NSA creates national database of phonecalls...major phone companies help

In a few years the baby boomers will start retiring. Within 10 years there will be one retired person for every two working poeple paying taxes. We are going to need as many working tax paying citizens as possible in order for the economy to survive this. The republican's federal deficit is only going to make this worse.

With this in mind why would anybody in their right mind want to kick the illegal aliens out? If anything we need to get them legal citizenship so they can start paying taxes.

If anything we need more immigrants than we have now. We actually really, really need them here paying taxes.
 
celldog said:
Tell me.....what is the lib plan to protect us?? Go to court for a warrant "every time"??? Do you realize how fast some leads can grow cold??? How fast these Islamic maniacs can move?? Personally, I want my government agents to be able to stay on that lead "immediately" ...NOT FRIGGIN' TOMORROW!!

You can get the warrant within 72 horus after tapping the phone. It takes minutes to get the warrant. The VISA judges are available 24 hours a day by phone specifically for the President.

I wonder what Bush is hiding from them? Were aren't the ones hiding, as you put it. Bush is the one with something to hide. If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be so afraid of the VISA courts knowing what he's doing. That's what they are there for. To make sure this power isn't abused. To make sure corrupt politicians don't use it to protect themselves from being exposed. To make sure they aren't invading the privacy rights of Americans. They absolutely do not stop you from spying on those that would want to hurt us.

I'm sorry man, either

A. you just can't comprehend things

B. you just don't know what you are talking about, your out of the loop, not up to date with what's going on

C. selective hearing.

I think most likely you are doing C. because you keep spitting out that most Americans support this, and giving us false poll results, while ignoring my links to polls that show 53% of America opposes this, and only 41% supports it.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12771821/site/newsweek/
 
Wait a minute? He's calling Democrats dollar foolish? even though Ronald Raegan, Bush SR, and Bush JR gave us almost all of our federal deficit?
 
Darthphere said:
Bill Clinton did this and more? Is that your argument for everything? its quite tired and old. The funny thing about Clinton's Echelon plan was, *gasp* He told us about it.:eek: He didnt hide it from us like this Administration is hiding this program. You keep using the excuse about us complaining saying this: "If you aren't having discussions with Hakim on blowing up the Capitol, you got nothing to fear from Uncle Sam!" Youre right, we have nothing to hide, but why does the Administration find it necessary to hide this program? These are questions you need to ask yourself. If its helping us and the country why hide it? im sure we would all love to see how theyre "protecting" us. If it isnt such a bad thing, why the necessity to deny/hide this program?


I don't care if you're tired. It's true!!! He did it and no one on your side or ours said a blessed word!!! This shows how political this is! The libs don't care about security. They just want the White House back.....:mad: And they will sacrifice us to get it!!!
 
celldog said:
I don't care if you're tired. It's true!!! He did it and no one on your side or ours said a blessed word!!! This shows how political this is! The libs don't care about security. They just want the White House back.....:mad: And they will sacrifice us to get it!!!

Riiiiiiight.

Just calm down now. Take a few breathes. How many fingers am I holding up?
 
If you aren't having discussions with Hakim on blowing up the Capitol, you got nothing to fear from Uncle Sam!" Youre right, we have nothing to hide, but why does the Administration find it necessary to hide this program?


Because we are at war!!!!!!!!!! WHAT OF THAT DO YOU NOT GET?????

uncle-sam.jpg
 
Flexo said:
Riiiiiiight.

Just calm down now. Take a few breathes. How many fingers am I holding up?


Typical response.....no real solutions....just wise cracks...

Go back to sleep. LOL
 
celldog said:
If you aren't having discussions with Hakim on blowing up the Capitol, you got nothing to fear from Uncle Sam!" Youre right, we have nothing to hide, but why does the Administration find it necessary to hide this program?


Because we are at war!!!!!!!!!! WHAT OF THAT DO YOU NOT GET?????

uncle-sam.jpg

So, that's an excuse for anything the administration does wrong?

"Well, we did invade your privacy... but there's a war, so everything's a-okay. Now forget all this so the change can become permanent."
 
No need to take Celldog seriously, this is the idiot who said you hate America if you don't see Flight 93.
 
celldog said:
Typical response.....no real solutions....just wise cracks...

Go back to sleep. LOL

Considering that your posts have become nothing more than biased, near-insane rants, I think some wise ass remarks are in order.

Have you ever seen Dr. Stangelove? You remind me of General Ripper. Those damn commies are corrupting our fluids!
 
Oh, and Celldog...

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."

---Thomas Jefferson

He must've just been a left wing liberal commie though.
 
Matt said:
No need to take Celldog seriously, this is the idiot who said you hate America if you don't see Flight 93.

It's okay Matt, just having a bit of fun here. If I was taking this at all seriously, I'd be weeping for the state of humanity.
 
celldog said:
You got nothing!! That's what you guys always do. Resort to name calling..... "dumbass" "idiot" ...... you crack me up.

You guys want to be protected but then won't give the government (or at least a Republican administration) the ability to protect. Bill clinton did this and more!!! And we were not at war then!!! What was his excuse??? God bless FDR for having the balls to do what he knew was right to win that war. If he hadn't, none of us might never have been born because we probably would have lost!!

Tell me.....what is the lib plan to protect us?? Go to court for a warrant "every time"??? Do you realize how fast some leads can grow cold??? How fast these Islamic maniacs can move?? Personally, I want my government agents to be able to stay on that lead "immediately" ...NOT FRIGGIN' TOMORROW!!

Let tell you something my friends. If a nuke goes off, we will have marshall law!! Do you want that???? You guys are being a penny wise and a dollar foolish. Personally, I look at this the same way I view airport screening. I got pulled out of line for a random once. I even missed my flight. But I realized what kind of world we live in now and didn't gripe. I was more pissed at 19 hijackers that made all of this necessary. And if they checked me, they are checking others, too. They are doing their jobs. Yes they went thru my "private" luggage. But guess what??? I had nothing to hide. If you aren't having discussions with Hakim on blowing up the Capitol, you got nothing to fear from Uncle Sam!


Captain_America_Kirby_Tribute.jpg



Okay. Celldog. I know you're going to say that I'm stalking you and that you're my hero, so before you do let me say this: Shut up.


I'm going to say my peace as calmly and as civilized as possible.


You're an idiot.


You're an idiot for alot of reasons. I could list all of them, but I think I'm just going to stick to the ones presented here.


You're always talking about how great America is. How pure. How perfect. You're always saying that it is the best place to be out of anywhere. Now, I don't entirely agree with that. I've always wanted to go to Tokyo, and besides for their crappy school system, Japan seems just as good as the U.S., is not better in some regards. Hell, the number of gun related deaths in Japan is next to zero, and prostitution is legal, which greatly minimizes the chances of disease and ill treatment of the prostitutes, since it can be controled like any other buisness. But, I digress. I agree that America is a pretty nice place. Not the best place in the world, and not even close to perfect (no countries are). But, I can definately think of more than a few countries that have it worse off than the U.S. This comes, in part, from the many freedoms that the United States Constitution provides. I must say, if there's anything in the history of this country that I'm proud of, it's the constitution and the bill of rights.

Now, I can tell that you are also quite proud of these things. You're always going on about how great it is that we're so free. And I must say, I agree. To an extent. And yet, hjere you are, aplauding that our freedoms are being taken away. And that, my friend, I just don't understand. The government should not be listening in on our phone calls, or recording our every move on the streets and sidewalks. That's too much. It's not right. And, it's also kind of pointless. Terrorists (or at least the terrorists that haven't been caught yet) are smart. Many, from what I understand, are quite well educated considering what they've had to work with. That, or they're grunts. Naive and impressionable youths who can easily be replaced by finding some angsty teenager or disenfranchised citizen and playing off of his or her shortcomings and insicurities. But even then, the smart ones tell them what to do, and being the well oiled, expertly manipulated automitons that they are, they usually follow their directions to the letter. The smart ones know that telephone conversations can be spied upon. Most don't use telephones. Most use alternate methods, such as walkie talkies, ham radios, and written letters (most likely in some sort of code that, at a casual glance, seems like a completely innocent letter sent between old and far too long parted friends).

All the phone taps and street survailance do is give the government too much power. And you must never, ever, give a government too much power. The founding fathers, for the most part, realized this, which is why they created a three branch government. To keep the individual power to a minimum. They realized that any system they created would be plagued by a problem that all governments have had and our government still has to this day. People. You see, a government is not some well oiled and infalible machine. A government is a group of people, most notebly ungoverned themselves. Sometimes the people are good. Sometimes they're not so good. But they're all people. And every one of them, from Abraham Lincoln to the Dali Lamma to Queen Victoria to Kim Jong Ill are all corruptable. Give them too much power, and their flaws and shortcomings and quirks which all people have, no matter how large or small, effect the countrt. And that is never a good thing. Give tyhe government too much power, and they're take it like a wolf who's been starved for a week snatching a wounded deer. They might use it for good. Hell, they're bound to do some good for it. Even Hitler helped solve Germany's crime and poverty problems. But they'll also do bad. And the longer they hold the power, the more bad they'll do, usually trying to do good. That's why our constitution and our bill of rights were written as they were. The founding fathers did the very best they could to keep that from happening. And now, through the phone taps and the survailance cameras, that good work is being undone.

Simply put, what I say on the phone is none of the government's damn buisness. What I say to my parents or my friends or (in the future when I actually get one) my girlfriend is between me and the people I'm talking to, not the feds. If a criminal or a terrorist or whatever is in the least bit smart, they'll either not be using phones in the first place or will learn to eventually. They can set up private web sites, use ham radios, use the morse code, or use ****ing carrier pidgions. They'll find a way around it if they haven't already. That's how crime survives. Through the cracks in the system. And any halfway decent system can't fill in all the gaps. Otherwise, they start looking like 198-****ing-4. And I sure as hell don't want the thought police coming into my house at night and beating me senseless because I don't like the president's new education reform polocy. The founding father's sure as hell didn't, and I doubt that you do either.


Also, don't you EVER use a pciture of Captain America at the end of one of your rants of lunacy again. He may be a fictional character, but being a fictional character, he stands for something. An idea. Just as the lie smith and the thunderer and the gallows god and the warmaker did in ancient times. He stands for an idea of freedom and percerveerance and decency. An idea that the phone taps and the security cameras and the patriot act spit in the face of. So unless you actually talk about the ideas that Cap represents and not the bull**** that's destroying them, you better stop. Now.
 
Matt said:
No need to take Celldog seriously, this is the idiot who said you hate America if you don't see Flight 93.
[Colbert]You not only hate America, you love Al-Qaeda.[/Colbert]
 
celldog said:
If you aren't having discussions with Hakim on blowing up the Capitol, you got nothing to fear from Uncle Sam!" Youre right, we have nothing to hide, but why does the Administration find it necessary to hide this program?


Because we are at war!!!!!!!!!! WHAT OF THAT DO YOU NOT GET?????

uncle-sam.jpg

were not at war with the VISA courts. so why is he hiding it from them? hmmmm? why can't you refute a sinlge thing I say, instead of spewing out this ridiculous crap. you aren't even making a good argument. And Clinton did not do the exact same thing. He had nothing to hide. He didn't try to hide what he was doing from the VISA court.

Despite all your posts, you have not once given one good reason that Bush needs to hide what he's doing from the VISA courts. Not even one. You said he might be in a hurry and he might not have time to go there. He has the legal authority to tap the phone and then get the warrant within 72 hours after tapping the phone. They are simply there to make sure it is only used to protect the country and for nothing else. The terroirsts do not have access to the VISA court records to find out who's being tapped and who isn't.
It takes minutes to get the warrant. they are available 24/7 by phone even, for the Presiden't and his staff.

Bush is using this for something else and that is why he needs to hide what he's doing from the VISA courts.
 
And none of us here are reunning for office, so quit accusing us of being "political"
 
okay, spider bite, it's actually the FISA courts, not the VISA courts. it stands for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
 
Matt said:
Oh, and Celldog...

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."

---Thomas Jefferson

He must've just been a left wing liberal commie though.


People love to quote that from a guy who never could conceive of the super [/B weapons we have now. We don't use muskets anymore. I think that those men would have the sense to know that there are times when the greater good means sacrifices are needed so that we can keep the greater good. FDR understood that!!
 
Spider-Bite said:
And none of us here are reunning for office, so quit accusing us of being "political"


Naaah.....you're just spouting off the rhetoric from the politicians who are.
 
The Question said:
Okay. Celldog. I know you're going to say that I'm stalking you and that you're my hero, so before you do let me say this: Shut up.

:) You know it's true. What took you so long??


I'm going to say my peace as calmly and as civilized as possible.

Shoot.

You're an idiot.

That from some kid who still lives at home??


You're an idiot for alot of reasons. I could list all of them, but I think I'm just going to stick to the ones presented here.


You're always talking about how great America is. How pure. How perfect. You're always saying that it is the best place to be out of anywhere. Now, I don't entirely agree with that. I've always wanted to go to Tokyo, and besides for their crappy school system, Japan seems just as good as the U.S., is not better in some regards. Hell, the number of gun related deaths in Japan is next to zero, and prostitution is legal, which greatly minimizes the chances of disease and ill treatment of the prostitutes, since it can be controled like any other buisness. But, I digress. I agree that America is a pretty nice place. Not the best place in the world, and not even close to perfect (no countries are). But, I can definately think of more than a few countries that have it worse off than the U.S. This comes, in part, from the many freedoms that the United States Constitution provides. I must say, if there's anything in the history of this country that I'm proud of, it's the constitution and the bill of rights.

Never said America was perfect. But I do believe it is the best place to live. Just ask those illegals. So why don't you stop being a hypocrite. Stop benefiting from this American way of life and go live in Japan, France or where ever you feel is better??? You never will. Even when you finally get a job.



Now, I can tell that you are also quite proud of these things. You're always going on about how great it is that we're so free.


And you will always go on complaining. Batman must always have his Joker.

And I must say, I agree. To an extent. And yet, hjere you are, aplauding that our freedoms are being taken away. And that, my friend, I just don't understand.

Not one freedom has been taken away from you or from me. You can still call the President an idiot to his face and live to tell about it. What you "cannot" do is plot to kill Americans. If you do, you deserve to have some problems.


The government should not be listening in on our phone calls, or recording our every move on the streets and sidewalks. That's too much. It's not right. And, it's also kind of pointless. Terrorists (or at least the terrorists that haven't been caught yet) are smart.

And we are very dumb!! Especially for leaking that we had a system that was designed to catch them red handed!!! :mad: Now what??? Bin Laden use to use his cell phone until the NY Times published that we were tracking his cell phone transmissions!! Then guess what happened!!! No more calls!!


Many, from what I understand, are quite well educated considering what they've had to work with. That, or they're grunts. Naive and impressionable youths who can easily be replaced by finding some angsty teenager or disenfranchised citizen and playing off of his or her shortcomings and insicurities. But even then, the smart ones tell them what to do, and being the well oiled, expertly manipulated automitons that they are, they usually follow their directions to the letter. The smart ones know that telephone conversations can be spied upon. Most don't use telephones. Most use alternate methods, such as walkie talkies, ham radios, and written letters (most likely in some sort of code that, at a casual glance, seems like a completely innocent letter sent between old and far too long parted friends).

All the phone taps and street survailance do is give the government too much power. And you must never, ever, give a government too much power. The founding fathers, for the most part, realized this, which is why they created a three branch government. To keep the individual power to a minimum. They realized that any system they created would be plagued by a problem that all governments have had and our government still has to this day. People. You see, a government is not some well oiled and infalible machine. A government is a group of people, most notebly ungoverned themselves.

No one is advocting giving all power the government!! But in war time, we need to give law enforcement the ability to protect us. FDR understood this. Why can't you. Even after FDR, we're still here today. The world didn't end.

Sometimes the people are good. Sometimes they're not so good. But they're all people. And every one of them, from Abraham Lincoln to the Dali Lamma to Queen Victoria to Kim Jong Ill are all corruptable. Give them too much power, and their flaws and shortcomings and quirks which all people have, no matter how large or small, effect the countrt. And that is never a good thing. Give tyhe government too much power, and they're take it like a wolf who's been starved for a week snatching a wounded deer. They might use it for good.

There should always be a review of the authority given to law enforcement as the time goes on. To see if abuses have happen etc......... It's called accountability. But they should still be given the authority when needed.

Hell, they're bound to do some good for it. Even Hitler helped solve Germany's crime and poverty problems. But they'll also do bad. And the longer they hold the power, the more bad they'll do, usually trying to do good. That's why our constitution and our bill of rights were written as they were. The founding fathers did the very best they could to keep that from happening. And now, through the phone taps and the survailance cameras, that good work is being undone.

Simply put, what I say on the phone is none of the government's damn buisness. What I say to my parents or my friends or (in the future when I actually get one) my girlfriend is between me and the people I'm talking to, not the feds. If a criminal or a terrorist or whatever is in the least bit smart, they'll either not be using phones in the first place or will learn to eventually. They can set up private web sites, use ham radios, use the morse code, or use ****ing carrier pidgions. They'll find a way around it if they haven't already. That's how crime survives. Through the cracks in the system. And any halfway decent system can't fill in all the gaps. Otherwise, they start looking like 198-****ing-4. And I sure as hell don't want the thought police coming into my house at night and beating me senseless because I don't like the president's new education reform polocy. The founding father's sure as hell didn't, and I doubt that you do either.


Also, don't you EVER use a pciture of Captain America at the end of one of your rants of lunacy again. He may be a fictional character, but being a fictional character, he stands for something. An idea. Just as the lie smith and the thunderer and the gallows god and the warmaker did in ancient times. He stands for an idea of freedom and percerveerance and decency. An idea that the phone taps and the security cameras and the patriot act spit in the face of. So unless you actually talk about the ideas that Cap represents and not the bull**** that's destroying them, you better stop. Now.

Captain%20america%202.jpg
 
celldog said:
That from some kid who still lives at home??

I'm under 18. Of course I'm still living at home.

celldog said:
Never said America was perfect. But I do believe it is the best place to live. Just ask those illegals.

Note that almost all of said illegals are from Cuba or Mexico. Two rather poor countries that are very very close to the U.S. I think that the fact that the U.S. is a wealthy country that's very close to them is the main factor.

celldog said:
So why don't you stop being a hypocrite.

I'm not a hypocrite.

celldog said:
Stop benefiting from this American way of life and go live in Japan, France or where ever you feel is better???

I don't think Japan and France are better (although Japan's gun control laws do help their crime rates alot more than ours). I just don't think the U.S. is the single greatest place on the planet. I still like it here, for the most part.

celldog said:
You never will. Even when you finally get a job.

No, I do think I might live in Japan for a while. Although the fact that I don't speak the language would be a problem.

celldog said:
And you will always go on complaining. Batman must always have his Joker.

I only complain when I see bull**** going on. I see some serious bull**** going on right now.

celldog said:
Not one freedom has been taken away from you or from me. You can still call the President an idiot to his face and live to tell about it. What you "cannot" do is plot to kill Americans. If you do, you deserve to have some problems.

And yet the rest of us are having problems to. They're putting survailence cameras on street corners all over New York. They're listening in on our conversations and looking through our things. You know that the patriot act makes it legal for government officials to take someone, try them, and exicute them on a boat offshore without anyone ever hearing about it? You know there have been incidents where agents of the government broke into people's houses, searched through their things, and then left and put everything back together before they got home. All of this is a severe infringement on our right to privacy and in the boat case, a right to a fair trial by a jury of our peers. Rights are being trampled on. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is. We allow the government to trample on smaller rights, and that leaves the door open for them to mess with the bigger ones.

celldog said:
And we are very dumb!! Especially for leaking that we had a system that was designed to catch them red handed!!! :mad: Now what??? Bin Laden use to use his cell phone until the NY Times published that we were tracking his cell phone transmissions!! Then guess what happened!!! No more calls!!

You think he wouldn't have stoped using his phone eventually anyway? The guy, obviously, isn't an idiot. Criminals will always figure out how to get around the system. The only way to create a system where they can't is to create a world as presented in 1984.

celldog said:
No one is advocting giving all power the government!!

But people are advocating giving too much.

celldog said:
But in war time, we need to give law enforcement the ability to protect us. FDR understood this. Why can't you. Even after FDR, we're still here today. The world didn't end.

FDR put American citizens of Japanese descent into camps. From what I understand, they were treated like crap by the gaurds. They went too far. I will admit that FDR, while a smart man, went too far in protecting the nation and ended up trampling over people's rights.

celldog said:
There should always be a review of the authority given to law enforcement as the time goes on. To see if abuses have happen etc......... It's called accountability. But they should still be given the authority when needed.

You give them too much power, and they'll hold themselves above accountability.
 
celldog said:
Naaah.....you're just spouting off the rhetoric from the politicians who are.

my arguments are actually somewhat different although they are the underlying theme, and you still haen't refuted a single thing you said, and although we disagree on the subject the facts which you used to justify your position were clearly proven wrong by me.

What Clinton did was not the same. And most of America opposes it. you stated the opposite of both and that is false. I even provided a link to show that most americans oppose it and you continued to provide false poll results.

you also still have not refuted a single thing I have said about this, because you can't. I can tell by your debate style you would never last 2 minutes debating me. you might keep posting, but it would be clear to any who observed that I whipped your arse.
 
The Question said:
I'm under 18. Of course I'm still living at home.

Then you know nothing about real life.



Note that almost all of said illegals are from Cuba or Mexico. Two rather poor countries that are very very close to the U.S. I think that the fact that the U.S. is a wealthy country that's very close to them is the main factor.


We get a lot of European immigrants too. And Asian!!! All looking for a better life.

I'm not a hypocrite.

Yes you are. You always trash your country. And gush all over its enemies.


I don't think Japan and France are better (although Japan's gun control laws do help their crime rates alot more than ours). I just don't think the U.S. is the single greatest place on the planet. I still like it here, for the most part.

Yeah...I bet you do. The word is called freedom. The other is capitalism. Hypocrite.

No, I do think I might live in Japan for a while. Although the fact that I don't speak the language would be a problem.

You ain't going anywhere.



I only complain when I see bull**** going on. I see some serious bull**** going on right now.

No...you like to complain period. And follow me around.

And yet the rest of us are having problems to. They're putting survailence cameras on street corners all over New York. They're listening in on our conversations and looking through our things. You know that the patriot act makes it legal for government officials to take someone, try them, and exicute them on a boat offshore without anyone ever hearing about it? You know there have been incidents where agents of the government broke into people's houses, searched through their things, and then left and put everything back together before they got home. All of this is a severe infringement on our right to privacy and in the boat case, a right to a fair trial by a jury of our peers. Rights are being trampled on. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is. We allow the government to trample on smaller rights, and that leaves the door open for them to mess with the bigger ones.


Cry me a river. Have we seen anyone done this way in the news??
All these urban myths need to stop.


You think he wouldn't have stoped using his phone eventually anyway? The guy, obviously, isn't an idiot. Criminals will always figure out how to get around the system. The only way to create a system where they can't is to create a world as presented in 1984.

Maybe he would have stopped. But I guess we'll never know now, huh?? :mad:

But people are advocating giving too much.

Nope.

FDR put American citizens of Japanese descent into camps. From what I understand, they were treated like crap by the gaurds. They went too far. I will admit that FDR, while a smart man, went too far in protecting the nation and ended up trampling over people's rights.

We won the war.

IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT
By Michelle Malkin · August 03, 2004 06:44 AM
The word is out about my new book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror. I've been keeping it under wraps over the past year as I quietly toiled away in the wee hours of the morning, but since Instapundit kindly mentioned receiving the book yesterday, I am delighted now to share a few more details with you.

The official launch is Monday, August 9. Please check my books page for more info (including documents, bibliography, resources, errata, etc.) and notices of upcoming appearances, speeches, and book signings. For those of you in the Seattle area, I shall return to the Pacific Northwest this Friday, Aug. 6, for a speech sponsored by my friends at KVI-AM. It's at 7 pm at Cedar Park Church in Bothell. More info is here. Hope you can make it.

My aim is to kick off a vigorous national debate on what has been one of the most undebatable subjects in Amerian history and law: President Franklin Roosevelt's homeland security policies that led to the evacuation and relocation of 112,000 ethnic Japanese on the West Coast, as well as the internment of tens of thousands of enemy aliens from Japan, Germany, Italy, and other Axis nations. I think it's vitally important to get the history right because the WWII experience is often invoked by opponents of common-sense national security profiling and other necessary homeland security measures today.

A few things compelled me to write the book. Ever since I questioned President Clinton's decision to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to Japanese-American soldiers based primarly on claims of racial discrimination in 2000, several readers have urged me to research the topic of the "Japanese-American internment." World War II veterans wrote to say they agreed with my assessment of Clinton's naked politicization of the medals, but disagreed with my unequivocal statement that the internment of ethnic Japanese was "was abhorrent and wrong." They urged me to delve into the history and the intelligence leading to the decision before making up my mind.

I was further inspired by some intriguing blog debates last year between Sparkey at Sgt. Stryker and Is That Legal?. After reading a book by former National Security Agency official David Lowman called MAGIC: The untold story of U.S. Intelligence and the evacuation of Japanese residents from the West Coast during WWII, published posthumously by Athena Press Inc., I contacted publisher Lee Allen, who generously agreed to share many new sources and resources as I sought the truth.

The constant alarmism from Bush-bashers who argue that every counter-terror measure in America is tantamount to the internment was the final straw. The result is a book that I hope changes the way readers view both America's past and its present.

If you are a history buff, you will undoubtedly enjoy reading the book as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it. There are some incredible stories of untold courage and patriotism, as well as espionage and disloyalty, that have been buried in the mainstream WWII literature. If you are a parent with kids in high school, college, or law school, I hope you buy the book for your students or their teachers. And if you are simply an informed citizen, seeking answers about why we have failed to do what's necessary to combat our enemies on American soil (e.g., airport profiling, immigration enforcement, heightened scrutiny of Muslim chaplains and soldiers, etc.), I hope you buy the book to help gain intellectual ammunition and insights on our politically correct paralysis.

Liberal critics always ask if I've ever changed my mind about anything. Yes, I take back what I wrote in 2000; I have radically changed my mind about FDR's actions to protect the homeland. And I hope to persuade you all to do the same.

It's a daunting task, I know. This issue is fraught with emotion. Already, the first two reviews at Amazon.com have been posted--one on either side of the debate
by individuals who have obviously not read a single page of the book. Another individual, who also admits she hasn't read the book, e-mailed the following to me today with the subject headline, "Shame on you:"

I have been a fan of yours since spotting you a while ago on FOX news?and I often agree with your views. I'm therefore appalled to read on Instapundit that you have published a book which endorses the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII...I'm shocked that you would use Michael Moore-ish "truth-telling" to make the case for the internment camps. My parents' families were interned in the middle of the desert in Arizona, and it was far from the summer-camp-like experience your publisher describes on Amazon.com. You apparently note the many "amenities" in the camps---sounds almost like Moore's depiction of pre-OIF days in Iraq.
Geez, Louise. She compares me to Michael Moore without having read a single sentence of the actual book.

Neither has Eric Muller, who runs the blog Is That Legal? that I mentioned earlier. (He is also mentioned in my book on p. 352.) Yet, based on the book cover and publisher's description alone, he comments that they do "not inspire confidence that Ms. Malkin is going to be giving us history that is Fair and Balanced." He complains that the cover unfairly likened "a Japanese-American man to Mohammed Atta"--but he does so without bothering to find out who the man on the cover is. He is Richard Kotoshirodo, a Japanese-American man who by his own admission assisted the Honolulu-based spy ring that fed intelligence to Tokyo that was key to the design of the Pearl Harbor attack. Every scholar and student who writes about Roosevelt's decision to evacuate the West Coast should know his name and story.

I expect much more emotion-driven criticism like this in days and weeks to come. And I look forward to whatever substantive debate the other side can muster up.

All that said, the fact that the book is being published at all is what made all the hard work of the past year--and the harsh ad hominem attacks sure to come--worth it. Most publishers wouldn't touch this with a 100-foot pole, and I am grateful to Regnery Publishing for fully embracing my idea. Everything else is icing on the cake (though it would be nice to outsell fluffball Maureen Dowd).

So, stay tuned. I think we are in for a wild but very necessary and educational ride.





You give them too much power, and they'll hold themselves above accountability.

"sigh"
 
Malkin's Defense of Internment
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 8, 2004

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Michelle Malkin, a syndicated columnist and the author of the New York Times best-seller, Invasion. She is the author of the new book In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling" in World War II and the War on Terror (available in Frontpage’s bookstore for a special offer of $19.95).



FP: Michelle Malkin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.



Malkin: Thanks! A pleasure to be here.



FP: First things first, what motivated you to write this book?



Malkin: A few things compelled me to write the book. Ever since I questioned President Clinton's decision to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to Japanese-American soldiers based primarily on claims of racial discrimination in 2000, several readers have urged me to research the topic of the "Japanese-American internment." World War II veterans wrote to say they agreed with my assessment of Clinton's naked politicization of the medals, but disagreed with my unequivocal statement that the internment of ethnic Japanese "was abhorrent and wrong." They urged me to delve into the history and the intelligence leading to the decision before making up my mind.

I was further inspired by some intriguing blog debates last year between Sparkey at Sgt. Stryker and Is That Legal?. After reading a book by former National Security Agency official David Lowman called MAGIC: The untold story of U.S. Intelligence and the evacuation of Japanese residents from the West Coast during WWII, published posthumously by Athena Press Inc., I contacted publisher Lee Allen, who generously agreed to share many new sources and resources as I sought the truth.

The constant alarmism from Bush-bashers who argue that every counter-terror measure in America is tantamount to the internment was the final straw. The result is a book that I hope changes the way readers view both America's past and its present.

FP: Your book exposes many myths regarding the Department of Justice’s “internment camps”. Could you briefly tell our readers about a few of them?



Malkin: One myth is that all the enemy aliens who were interned were ethnic Japanese. Almost half the people in the internment camps were European or of European descent. The larger myth is that the internment of ethnic Japanese--as well as the evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast--was based solely or primarily on wartime hysteria and racism. As I show in the book, there were in fact legitimate national security concerns. Reasonable people can agree or disagree with what the Roosevelt administration did, but my book leaves little doubt that the principal decision makers were honorable men who were trying their best to protect the country under extremely difficult circumstances.



FP: Tell us a few legitimate national security concerns that motivated the Government to do what it did vis-à-vis the ethnic Japanese at this time.



Malkin: Decision makers at the top levels of the Roosevelt Administration had bona fide concerns about Japanese espionage on the West Coast. These concerns were strongly reinforced by the “MAGIC messages”—that is, top-secret diplomatic communications to and from Tokyo that had been surreptitiously intercepted and decrypted by America’s signal intelligence officers.



FP: You show that the $1.65 billion federal reparations law for Japanese internees and evacuees was a total disaster. Tell us why.



Malkin: The popular perception is that the evacuees received nothing until President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. In fact, Congress had already provided a reasonable remedy to affected evacuees. The American-Japanese Evacuation Claims Act of 1948 authorized payment of more than $37 million to ethnic Japanese who made any claim for damage to or loss of property because of evacuation or exclusion.



Unlike the 1948 Act, which considered each individual claimant's circumstances, the 1988 Act doled out money based on ethnicity alone. An evacuee who refused to take a loyalty oath, an evacuee who renounced his American citizenship, an evacuee who resisted the draft, and an evacuee who volunteered to serve in the U.S. military were all equally deserving of an apology and a check. A disloyal evacuee who terrorized other camp residents or a camp resident who renounced his American citizenship received the same payment as a patriotic evacuee who assisted military authorities in the relocation and war efforts.



Japanese enemy aliens individually arrested by the FBI immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack received compensation. But their German and Italian counterparts, many of whom lived side-by-side with their Japanese counterparts in Justice Department-run internment camps, did not.



The worst effect of the reparations law has been its effect on current homeland security policies. Civil liberties absolutists have invoked the “racist” World War II evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese to attack virtually every homeland security initiative, large and small, aimed at protecting America from murderous Islamic extremists. When every detention of a Middle Eastern illegal alien is tantamount to the “unjustified” internment of ethnic Japanese, there is no room for rationality. This absolutist resistance to wartime threat profiling, based on falsified fears of repeating the mistakes of World War II, reduces the security of our nation.



FP: You demonstrate how both Japanese American and Arab/Muslim American leaders have united to weaken America's security. Give us the highlights please.



Malkin: Virtually every homeland security initiative implemented or contemplated by the Bush Administration has been opposed by Japanese-American, Musliam-American, and Arab-American leaders intent on preventing a replay of the events of 1942.



Within weeks of the Sept. 11 attacks by 19 young male Islamic terrorists, Japanese-American activists rushed to comfort Arab and Muslim Americans who felt unfairly targeted by the War on Terror. “War on Terrorism Stirs Memory of Internment,” the New York Times decried. “Japanese Americans Recall 40s Bias, Understand Arab Counterparts’ Fear,” read a Washington Post headline. “Japanese Americans Know How It Feels to Be ‘The Enemy,’” the Seattle Times reported. “Japanese Americans See History Repeating,” a Yahoo headline warned. “Reaction Reopens Wound of WWII for Japanese Americans,” the Los Angeles Times noted.



When the Justice Department began requiring young men from 25 high-risk countries simply to check in with immigration authorities during their temporary stays on tourist, business, and student visas, San Francisco Chronicle writer Annie Nakao wrote ominously of the program’s “haunting echoes of Japanese internment. John Tateishi of the Japanese American Citizens’ League told Nakao: “It echoes something from our own experience in 1942. It is really about racial identity, racial profiling.”



When immigration officials began allocating scarce detention space to political asylum seekers from high-risk countries rather than those from low-risk countries, Tateishi again played the internment card: “As one segment of the population that has gone through this before, we are determined that it won’t happen again.”



When immigration officials detained 762 illegal aliens (mostly Middle Easterners) being investigated by the FBI for ties to terrorism—a common sense step in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks—legal scholars Susan M. Akram and Kevin R. Johnson wrote that “the September 11 dragnet carried out by the federal government resembles the Japanese internment during World War II.” Georgetown University Law School professor David Cole lamented that the post-Sept. 11 response involved “the same kind of ethnic stereotyping that characterized the fundamental error of the Japanese internment.”



The confinement of American citizens José Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi and the imprisonment of foreign jihadists at Guantanamo Bay also evoked contemptuous comparisons to the World War II evacuation and relocation. “One of the darkest and most painful chapters of American history is repeating itself,” proclaimed law professor Jonathan Turley. Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley called the administration's plan to try some enemy combatants in military tribunals "one of the most extraordinary assaults on civil liberties" in American history since internment. (The constitutionality of military tribunals has since been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.)



One of those who filed petitions on behalf of Hamdi and the Guantanamo Bay prisoners was Fred Korematsu, who was the subject of the 1944 Supreme Court case that upheld the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast.



FP: Where do we draw the line between protecting civil liberties and national security?



Malkin: One of the themes of my book is that civil liberties are not sacrosanct. While we should never be contemptuous of civil liberties, we ought not make a fetish of them either. When we are at war, certain infringements (e.g., military tribunals for suspected al Qaeda operatives), while regrettable, are justified.



FP: President Bush calls you tomorrow and asks your advice on homeland security policy aimed at protecting America from Islamic extremists. He asks how you think his administration is doing and also what it should do. What would you say to him?



Malkin: I would tell him he is doing a fine job waging the War on Terror overseas but that his efforts here at home are seriously deficient. I would advise him to fire Norm Mineta and replace him with John Lehman or someone else who supports racial, religious, and nationality profiling in airport screening. It is long past time to get serious about border security. I would tell him to fire Tom Ridge and replace him with Tom Tancredo. Above all, I would advise him that if he is re-elected he should re-appoint John Ashcroft as Attorney General. Bush should go out of his way to praise Ashcroft. Often.



FP: Ms. Malkin thank you, it was a pleasure.



Malkin: Thank you Jamie.
 
Spider-Bite said:
my arguments are actually somewhat different although they are the underlying theme, and you still haen't refuted a single thing you said, and although we disagree on the subject the facts which you used to justify your position were clearly proven wrong by me.

What Clinton did was not the same. And most of America opposes it. you stated the opposite of both and that is false. I even provided a link to show that most americans oppose it and you continued to provide false poll results.

You're right....IT WAS WORSE.


Under Clinton, NY Times called surveillance "a necessity"
January 12th, 2006



The controversy following revelations that U.S. intelligence agencies have monitored suspected terrorist related communications since 9/11 reflects a severe case of selective amnesia by the New York Times and other media opponents of President Bush. They certainly didn’t show the same outrage when a much more invasive and indiscriminate domestic surveillance program came to light during the Clinton administration in the 1990’s. At that time, the Times called the surveillance “a necessity.”

“If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency.” (Steve Kroft, CBS’ 60 Minutes)

Those words were aired on February 27, 2000 to describe the National Security Agency and an electronic surveillance program called Echelon whose mission, according to Kroft,

“is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world.”

Echelon was, or is (its existence has been under-reported in the American media), an electronic eavesdropping program conducted by the United States and a few select allies such as the United Kingdom.

Tellingly, the existence of the program was confirmed not by the New York Times or the Washington Post or by any other American media outlet – these were the Clinton years, after all, and the American media generally treats Democrat administrations far more gently than Republican administrations – but by an Australian government official in a statement made to an Australian television news show.

The Times actually defended the existence of Echelon when it reported on the program following the Australians’ revelations.

“Few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists….”

And the Times article quoted an N.S.A. official in assuring readers

“...that all Agency activities are conducted in accordance with the highest constitutional, legal and ethical standards.”

Of course, that was on May 27, 1999 and Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush, was president.

Even so, the article did admit that

“...many are concerned that the system could be abused to collect economic and political information.”

Despite the Times’ reluctance to emphasize those concerns, one of the sources used in that same article, Patrick Poole, a lecturer in government and economics at Bannock Burn College in Franklin, Tenn., had already concluded in a study cited by the Times story that the program had been abused in both ways.

“ECHELON is also being used for purposes well outside its original mission. The regular discovery of domestic surveillance targeted at American civilians for reasons of ‘unpopular’ political affiliation or for no probable cause at all… What was once designed to target a select list of communist countries and terrorist states is now indiscriminately directed against virtually every citizen in the world,” Poole concluded.

The Times article also referenced a European Union report on Echelon. The report was conducted after E.U. members became concerned that their citizens’ rights may have been violated. One of the revelations of that study was that the N.S.A. used partner countries’ intelligence agencies to routinely circumvent legal restrictions against domestic spying.

“For example, [author Nicky] Hager has described how New Zealand officials were instructed to remove the names of identifiable UKUSA citizens or companies from their reports, inserting instead words such as ‘a Canadian citizen’ or ‘a US company’. British Comint [Communications intelligence] staff have described following similar procedures in respect of US citizens following the introduction of legislation to limit NSA’s domestic intelligence activities in 1978.”

Further, the E.U. report concluded that intelligence agencies did not feel particularly constrained by legal restrictions requiring search warrants.

“Comint agencies conduct broad international communications ‘trawling’ activities, and operate under general warrants. Such operations do not require or even suppose that the parties they intercept are criminals.”

The current controversy follows a Times report that, since 9/11, U.S. intelligence agencies are eavesdropping at any time on up to 500 people in the U.S. suspected of conducting international communications with terrorists. Under Echelon, the Clinton administration was spying on just about everyone.

“The US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world,”

Poole summarized in his study on the program.

According to an April, 2000 article in PC World magazine, experts who studied Echelon concluded that

“Project Echelon’s equipment can process 1 million message inputs every 30 minutes.”

In the February, 2000 60 Minutes story, former spy Mike Frost made clear that Echelon monitored practically every conversation – no matter how seemingly innocent – during the Clinton years.

“A lady had been to a school play the night before, and her son was in the school play and she thought he did a-a lousy job. Next morning, she was talking on the telephone to her friend, and she said to her friend something like this, ‘Oh, Danny really bombed last night,’ just like that. The computer spit that conversation out. The analyst that was looking at it was not too sure about what the conversation w-was referring to, so erring on the side of caution, he listed that lady and her phone number in the database as a possible terrorist.”

“This is not urban legend you’re talking about. This actually happened?” Kroft asked.

“Factual. Absolutely fact. No legend here.”

Even as the Times defended Echelon as “a necessity” in 1999, evidence already existed that electronic surveillance had previously been misused by the Clinton Administration for political purposes. Intelligence officials told Insight Magazine in 1997 that a 1993 conference of Asian and Pacific world leaders hosted by Clinton in Seattle had been spied on by U.S. intelligence agencies. Further, the magazine reported that information obtained by the spying had been passed on to big Democrat corporate donors to use against their competitors. The Insight story added that the mis-use of the surveillance for political reasons caused the intelligence sources to reveal the operation.

“The only reason it has come to light is because of concerns raised by high-level sources within federal law-enforcement and intelligence circles that the operation was compromised by politicians—includingmid- and senior-level White House aides—either on behalf of or in support of President Clinton and major donor-friends who helped him and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC, raise money.”

So, during the Clinton Administration, evidence existed (all of the information used in this article was available at the time) that:

-an invasive, extensive domestic eavesdropping program was aimed at every U.S. citizen;

-intelligence agencies were using allies to circumvent constitutional restrictions;

-and the administration was selling at least some secret intelligence for political donations.

These revelations were met by the New York Times and others in the mainstream media by the sound of one hand clapping. Now, reports that the Bush Administration approved electronic eavesdropping, strictly limited to international communications, of a relative handful of suspected terrorists have created a media frenzy in the Times and elsewhere.

The Times has historically been referred to as “the Grey Lady.” That grey is beginning to look just plain grimy, and many of us can no longer consider her a lady.

William Tate is a writer and researcher and former broadcast journalist. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.




William Tate





you also still have not refuted a single thing I have said about this, because you can't. I can tell by your debate style you would never last 2 minutes debating me. you might keep posting, but it would be clear to any who observed that I whipped your arse.


Already done.
 

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