Do not mention to the public or the media the use of cell phone technology or equipment used to locate the targeted subject,” the Iowa City Police Department warned officers in one training manual. It should also be kept out of police reports, it advised. NY Times, April 1, 2012
For all the screeching and wailing about government oppression in the form of an insurance mandate for health insurance, why are those freedom-loving, liberty-cherishing, gun-hugging Americans so utterly placid and spineless about the massive government intrusion into their personal lives through the routine abuse of police powers as described in the New York Times on April 1?
Apparently the police, even in small, rural towns, routinely go to cell phone companies and demand the locations of particular phones, or the content of text messages. Some of these police departments have even acquired their own equipment to do it without having to pay– or possibly arouse the antipathy of– private cell phone companies.
Where’s all the outrage? Where’s the placards, the effigies, the righteous indignation, the groveling, tearful references to the Constitution, the swelling, yelling, enraged marches?
The most sacred rights are being systematically disemboweled and we hear not a whimper from the so-called patriots.
It’s all a lie and America is a giant fraud. It’s time to hold a grand public ceremony and officially burn the Constitution in a steel barrel and then roll it off the docks somewhere near Wall Street and the “Freedom Tower”, and time for all the flag-draped Patriots to just get over it: you are liars.
Retroactive Immunity: John Ashcroft’s wet kiss to the Telecoms
I will note that I was completely wrong about consequences of Ashcroft’s actions, primarily because Obama has completely and totally capitulated to the forces of darkness in the American intelligence community and has, indeed, joined in the Constitution-defying American Jihad against suspected American enemies everywhere with his own program of assassinations and mayhem.
I would like to say that I predict that it will be the thing Obama will be sorriest about in ten or twenty years. But he won’t be, because the American public will adore him for killing people on their behalf. The more, the better. The bigger and more spectacular, the better. The bloodier, the lovelier. In foreign lands or, hell, why not, here on American soil. Arrest them, torture them, kill them remotely: our religion is an angel, a drone, with a gift of shredding.
If there were no enemies out there to kill, I strongly suspect we would make them up. No military or intelligence community would ever willingly acknowledge that they are not really needed, or that they do more damage, in the long term, than good.
And if you think that is preposterous, you should ask yourself how we got here: Obama, the “yes we can” guy, in the embrace of a Hellfire missile.
[added July 17, 2012]
Did you know that about 98%– no exaggeration — of criminal court proceedings in the U.S. end with a plea bargain? Is this good? Bad? Terrible?
What we have is district attorneys with enormous power bullying defendants into giving up their constitutional rights by threatening to lay more serious charges than are called for (which could result in a far more severe sentence) if the defendant doesn’t please guilty to “lesser” charges.
Now, did you know that District Attorney’s are allowed to demand a “waiver” as part of these agreements, wherein the defendant gives up his right to appeal his sentence later, if he happened to, say, discover exculpatory evidence somewhere, or that his own lawyer was a dunce? Furthermore, his own lawyer is likely to push him to agree to these terms because part of the waiver excludes his own attorney from any culpability for incompetence or negligence resulting in a more severe sentence than might be reasonably expected?