Here are some great quotes:

"As President, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I
have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our
freedom and our way of life. ... We're fighting these enemies
across the world. Yet...one of the most critical battlefronts
is the home front, and since September the 11th, 2001, we've
been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting within our
borders. ... There is still an enemy that would like to strike
the United States of America, and they're very dangerous...and
the discussion about how we try to find them will enable them to
adjust." ---President George W. Bush

"President Bush's post-Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the
National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into
private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions
and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior
presidents...I do not believe the Constitution allows Congress
to take away from the president the inherent authority to act in
response to a foreign attack. That inherent power is reason to
be careful about who we elect as president..." ---Former Clinton
associate Attorney General John Schmidt

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I think the media is doing its best to make it a Watergate type story but without the meat Watergate had behind it.

There is non-stop coverage of the item here, but there is a desert of new information coming out. They keep harping on the same things, and they have created cushy generalities that do more to disinfor than inform. For example, the media constantly calls it "domestic spying" or similar phrases several times in each article or video segment. You have to wait for the Bush people to say it is monitoring contacts between known terrorist groups outside the US with individuals in the US.

I heard one well known reporter the other day on TV ask whether the New York Times would now become a target for spying in the name of national security because the government is investigating the leak of the information. It was a classic slippery slope argument.

Be very wary of the slippery slope argument.

I also had to dig around to find out information like part of the program that was first reported was high tech software and computers, not individuals, that monitor gobs and gobs of data streams looking for tell-tale clumps of data in a "pattern" that the same or other programs have thought to have identified as a pattern using known terrorist group communications.

That wasn't worded well, but the point for me was that it was a computer processing mega amount of data communications --- not hundreds of CIA operatives shifting through the garbage or randomly taping the phones of thousands of ordinary citizens.

And, as some expert in the radio program I was listening to about this pointed out, you probably can't get a warrant to do that kind of search, because it is not targeted at a specific individual.

I don't like the idea of the government doing warrantless searches or investigations without oversight. So, I was interested in this story when it first broke.

But, both because I have been frustrated at the lack of real "news" coverage of the facts in favor of repeating the same meatless stories day after day, and the fact that the other pieces of information I've been able to pick out have eased my mind about the government running amuk, this news item has yet again further pushed down my esteem for the media.

It appears members of congress were briefed periodically on these programs over the years and that the justice department.

My opinion is also based on what I can remember of the aftermath of 9/11. For a couple of years, there was frequent news about a discovery of what this agency or this office in the government knew about one of the hijackers or the activities of the terrorist groups in trying to get into the US --- and the press and others demanded to know if we had this and that and that scraps of information, why weren't the attacks prevented? You even had a small minority, even in the press, saying maybe the attacks were "allowed" to happen based on "what we knew" beforehand.

When the problem was, as was discussed a bunch the first 6 months after the attacks, lack of communication between agencies in large measure due to the fact America decided long ago to keep its domestic and foreign intelligence operations seperate for fear of the type of government abuse known to happen elsewhere.

(So, you had situations like the justice department or FBI, I forget which, not looking into the notebook computer of the terrorist who was supposed to be with the others on 9/11 but who had been picked up, I believe by immigration, beforehand).

But, at least it seemed to me, there was a major concensus after 9/11 that we needed to do some serious rethinking about how much we strive to keep agencies from working with each other --- given the nature of the terrorist threat in a globally linked world where people and information can exhange so quickly and easily.

I guess over time, since no new attacks have been launched in the US itself, people have decided the old way was best.......

Well, no. That isn't true. But that is why I dislike the news coverage these days a lot.....

The news media today isn't saying, "We've thought about it, and the old way was best."

No. They are ignoring the context of the activity. In order to gin up the coverage and push it toward Watergate status, they are ignoring the thoughts serious people gave after the attacks to how different agencies operate and especially how they don't communicate with each other.

I don't think the government can just do whatever it wants in terms of spying on people --- whether inside the US or abroad. I definately want different organs of the government to have oversight of each other --- checks and balances. But, the more I've found out about this latest scandal, the more at ease I've felt about it.

And on a different track...........one of the first things that came to mind when the media started running with this story is ----

-----I wonder how many deaths we can attribute to the media thanks to the disclosure some years ago that US intelligence was listening in on the cellphone conversations of Bin Laden's crew in Afghanistan.

You know.....the story leak that taught them to change how they communicate.

I heard President Bush the other day, in defending an aspect of the spy program, that as far as listening in on domestic calls go --- if you mean listening in when a known terrorist or terrorist org calls someone in the United States --- then he thought it was a good, defensiable idea.....

.....he emphasized that the calls being listened to origniated outside the US....

....and I also thought, "You know. If I were a terrorist, I think I could use that information just provided to alter how we do our communication."

"there's Nothing New Under The Sun"... J. Edgar Hoover Established This Practice Decades Ago And The C.i.a. Has Also Been Doing This For Who Knows How Long... I Believe The Government Has The Responsibility, Obligation, And Right To Protect U.s. Soil And Citizens From Any Threats, Foreign Or Domestic. I Can Guarantee You That If The Gov't Didn't Do These Things, The First Time Something Happened It Would Be The Leadership That Was Blamed For Letting It Happen....

I Guess It's Time To Rerun The Images Of Sept. 11, 2001, Again!! To Me, We Have To Choose The Better Of 2 Evils. This Issue Is Like The Tip Of An Iceberg. There Is A Lot More Going On Then Most People In The U.s. Can Even Imagine, Or For That Matter, Probably Care About....

I Believe There Are Things The American People Don't Need To Know, For Reasons That We Are Seeing Right Now.. Overblown And Excessive Media Scrutiny, Which Ultimately Undermines The Efforts Of The Government To Protect The Country!!! Thank You For Your Time!!!!!

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DAN BURESS

The funny thing is that much of this came from a required act in my opinion.

From what I heard on TV, the US government has been parking "nuke sniffers" in public places. They are sampling the air for radioactive particles that may leak from dirty nukes. They have been parking them near mosques and other high interest areas. So, they are sampling the particles OUTSIDE of buildings, to see is there may be material INSIDE the buildings. The civil rights lawyers are complaining that civil rights are being violated. Honestly, you will have no rights to violate if a dirty nuke goes off in your neighborhood.

This is much like the Patriot Act. I hear all the time how your rights “may” be violated. No one against the Patriot Act can point to any specific instances of rights being violated by the Patriot Act, but they are against it.

This reminds me of a debate Howard Dean was in with a propionate of the Patriot Act. Dean was saying over and over about how the Patriot Act violates your rights. The other speaker said, “Howard, if you can give me one name of a person whose rights were violated by the Patriot Act I will concede this debate to you.” Well, needless to say, Howard Dean couldn’t come up with a name.

Mike