Wanker of the Day
Jeff Goldstein, as a representative of the rest of the conservatarian blogosphere.
Not a single troll stepped up to the plate last night. So, consider this thread another opportunity to answer this:
Can anyone - anywhere - explain, just a little bit - just one time - how "national security has been damaged" by revelations that the Administration was eavesdropping without FISA-required warrants and judicial oversight rather than with them?
Darn good question. Let's think about this. If I'm a bad guy who wants to cause harm to America and I've long known that the NSA has the capability to spy on me legally and intercept my electronic communications legally and I then learn that the NSA is doing so illegally, what the heck difference could that possibly make? How does that effect me one way or the other? Is any American going to tolerate my activities under any circumstances?
As I've mentioned to various friends and buddies, this looks a whole heck of a lot like another COINTELPRO operation, an operation that ran from 1956 to 1971 that had the FBI not only monitoring domestic disssident groups, but actively disrupting them. There were a lot of genuinely bad groups that the FBI investigate via COINTELPRO, but there were also a number of antiwar and black liberation groups as well. A modern-day operation would not only be aimed at real bad guys, but would also cast a wide enough net to reel in environmentalists, Quakers, gay and lesbian organizations, pro-choice groups, etc., etc.
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