wow.

the FAR less egregious of the two points above, first.

the “secret” prisons.

off the record (like you can do that on the Internet) I’d visit all the t.v. stations that originally broadcast his tapes, etc, and get the information that we need to get to capture u b l, for example.

But here’s the problem with the prisons. since we don’t really know who is a terrorist, and who is innocent, the torture thing is kind of uncool (also, remember, a lot of the Iraqi insurgents, as hard as this is to understand, and as misguided as they may have been, were not terrorists, but thought they were fighting for their country against aggression).

but more importantly, if it is a policy that the American people would not accept, and it is being done by their government,then they have a right to know.

at least in a free society, the land of the free and home of the brave.

here’s why. in america, our government, under our founding document — and I suggest, very correctly — derives its sole power from the consent of the governed. period. this has to involve consent of its policies, as well.

additionally, people are responsible for their own government, for their own country. This includes its policies (this also applies to other countrie as well, btw, such as mexico).

therefore, it is anti American, to have not reported this information, when it represented policy that was not only (apparently), in violation of international law, and in violation of our own stated policies, but against the will of a majority of Americans as well.

With respect to the NSA wiretap surveillance issue, this is mind boggling.

For the party that is supposedly on the side of freedom, this “give unchecked power to the government in order to ‘protect us’ is also extremely hard to fathom.

First, one needs to have a basic understanding of the legal and constitutional issues. This doesn’t come from reading Alberto Gonzales’ spin, which no less than staunch conservatative constitutional studies fellow Rober Levy called “bizarre,” in testimony before the Senate judiciary committee.

The issues are non partisan, and they are clear cut, and umambigious. The surveillance clause was in plain violation of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, and as such, flagrantly violated the Constitution’s separation of powers clauses. Read the link.

It also represented the unilateral appointment and usurpation of unchecked government power (no warrant or other basis for review, no record to actually know what the program, good intentions aside, is or might be used for. which is why the Executive Branch’s unconstitutional actions, in the words of Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein, would have our founding fathers “rolling over in their graves.”)

But regardless, the program was illegal,under FISA, and the clandestine authorization and exercise of it, therefore, a violation of the Constitution’s First, Second (yes, second, read the whole thing) and third Articles’ separation of powers clauses.

A democracy can not function without proper information. To suggest that the government’s potentially (and in this case flagantly) illegal activity should not otherwise be revealed by the Press to the American people, let alone suggest that they did something against America’s interests, is, in the words of Nixon White House Counself John Dean, “something other than a democracy.”

Am I wasting my time? Because if I am writing to a bunch of totalitarians (and there are people who truly believe this way, they just don’t, being American, tend to recognize it), then I am. Otherwise, I hope that this has offered some reasonable and thoughtful additional perspective on the issue.