As long as the Patriot Act has a “sunset clause”, I am for it. Does that make me “un-patriotic”? I wore the uniform for 11 years.
The problem with the Patriot Act is that it is too “all encompassing”, which is the problem with all legislation these days. Nobody wants to let individual pieces stand on their own.
Was Lincoln “un-patriotic” for taking the steps he did, suspending habues-corpus, during the civil war? It was necessary.
So far there have been no violations or misuse of the act that anyone can point to. The next re-authorization comes up in 2009. And if it is reauthorized, we need to make sure that the “sunset” clauses are retained (probably the only issue I have agreed with the ACLU on).
The first time there is credible evidence that it has been misused or that they want to make the provisions permanent without proper safeguards, I’ll be all for trashing it.
I’ve found that most people that are against it have not really read the act or any objective analysises of the act (they usually rely on partisan report from one side or the other).
Regardless of which group you fall into, don’t go around calling people who are in favor of it “un-patriotic”, unless you simply want to look stupid. I’ll stack my patriotic cred against yours any day.
Hey, I served and still do.
So please, spare me. The fact is that those of you (perhaps not you) who would seek to include the rest of us in your game of “please look under my skirt, Govna”, do not adequately consider the fact that there are those of us that don’t like the idea.
You wanna give up your rights? Fine, do so. Reap what you sow. I, for one, ain’t buyin it.
Like the nutty Paul says, if it ain’t illegal, then why do you need immunity?
And to answer your question about Lincoln, yes. In my opinion, Lincoln did more to hurt the concept of free people than any other President. He deficated on the graves of our genius founding-fathers, of which he is not one of.
Thank Lincoln for the income tax.
Just my opinion.