the idea?

I have made these same comments to folks here on all sides of the political spectrum, and any other spectrums you can likely point out; so please don't come back on me with the ''Marcia, you are just being naive;'' or the ''Yeah, but so-and-so did the same thing so I'm/we are just doling out the same medicine to see how they like it...and they are worse, so that makes me/us better.''

I am an equal opportunity ''knock-it-off-you-are-being-childish'' kind of person

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