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Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Just to be clear here, you're saying you are opposed to the government gathering information about the activities of citizens where the government has no reason to suspect them of unlawful behavior?
Good, so am I; I consider laws like this invasive and unconstitutional. I expect you'll stand with us against the Patriot Act. (Feel free to bring your gun).
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Believe it or not, I thought some aspects (as I understand them) of the Patriot Act were the obvious response to the issue. If the government has "no reason" (which I read as no specific reason not based solely any one or more of race, creed, color or national origin), than the G should not be doing one thing to single out an individual. Its funny sometimes that some of y'all Democrats are sometimes at least party Right.
As examples of what I oppose:
The LA roundup of two years ago, based solely on national origin of illegal immigrants. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants (or registering them, or anything but ignoring them and pretending they don't exist). I'm against rounding up and deporting (in the LA region's case, jailing) illegal immigrants solely because they were from Iran or Syria. Thankfully, the public reacted with scorn and the Bush administration called it a mere misunderstanding (which I'll believe when I see elephphants fly... one of the reasons I fucking hate John Ashcroft).
I don't oppose specific targeted inquiries based on subject matter though, even without any other tie to an individual. I don't have a problem with the government searching library records and seeing who is checking out Mein Kampf, Pogroms for Dummies, or anything by Al Franken (ok, that's hyperbole), and identifying some (hopefully combination of more than one) things as "suspicious".
I've taught entire classes on "suspicion" before, and there is oftent a legitimate basis for an individual to have individualized alarm. Its way better than teaching classes on "plugging bullet holes" or "scraping bodies off the pavement after someone jumps 100 stories from a burning building".
Hello
