Seems like a fine opportunity to pull out some words from one of my all time favorite US Supreme Court justices:

“…the tapping of one man’s telephone line involves the tapping of the telephone of every other person whom he may call or who may call him. As a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrants are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with wiretapping.”

“The makers of our Constitution….sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.”

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding”.

“If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy…to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.” – Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in 277 U.S. 438, Olmstead v. United States, June 4, 1928

“Extra-Constitutional” is euphemism for “illegal.” No one gets extra-Constitutional powers or authority…because that means it’s outside the limits of the Constitution and therefore against the law.

As is his boss.

Oh, I think by and large FDL can admit it. A few of the diarists and commenters are the ones who can’t. Attaturk is consistently a diarist who leaves me shaking my head at the level of…well…idiocy.* And some people who call themselves turtles seem to have pulled their head back into their shell so as to not see anything they don’t want to see.

*Apparently mentioning the fact that Obama is the nation’s first black president is somehow “race baiting.” Attaturk sees everything through a partisan (Obama) lens. Liberal? Not so that I can tell.

Why are you concentrating on the Republican response in this diary? That’s just pure partisan blindness, willful partisan blindness I suspect, that ignores the fact that nearly 1 in five Dems and nearly 1 in 3 independents in this survey also agree that revolution might be necessary.

Gotta say that since I stepped away from the Democratic Party in the age of a right wing Obama presidency, the ridiculous “us versus them” mindset of many who still see themselves as Dem has become just as apparent as the ridiculous “us versus them” mindset of Republicans always was.

You’re focusing on the wrong thing here. What you ought to be focusing on is that fact that nearly one in three people in a survey that included Republicans, Dems and independents are so distraught with the state of our nation that they believe revolution may be needed. Maybe you ought to ask yourself why that is so.

So…your complaint here is that the abuses of the federal government against people that arise from merely having their name placed on some list without ever being charged or tried or convicted of a damn thing is that those abuses are not widespread enough? That’s what you’re saying. Really, it is.

How about this. Instead of complaining that we don’t have enough unaccountable abuses of the basic rights of people by government post 9/11, how about complaining that we have too damn much abuse, actually acting like a liberal who gives a damn about rights and liberty and seeking to roll it all back? Geez!

This report if from The Daily Mail. If there any confirmation by any other news reporting agency or other source? ‘Cause when The Daily Mail is the newspaper, you really, really want another source. Really.

You’re misinformed if you believe that keeping Gitmo detention (whether it was at Gitmo or moved to another location) is the fault of Congress. Obama’s plan was never to close Gitmo. It was simply to move the horror show to a new location and continue it there. Story here.

Who says “we don’t”? You’re using a tragedy and a falsehood to argue about something unrelated. “Investigations and regulations of explosives” proceed apace. Go down to your local co-op and just try to buy the truckload of fertilizer you want to store before the price goes up and see how long it takes to get a call if not a visit.

No society, if it is to be free, can be 100 percent safe. You have no real information about what happened in Boston. For all you know the devices used were cobbled together from powdered aluminum and table sugar. And you have zero way to know whether or not having an ATF director would have made a lick of difference in this isolated incident. Given that there appears to have been zero chatter in advance by any electronic means or any other indication that might have given this away, right now I expect that it would be hard to show any merit to the specious argument you’re making here. But hey, why let a crisis — or a tragedy — go to waste, right? Right!

Also, via AngryBear, a long and detailed post from NewDealDem from February 2010 containing extensive links and quotes from Obama that make it clear it is he who wants these cuts to Social Security: Mr. President, no *Real* Democrat is “agnostic” about Social Security

This is who Obama is. This is who Obama has always been. This is why Obama always opens “negotiations” with Republicans by starting out on solidly “moderate Republican” ground…and then giving even more. The man is a disaster. Some of us always knew he was and would be. If the rest (or even most of the rest) are waking up to that truth finally and at last, I’ll take it. But don’t blame the Republicans for Obama. Blame Obama for Obama. He told you this is who he is long ago. You should have believed him.

That claim is attempted political cover codswallop. Obama has been working towards a “grand bargain” that cuts Social Security since before he was ever inaugurated at president. Actually, his publicly stated desire to put Social Security on the table goes back to before he was ever even officially running for president. Obama isn’t doing this because of the Republicans. Obama is doing this because this is what Obama wants to do. He’s said so repeatedly. Instead of looking for a way to blame this on the Republican Party, you should blame the Republican in the White House.

TVA rates are often lower than the rates from private producers, but no, the rates are not subsidized in any way. The TVA is self-financing and self-supporting and has been for quite a while. (When TVA started up and for several decades thereafter, it did receive federal appropriations, but that was during build out when TVA was working to bring electricity to rural areas the privately owned companies were not interested in serving due to lack of population density and low profit potential.)