It seems that something has changed since Democrats opposed the absolute police state provisions of the Patriot Act. Nobody seems to know exactly what that is. It is Harry Reid's position that trying to do something endangers the US. That would be the same Harry Reid who opposed it previously - when it was a BushCo issue.
I don't really much give a damn about political party identification when it comes to stomping on civil liberties. I particularly don't give a damn when the law is in response to an occurrence where the failures had not a damn thing to do with the cures.
Nothing in the draconian nonsense enabled by the "Patriot Act" (patriotism is something else) addresses the failure of the FBI to continue with the results of ordinary police work nor the failure of agencies to communicate information - all of which led to 9/11 investigations dead ending before 9/11. Nothing extraordinary was required to unravel the conspiracy, just plain old already available law enforcement tools.
Security at any cost does mean the eventual end of civil liberties, their very existence in this country ran counter to the desire of virtually every government preceding and the root of that was the security of those governments. That the autocratic GOP loves some civil liberty stomping is no surprise, that the Democratic Party rolled over and ran with that ... sadly isn't a real big surprise.
So, is the difference between the parties simply a matter of degree to which they're dedicated to screwing the citizenry? Maybe the deficit issue will tell you all about that.
1 comment:
I blogged about this myself. It's the inherent hypocrisy of the two major parties. Values and positions bend like reeds depending on whether or not one's "guy" is in office.
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