Re: This ain't gonna be brief

Post #20,234 by gtall 12/4/01 4:28:29 PM Reply	Re: This ain't gonna be brief It isn't important that they pass laws preventing the 9/11 attacks, it is important they pass laws helping prevent the next attacks. We can argue about this or that law, but I think what remains is that it will take a lot of time and trials, as in Supreme Court cases, to get it right. This is an entirely new ballgame, to think that we can rely on current constitutional guarantees to remain fixed I think is not being realistic. I'm not necessarily arguing that constitutional guarantees should be given up, or that the accumulated law built up around them should be given up, but I do believe we need to bang on the nuts and bolts ask ourselves what makes sense. Freedom of religion is good case in point, when does freedom of religion cross the line into freedom to kill Americans in Allah's name. That's freedom of religion in some circles. So, do we write a law saying thou shalt not use Allah in justification for killing Americans. Uh, probably wouldn't pass constitutional muster. So the administration is saying just because you have freedom of religion doesn't mean you have freedom from surveillence. But what does that really mean to freedom of all religions? Do some get special scrutiny, or only the ones the government doesn't like? Should the gov. be an equal opportunity peeker? I do not think any one of these or other issues the administration is dealing with are easy, and I do not think they think they are easy. I do think it will take a lot of time to sort out the bad laws. And Americans can vote in people who will get rid of laws the Americans do not like. And they get to do this every 2 to 4 to 6 years. Gerard Allwein
Post #20,240 by inthane-chan 12/4/01 4:50:52 PM Reply	Somebody already defined that one... ...your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Or, you have the right to do and say as you please, as long as you don't hurt anybody by doing it. As soon as you cross that line, you'd better have a darn good reason for doing so, or else you'll be held liable. See also the "yell fire in a crouded theatre" argument. We already have the basic framework in place - that can be applied. Freedom of religion IS protected, but threatening people, and then those threats being carried out, is not protected. I just wish we'd apply that standard to some of our own fundamentalists... "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Post #20,617 by gtall 12/7/01 6:43:55 AM Reply	Re: Somebody already defined that one... We already have the basic framework in place - that can be applied. Freedom of religion IS protected, but threatening people, and then those threats being carried out, is not protected. But that isn't the issue, the issue is how far and using what methods does the U.S. choose in order to stop mega-death. If a religious organization in the U.S. is preaching death to all Americans by any means, and no law enforcement agencies know of it, then one could (and I would) argue the government is failing in one of its primary missions, to protect Americans. How to do that protection is the hard part. Gerard Allwein
Post #20,248 by wharris2 12/4/01 5:15:25 PM Reply	Re: This ain't gonna be brief It isn't important that they pass laws preventing the 9/11 attacks, it is important they pass laws helping prevent the next attacks. I disagree, conditionally. The exact modus operandi of the 9/11 attacks will probably never be used again; indeed, short of stuffing the plane full of terrorists-posing-as-passengers, I don't think it can succeed again. However it is, at least, a useful measuring stick. Telephone taps, for instance - how would adding the ability to tap telephones of suspected terrorists without a warrant have prevented this or any other attack? Well, it wouldn't - it's hard to tap a phone if you don't suspect anything. (I'm trying to avoid 9/11-specific examples - apply the example to the Federal Building bombing.) OK, so you say "Well, okay, but what if we do have good suspects?" - in this case, if you have something to make you think they are terrorists, surely you can convince a sympathetic judge to give you a warrant. One of the purported problems was that being a suspected terrorist wasn't one of the wiretap categories before. Well, okay, provisions that would allow you to tap suspected terrorists with a warrant would seem to me to be reasonable. Likewise, tapping all the phones of an individual rather than a wiretap on a particular telephone seems reasonable in this age of sixty-zillion telephones per person. But a wiretap just on the sayso of an attorney general or one of the other "approved" law enforcement officers? No, no, no. It's this kind of ill-thought-out hastily executed sweeping power that is the problem with the bill. I believe this example is one of the sunsetted provisions. That's good. But the dang bill is hundreds of pages long. "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth

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