[QUOTE=detbuch;996525][QUOTE=Jim in CT;996362]Bush implemented these policies, and Obama has kept all of them in place (except waterboarding, I believe)? So if those 2 guys, who are as far apart as you can get on the political spectrum, both agree that these protections are legal, I sleep OK at night.
Because Bush and Obama agree, that makes it constitutional? Whaaa . . .
But if someone says we are not safer today that 12 years ago, I assume that person is blinded by political ideology, because you must admit that is an absurd statement.
Uhhh . . . two twenty-year-olds with back packs and pressure cookers, in spite of the Bush era/Obama era "safeguards" succeeded in blowing up the Boston Marathon.
I'm sorry, where in the Constitution does it say that you need probable cause for wiretaps? I have read the Constitution, and I don't recall that. Because it's not there. Which means that's something that's open to interpretation.
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That's not how it's supposed to work, Jim. If something "is not there"--doesn't fall within an enumerated power--the Federal Government has no right to do it. What the SCOTUS has to "interpret" is if the action falls within the purview of powers granted to any branch of the Federal Government by the Constitution. If it does, so be it--the government can act in a nearly unlimited capacity. If it doesn't, it has no power to act. Where, in the Constitution, did you read that the Federal Government, or any branch thereof, has the power to write its own search warrants, to permit search warrants without probable cause, to spy on personal computer communications, to fund the installation of cameras and microphones on nearly every street corner, or to expand the 10 second window to collect "excited utterance" to 72 hours of interrogation before Miranda begins?
The use of "interpretation" to go beyond the determination of government power as constitutionally granted into spheres of social or economic "good" or necessity is the very thing that has reduced the Constitution to a meaningless tool used as a cover which allows government to rule without limits.
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"Because Bush and Obama agree, that makes it constitutional?"
Neither one claimed that it was unconstitutional, and that covers a huge political divide. Also, has the Supreme Court deemed the Patriot Act to be unconstitutional? Not as far as I know..
"Uhhh . . . two twenty-year-olds with back packs and pressure cookers, in spite of the Bush era/Obama era "safeguards" succeeded in blowing up the Boston Marathon"
Come on, you are better than that. I did not say we are "invulnerable". I said we are "safer". In other words, we are not "perfectly safe". But we are obviously "more safe" than we were on 09/11...you are the first person I have ever heard deny that.
Al Queda still exists, and they are lethal. But they don't have the operational capacities they once had. We are better at anti-terror than we were 15 years ago. Do you really deny that?
"Where, in the Constitution, did you read that the Federal Government, or any branch thereof, has the power to write its own search warrants"
You got me there...