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> Am I missing something here? No. Money is the mother's milk of politics,
and secrecy is the favorite dessert of
bureaucracies. Much of why W, Obama, etc. want the Patriot
Act is to have power to catch the bad guys
so that they, W, Obama, etc., won't get
blamed. Indeed if a president doesn't defend
the Patriot Act, the NSA, etc. and there
is another Boston bomber, then some people
will try to sell the charge that "The president is
soft on terrorism." So, a president will
want to defend the Patriot Act, etc. right up until
the Supreme Court strikes down the act.
Then a president will say that he did all he
could to protect us against the bad guys, and the part of government soft on
terrorism was the Supreme Court or just say
that the Supreme Court showed us what we have to
do to defend the Constitution. A politician wants
to avoid chances that
opponents could say that the
politician was to blame.
Generally politicians get
an A+ in CYA. Generally the hope that a politician
will be more responsible is
a well informed citizenry making
their opinions heard. That's why
here on HN I'm putting out there
that my view is that we need to
protect the Constitution; the Patriot
Act, etc. and the NSA have been trashing
the Constitution; it's not worth
trashing the Constitution to catch
Boston wackos with pressure cookers;
so, let's get the NSA, etc. back
within the Constitution and
otherwise do what we can with
Boston police, the FBI, etc.
about Boston wackos. Indeed, the
Russians told us that the Boston
bombers were dangerous wackos,
and still we didn't do enough. One more point is that so far
a few wacko Muslims have caused
us to suffer over 4000 deaths
among our soldiers, tens of
thousands of serious casualties
among our soldiers, blow
ballpark $3 trillion (net present
value) of our money, and trash
the Constitution. We've taken
a sucker punch. We need to
find some ways to get more security
per unit of effort. |