my short political rant...

Let me just preface this by saying I tend to be quite middle of the road politically, but have very strong leanings toward environmentalism, yet I balance this by my belief we need to have a strong defense policy. I also believe need less laws and more enforcing of the laws we already have, not silly excessive legislation for fun. Although those old blue laws are pretty entertaining... but I digress.

So my aunt sends me several copies of the same article about Bush signing some secret thing giving permission for NSA to spy on Amercians. I personally am not surprised he did this... look what's been happening in our country. We're realizing that the terrorists are not people living somewhere else blowing up mosques and shouting about Jews and infidels, declaring fatwahs and speaking in some language we don't understand... and who cares anyway right? They're over there. Well this ain't our father's country anymore. Suicide bombers don't just end up in Beirut or Israel. They're here. Now. Today.


This doesn't mean we should have the freakin' Patriot Act to allow our Constitution to be tossed out the window. We already have laws in place to protect us... like officials need probable cause to search, seize, eavesdrop, monitor... The Patriot Act threatens to widen those powers and stretch that thing about probable cause.

I got the impression my aunt is more worried about Bush signing some eavesdropping thing. Hey, we've come a long way ya know... in the 40's had the whole 9/11 thing happened we'd have rounded everyone up that wore a headscarf and put them in camps. That's what we did to the Japanese during WWII.

I'm not sure how i feel about the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. I'm sure it began as security concerns but I think it's also one place where the American servicemembers completely control the environment and they can monitor all visitors, all communications between prisoners... not like American prisons where pretty much anything goes... I still am not sure how i feel about it. I"m outraged at the stories I hear, but I don't know they're true. How can I know? I'm not there.

Anyway, yeah so ... I'm not pissed off so much as waiting to see what will happen.