July 4 is a day when we celebrate our independence, our freedom, and our liberties, guaranteed by our great Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It is also a good day to ponder the continuing growth of the national security state. This state demands the power to watch our every move. It says that it keeps us safe by having the ability to read our emails and monitor our phone calls. It sets up hidden cameras on the street to watch us.
Similarly, in schools, confidential data about our children and grandchildren are being amassed on a huge database that will be stored somewhere in the “cloud,” and managed by amazon.com. The database is being assembled, thanks to $100 million from Bill Gates and the Carnegie Corporation, by Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation. Don’t you feel safer already, knowing that every detail about your offspring is aggregated somewhere so that corporations can develop new products and sell stuff to the schools? Who might hack the data? Who might use it and misuse it? We don’t know. Will it happen? Of course.
And then there is the big story of the hour, the leaking of national secrets by a contractor employed by Booz Allen & Hamilton (which has a billion dollar contract with the U.S. government to manage secrets). Now our government is in hot pursuit of whistle-blower Edward Snowden. What did he do? He told the world that our government has the capacity to watch our every conversation, online and on the telephone. Days ago, the New York Times revealed that our government has been tapping into phone calls and emails in Germany and has done so more than half a billion times. No wonder the government wants to keep its snooping secret. The German government and people must be outraged.
Today is a good time to look at some of the claims made in the media about leaking and the danger Snowden poses to our national security. This article in The Nation does that, and it is a revelation. If we accept the idea that the government can monitor our phone calls and read our emails, haven’t we abandoned a good deal of our liberty?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
don’t leave out the other story, that the Postal service is now grabbing images of the front and back of all mail. What a lot of people do not realize is how much information the government can get about you by doing things like this. The Supreme Court ruled that the government still needed a warrant to put a GPS on your car. As of now in theory they need a warrant to get your GPS locations from your cell phone provider. But it seems to me that it is probable that if they are grabbing the metadata about all electronic communications they would also be able to grab the meta data about all cellular traffic as well – that is, beyond what numbers you are calling and when, to where the phone was specifically when the call was made. Data storage is now incredibly cheap, and the computer power to manipulate date is ever more powerful and quick.
Now, imagine – and this is real – the specific data about your child in the hands of InBloom. Connect that with information about the location of your child’s cell-phone, your credit card records on tutoring or supplemental materials you may buy to assist your child. If you start getting worried at the total lack of privacy implied, we are already there.
Even if you choose to vary where you shop and only spend cash, you still have to obtain that cash and there will be bank security cameras recording the transaction whether it is at an ATM or with a teller (for which they may charge you more).
During the 1970s we discovered that the military was ILLEGALLY accumulating information on civilians. Even when ordered to destroy the accumulated data, the records were still at Fort Holabird in Baltimore.
We seem to be on an irreversible path when it comes to information about us.
The metadata is sufficient to know great details about us.
We should be having serious debates about these policies.
That we are not is an abdication by the Congress of its responsibilities to act on behalf of the American people.
I very much agree. Did you vote for Obama just once, or both times? You bought him. Now it’s up to you to control him.
Why do you assume that everyone on this blog besides yourself voted for Obama? Your broken record gets old.
P.S. I didn’t vote for Obama. Either time.
Harlan Underhill seems to have a problem with anyone who voted for Obama. No need to explain to him anything. He doesn’t belong on this blog because he attacks people on a personal level. Dianne Ravitch banned him once but he’s obviously back.
Michael Brocoum,
I deleted Harlan’s personal attacks on other individuals and warned him to cut it out. If he wants to express his opinion in general, it is okay with me. But if he goes after anyone by name or resorts to invective, I will ban him forever.
That would be a refreshing lift to the level of the discussions. His adds nothing to the conversation., and his attacks on those he can’t summon facts to refute, lowers the tone of this otherwise wonderful, insightful post! We hear enough of “tea bag” logic on Fox!
The news reports about the Snowden case say that under several programs, the government has been collecting metadata–information ABOUT communications (e.g., IP addresses and times for Internet communications), but not the communications themselves. However, the cover article in Wired magazine in March of 2012 on the subject of the new NSA Utah data center goes MUCH further. (Google Wired, NSA Utah data center.) It says that the purpose of the data center is to store, permanently, actual electronic communications of citizens and foreigners alike–emails, faxes, telephone conversations, etc.–and that President Obama’s Justice Department has issued a finding that such storage of actual communications is not surveillance until officials actually look at the data (that is, until you or a friend or relative becomes a person of interest).
Here is the question that Congress and the media are NOT asking the President and our intelligence officials:
Are you collecting and storing any of the following: the emails, instant messages, faxes, telephone conversations, or any other electronic documents produced by or sent to American citizens?
Note that the question is not, “Are you examining documents or records without a court order?” And it’s not “Are you collecting metadata?” Those are DIFFERENT QUESTIONS. The question above is the one that is being artfully ignored and/or equivocated about. The President says, in conversation with Charlie Rose, We aren’t listening to your phone conversations and we aren’t “tracking” your emails. Not that “we are not listening” is not “we are not recording.” And what does “tracking” emails mean? Again, “we are not tracking” is not “we are not recording.”
That sort of talk reminds me of Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman.” It’s an equivocation. It sounds suspiciously carefully worded so as to maintain deniability: “I never said that we weren’t collecting people’s emails and posts and instant messages and storing them permanently. I said we weren’t tracking them, and we’re not.”
Are we already living in the Panopticon? Or will that soon be the case? It’s a question worth asking. Here’s why: The capabilities we create today become available to ANY future government that we might have. Orwell’s INGSOC would have loved to have had the sorts of capabilities that we are now developing.
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”…Joseph Goebbels/Nazi Party
This is what I hear young people saying all the time now. They’ve been indoctrinated to believe it.
Indoctrinated, absolutely… and what they don’t understand is that they may THINK they have nothing to hide… but unscrupulous people in power can twist the most INNOCENT comment, behavior, picture to fit into a mold of their choice.
CX: Sentence above should read
Note that “we are not listening” is not “we are not recording.”
Happy July 4th everyone! Thank you for the article. This blog shows that teachers in America care deeply about democracy and civil liberties. One thing I want everyone to think about is how our schools are tied to liberty and democracy. Having public schools and elections for the school board are very important. How many people realize that charters schools, especially in urban areas, have cameras installed in the classrooms? The children are watched on camera from the beginning of the day until they leave the school. Does anyone here find it offensive that urban children are being brought up in a world where they accept being watched and recorded all day long. I find this very odd. Would you want your child recorded all day long and think it is just no big deal? If so, why can’t we watch our politicians’ every move and access videos to watch?
I am so eager to see who steps up for running for office in the next elections and how the privacy issues, Common Core, DOE become debate questions.
I guess that is what I am waiting for! New leaders on the horizon??? I hope so.
Nothing this gov’t does suprises me any more. If you watch movies like “Enemy of the State” with WIll Smith and Gene Hackman, “Eagle Eye” with Shia LaBoef, and “Body of Evidence” with Leonardo DeCaprio and Russell Crow, you will see what the gov’t is capable of doing. That’s the reason they are building/built that huge data center in Utah. They are going to know every bit of information about us. What are they going to do with all the information they have stored? Who knows, but I would be very worried. Especially when they add all our children’s information into the mix.
Thank you so much for speaking up in support of Edward Snowden. I think he is a real hero and a patriot who cares about our constitution. The really appalling thing is the response of the congress–even the most progressive reps and senators are saying little or nothing in his support.
All this grieves me for my grandson and granddaughter. It’s interesting, isn’t it, z1queenie, that our popular media simply ASSUME the existence of “total information awareness”-type capabilities in the US of a kind that Orwell’s INGSOC and the Stazi could only have dreamed of.
He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
Stasi, not Stazi
The public seems to be giving President Obama a pass on this and I think the mass media’s reporting is partly responsible. However would the public be as sanguine if their physical mail was obviously opened before they received it? I think not. The public doesn’t “see” the spying of their emails. Furthermore President Bush stated a few days ago that he supports the NSA spying program. That’s all the proof I need that Snowden did the right thing. Remember “WMD”!
WMDs? How can I remember something that didn’t exist?
LOL. Brilliant!
Oh, they existed, I believe, and are now living happily in Syria.
I always told my children don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want done to you (Golden Rule) nor that you would want printed on the front page of the newspaper. Snowden, Assuange, Bradley Manning are an embarrassment to the government-I tell them all- don’t shoot the messenger! Protect our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms–thanks k
Sent from my iPad
Dems and GOP will not stop building nat’l sec state, will not stop snooping, spying, gathering info on all of us. Rubio is being groomed to run in ’16 as is Hillary. Only chance to rescue public schools, public sector, and public rights is to gather an alternative party outside the two corporate ones. NCLB, RTTT, CCSS are all joint Dem/GOP programs financed by corporations.
The two corporate ones. Exactly, Ira!
Sure, like the tea party? Even if the members were all angels, no progressives would want to be associated.
He didn’t say anything about the tea party. Is the level of consciousness in this country so low that workers can’t see 99% of the people need a new party that has a program for human need not corporate profit?
Many countries have had Labor Party’s for over one hundred years. Today they are as tied to the corporate state as are most of our union officials. But we have no choice but to start a party from the grassroots, union, non-union, unemployed, which is free from any corporate and banking connections. If we do not do this we are doomed to a very oppressive government and economic hell on earth!
The Tea Party and the Occupy Movement need to recognize that they have a common enemy, the emerging totalitarian state, and act accordingly.
Unfortunately, the Occupy movement is a creature of the Obama propaganda machine. It is what is called “astro turf” not real grass roots, unlike the tea party which really is grass roots in my personal experience. So many here condemn the tea party folks out of hand with canards that they are Randian without arguing the Rand assumptions. I suspect very few of the tea party folk have ever heard of Rand, and if they had they would reject her atheism. We don’t have to talk tea party, but rather say that every responsible citizen ought to be disturbed by the departures from constitutional government we are seeing in the previous four administrations and we should be discovering our common interests and begin working together to restore a constitutional Republic. The process of chipping away at it has been going on at least since Woodrow Wilson. It will take a while to educate enough people to make it happen. But I think it will eventually happen. That’s all I’m “preaching.” Rule of law not of men under the constitution. Inalienable rights. That sort of stuff we all know. If you believe in the Declaration of Independence, you ought to consider joining with other constitutional conservatives whether you agree with them on religion or taxes or abortion. Those matters are trivial compared to the threat to the individual from too big a government. Teachers have seen what big government does to education, NCLB, RTTT, perhaps even CCSS. Big government does the same thing to every other segment of life in this country. Obamacare is the most prominent example at the moment. The Immigration bill is another. If you’re not careful and start examining your views you’ll wind up as un-free in your every day lives as you already are in your education work lives.
Harlan, as a libertarian you certainly think you have a right to ingest/drink/smoke whatever substance you want. I wonder if that is what is distorting your view of the world. When you say
you are, despite what you claim as your experience, wrong on both counts.
It is well documented that most of the early Tea Party Groups were funded indirectly by the Koch Brothers.
As for the idea that the Obama organization has anything to do with Occupy, that is simply laughable, as is demonstrated by the fact that Homeland Security worked with some local police departments against Occupy.
If I may quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sir, you are entitled to your own opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Your statements are not factual.
Harlan and Teacherken, with all due respect, not all Tea Parties early or later were funded by the Koch’s. Movements like FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, and other national movements may be funded by them, but 99% of Tea Party groups are self-funded. They don’t depend on benefactors with deep pockets, they ARE the grass roots. Only people like Nancy Pelosi and you consider the Tea Party astro-turf. Tea Party people shut down the entire city of DC in 2010 when 1.8 million showed up. There were even people from Hawaii there. I doubt the Koch’s were paying everybody’s way.
FreedomWorks didn’t come along until the deep pockets people saw that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan and then they jumped on the bandwagon. That’s the beauty of a Tea Party on the local level or even state-wide. There is no structure. If you hear of a Tea Party that gets into trouble, it’s usually one of the national groups. Most Tea Party people don’t care about your job, where you live, who you worship, they are mostly about limited gov’t and less gov’t and reminding the people that WE employ the gov’t. They want a return to the gov’t that our Founding Father’s envisioned. NO amensty, NO national spying, NO executive orders, NO foreign aid, and the list goes on.
It would be nice if the Tea Party or ANY party could make a difference as a 3rd party. Ross Perot thought he was the answer, the Green Party, Tax Payers Party, and a myriad of others thought the 3rd party was an answer. The only thing a 3rd party does is peel the votes off the 2 mainstream party candidates and we get exactly what we got…Obama for 4 more years. Of course voter fraud helped, but that’s a subject for another time.
Harlan, I would worry more about our gov’t and what YOU have done or are doing to help restore our republic, not rag on those that ARE doing/trying to make a difference.
As Edmond Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And so far, evil seems to be winning.
I didn’t mark my “angels” comment as irony. I was mocking the horror of progressives at the mere mention of tea party folks. My experience of my local group has been the same as yours, queenie. I’m on board. Thank you for your stout defense of us. The progressives all secretly deny private property so they can feel superior to the rest of us. But it’s just holy piracy worthy of the satire of a Moliere. Think of Diane as Jack Sparrow, and you’ll begin to see how things look to me. Zombie pickpockets.
umm, you are way off on your facts. The only time anything like 1.8 million showed up in DC was on January 20, 2009, for Obama’s first inauguration.
I was, as a nationally known blogger, on the email lists for most of the major Tea Party groups when they got going. I know who was funding them, and I could point you at video showing a Fox news reporter telling one small group of Tea Partiers what to say.
There are remnants of other earlier groups that have become folded into the Tea Party – from the KKK, the John Birch Society, and from some similar groups. Some of the self-proclaimed Tea Party leaders have a great amount of history about them online.
And far too many of those claiming to be speaking for the Tea Party movement make racist, Islamophobic, and homophobic comments having absolutely nothing to do with the size of the government, which by the way is SMALLER than it was under George W. Bush, but they didn’t complain then.
And then there are the fellow travelers, from the New Apostolic Reformation, who are happy to manipulate the Tea Party in order to achieve their goal of a theocracy as defined by them, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights be damned.
Bloviate all you want. I will not further impose on Diane’s blog with the details about these things, but they are readily available.
Harlan… I am a member of my local Tea Party. I helped found it.
To Kenneth… Umm….YOU are wrong in some of YOUR facts.
Were you there in 2010 when the city was shut down, or do you get your information from the HuffPo , WaPo, and the NYT? I was there. And no matter how the media cooked the numbers, there were that many people there. And it was left a lot cleaner than it was with Obama’s coronation too.
As to the accusation of Tea Party people making racist comments etc, how do you know they were actually Tea Party people? There are many people who CLAIM to speak for the Tea Party. The other side has been known to plant people at rallies and other activities to make the Tea Parties look bad. Kind of like the black legislator who said a Tea Party person spit on him during the Obamacare debacle and when the police investigated it, they found it wasn’t true, the legislator had lied.
Jenny Beth Martin and her cohorts with Tea Party Patriots have been in bed with the deep pockets crowd since their inception. Judson Philips of Tea Party Nation is another one. Your perception of the Tea Party movement is really quite skewed because you are portraying all Tea Parties as rabid, right-wing nutcase regardless of knowing the facts.
As I said before…not ALL Tea Party people belong to deep pocket organizations.
Nobody cares if you “used” to be a nationally known blogger or not or who you used to know or who you used run around with. Perhaps moving with the deep pockets crowd has colored YOUR view. Yes, many major Tea Party spokespeople DO have major baggage, but you are painting all Tea Parties by your lens.
The John Birch Society was around long before the Tea Party was. The JBS believes in many of the same values that Tea Parties do. However, they have NOT been folded into any Tea Party. The JBS is still alive and well and flourishing. There are lot of people who believe the way the Tea Party does, and they may or may not belong to a group. Not every Tea Party parrots what the talking head talking points are. Again, there are THOUSANDS of people that belong to Tea Parties that DO NOT parrot talking points.
The point I am trying to make is this…Yes, national groups are under public scrutiny, and yes, national groups have baggage. However, there are thousands of Tea Parties out there WHO DO NOT belong to any national group for the exact same reason you stated above…the major players have baggage and history.
You say that the gov’t is smaller now than it was under Bush. Are you serious? Have you been drinking the kool-aid that you accused Harlan of drinking? The gov’t under Obama has EXPANDED. Czars, new cabinet positions and new departments are being made all the time. I fail to see how adding how many Czars to the gov’t and each with their own employees and budget is keeping the gov’t smaller.
Kenneth…I have a question for you. Why is it when liberals are faced with logic or truth, that they always have to throw Bush into the mix? Bush has been gone for how long? What…I can’t hear you…try 5 years. Bush was no saint, and I am not defending him, but stick to the facts at hand. Bush was gone when the Tea Parties came into existence. Obama is still here.
I live in Arlington which is the Virginia portion of the original District, I was in the city that day, the city was NOT shut down, and the numbers were no place near the 1.8 million you claim. Yes, there was some disruption at the Capitol, including a tea party person spitting on a Black Congressman whom I happen to know – that particular person could have been arrested immediately on federal charges of assault on a federal official, but the Congressman refused to press charges.
Are there SOME relatively small tea party groups that were founded independently? Sure. Do they all operate independently? Not really, not for attempts at mass rallies, which were funded by the Koch Brothers.
I know whereof I speak and write. And since this is really irrelevant to the particular thread on which it is appearing, I will not further engage.
Kenneth…the legislator getting spit on was an entirely different occasion. IT was during the Obamacare debacle, the 1.8M in DC was a different occasion entirely. .
Wth all that said, we will have to agree to disagree. Hope you had a good 4th.
if you are referring to Glenn Beck’s event, counter events actually drew more people.
No, I was not referring to Glenn Beck’s event. If I was, I would have said as much.
I think this discussion has gotten completely off the purpose of this blog. Some people here are throwing out topics such as “tea party” or “I’ll bet you voted for Obama”, etc., that have little to do with what is happening to public ed. Let’s stay away from personal attacks and keep it about saving public education.
Snowden for the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama doesn’t deserve his.
Manning should also be seriously considered. Yeah for Manning and Snowden…true patriots and American. I Ann sick of demagogues.
Kissinger, then Obama. The Nobel Committee has made of the Peace Prize a complete laughing stock.
Really good article. Snowden is a hero of the highest order. The secret Nazi Fascist Amerika is on its way to total domination of all as is their intent. That is why you see the kickback of Russia, China and many others against us for good reason. Read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” by Gulick if you want to know the plan as we have copied the plan begun in 1919 which turned Austria into a fascist country since then. Remember they invited in Uncle Adolph.
This all comes from the military’s “Net Centric Warfare Model.” They have the algorithms to manipulate the data. They are gathering up all of every electronic communication worldwide not just the numbers. They have the memory capacity to do this. They are dramatically expanding these facilities in England also while the English protest. Why do you think we have all these actually unnecessary bases worldwide? I worked on the SR-71 what do you think that was for and for 55 years I have read every issue of Aviation Week cover to cover. I know what they are doing and their capacities and where they are going as a long time follower. Information from Aviation Week is how I knew to get a 4F before the Vietnam War really lit up. I was not going to die for someone to make money. They are purposely destroying the public education system to create the drones they want who do not question and do what they want for the elite. They have a Grand Plan and it is not for our good and Obama and Clinton have been great assisters to the fascists in this program. Unfortunate, but true. Just look at what they have done and not what they say. Perception is not always reality.
Thanks for posting this on this day. Let us hope that with the win in D.C. of the new teachers union president, CTU in Chicago and the new board at LAUSD we can begin to turn this mess around and make a great benevolent society as we must be to survive and be in some sense of peace and security for as many as possible as there is no perfection. That is why it is so ridiculous to say all will go to college and all will graduate. Never will happen in the real world. We have to make as good as we can for as many as we can and that is the best we can really do.
If the rest of the world played “fair”, then we would have no need for the NSA.. Snowden seeks asylum in countries where freedom exists very little if at all.. We as civilians will never know how many terrosists plots have been stopped because of the type of surveillance peformed by the NSA and other similar agency’s… I wish this type of “snooping” were not necessary, and that “Big Brother” was unnecessary… In the age we live in, we can never protect our great country without sacrificing our personal freedoms.. Do any of us really believe the Founding Fathers, when writing the Constitution and Bill of Rights could have remotely imagined the technology as it exists today ?? Idealism is a wonderful perspective to use as a benchmark to proceed from.. But like the “Cleavers”, “Ozzie and Harriet”, “Fathers Knows Best”, etc… Just a fantasy.. If the same surveillance Snowden hates so much would have stopped 9/11, would anyone argue it was unnecessary ?? Surveillance, Wire Taps, and any invasion of my privacy in the name of National Security I hate as much as anyone !! Yet it is and will only grow more important as the years roll by….. Just my 2 cents
Actually the government had the Info they needed to stop the attack. I believe stopping future terrorist attacks is made more difficult by spying on everything. Recall that one of the flight trainers reported to authorities that one of his students learning to fly a big jet did not want to learn how to land it. The local FBI agent reported this to superiors who let it die.
“Western authorities stressed, however, that the quality of Soviet education often lagged behind that of the West, in large measure because of the high degree of centralization and standardization of Soviet schools.”
–From CIA World Fact Book article on Education, Health, and Welfare in the former Soviet Union
QUESTION FOR ALL:
Isn’t anyone else concerned that the president and the intelligence community have NOT answered a direct question about whether the government is recording and permanently storing people’s private communications? This is the astonishing claim made by the Wired magazine cover story–one that FAR, FAR exceeds in its consequences the collection of metadata that the media has been reporting on since the Snowden leak. Why has no one, even here, commented on this? To me, that this might be happening is absolutely breathtaking. All the other activity pales in its consequences to that.
Robert…The question WAS asked, the gov’t flat out lied and they got called on it. Lying to Congress under oath is a felony.
From Breitbart…”On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper apologized for what he termed a “clearly erroneous” statement he made under oath to Congress regarding the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.” Translation…HE LIED.
From freerepublic…DNI Clapper Admits ‘Clearly Erroneous’ Testimony on NSA Surveillance (Translation: I lied).
From truthout…In light of what National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed about the NSA’s domestic data-gathering, Clapper has now admitted that his answer in Senate testimony was “untruthful” – what ordinary people call a “lie.”
If our gov’t can lie about Syria, Benghazi, the IRS, Valerie Jarrett, which DO involve scandals, and a myriad of other things that DON’T involve national security like Obamacare and Common Core, what makes us think that just because Snowden revealed the NSA and DNI for what they are, that the gov’t is going to man up and tell us the truth? Especially with the lame stream media running interference. Our gov’t now is not the gov’t of our forefathers. It isn’t even the gov’t I grew up with and I’m only 59.
. . . perhaps you’d consider the tea party?
But read Clapper’s apology. Again, equivocation, carefully worded to avoid the question of whether, in fact, the government is recording and storing the content of Americans’ electronic communications.
The question that Wyden asked Clapper was not specifically about whether communications themselves were being collected and stored. He asked whether the government was maintaining dossiers containing “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.” It was that question that Clapper lied about under oath to Congress, but again, I’m saying that Wyden was asking the wrong question. The answer to Wyden’s question about whether the government is collecting “any type of data” about “millions or hundreds of millions of Americans” is, obviously, yes. The government collects loads and loads of data about hundreds of millions of Americans. Wyden’s question was extraordinarily poorly worded, and (amusingly), Clapper could easily have answered yes to this question without compromising his position one bit.
What I am saying is that Wyden’s question should have been this:
“Is the government collecting and storing any of the following: the emails, instant messages, faxes, telephone conversations, or any other electronic documents produced by or sent to American citizens? Understand that this is a question about whether you are collecting and storing the content of Americans’ private communications, not about whether you are currently reviewing that content systematically or looking at data about it.”
That’s the question that NO ONE IS ASKING. And if something remotely like that question is asked, what we get is an equivocation in reply: We are not tracking your emails. We are not listening to your phone calls.”
But those are not answers to the question. Here’s another way of asking the real question, the one that’s being avoided: Are you collecting and storing any of the the content of Americans’ private communications, and if so, what are you collecting, from whom, and why, and what are you doing with this content?
Robert, in reply to your posting below, now I see how you are right. I still stand by my claim that we cannot trust our gov’t no matter what questions are or are not asked and how they are or are not worded. It’s a sad commentary on the state of our country.
Harlan Underhill…what do you have against the Tea Party and why do you hate it so much?
Perhaps, Harlan, because the Tea Party has been funded by the Koch brothers from it’s inception? Just a guess…
..and don’t forget Dick Armey and FreedomWorks.
Freedom Works was set up by David Koch.
Votem’ all out. Start again with less government and more liberties.
Perhaps because the Tea Party is only concerned about themselves and has little or no compassion for anyone else. As a former arch conservative I have a conflict between the Tea Party and the example given to the apostles in the New Testament. As a christian I can not embrace the overall Randian view of the Tea Party. I agree with some of their views on limited government powers vis a vis the Bill of Rights, but their view will lead to a society that is not sustainable unless you are one of the few wealthy.
True!
I can’t express how proud, happy and inspired I am that you would take this stand, Diane! Snowden has ripped the mask off the benign Obama, and revealed a vengeful destroyer of truth tellers. The vitriol is amazing! ALL the media have sold their souls to the corporate rulers who are behind much of the things we see. WHEN did the White House tell the truth about any serious issue? “W” fought, tooth and nail to stop the 9/11
commission, then did all he and his arch villain, Cheney, could do to make it as “truthful” as the Warren Commission’s pack of lies! WHY did “W” and Cheney only agree to testify to the sham, 9/11 group IF they weren’t under oath! That alone should make the public sit up and take notice! There are many, many curious things about that tragedy.
FACT: Just recently the fact that those tear wrenching phone calls from the doomed planes WERE IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE BEEN COMPLETED, DUE TO THE LACK OF TECHNOLOGY AT THAT DATE!! FACT: Check out anywhere if jet fuel can melt steel…
IT CAN’T! The jet fuel doesn’t come close to temps needed to melt steel! FACT: Why did building 7 fall (into its own footprint, as done in DEMOLITIONS…) and it NEVER had any damage from the Twin Towers fires? Then there’s the fake crap that lead to the debacle of Iraq…and now we’re being told about Syria using
gas on their population…Proof offered: NONE!
The absolute ravings of the press, crying for Snowden’s blood is ghoulish and eerily
similar to oppressive states that would kill truth at all costs. Are we any better? I fear
we are slipping at a dizzying rate into a police/security state. The public seems to
bark the absurd answer, “I’ve got nothing to hide” REALLY? Just what do you think they are mining from all those forms of PRIVATE communications? That ought to make us all protest this travesty. One last thought: Google “Executive Orders” and see what has been made law by just a presidential signature! That is if it hasn’t been wiped from the internet!