Wiretapping: Exchange of Freedom for Security

I used to work at a prominent brokerage house next to a girl that grew up in the old GDR - that's East Germany to you and me. As a little girl in the early 1980's her family was able to get out and escape to the West. She told me that before their escape her uncle and a few other relatives were rounded up by the Secret Police known as the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit). She never saw most of them again. So how were these freedom-loving people caught while planning their family's escape? Wiretapping and neighbors spying on neighbors.

So in what direction does the United States go with it's Wiretapping Law? The old GDR and the other Eastern Bloc countries spied on their citizens on the premise of security. Sound familiar? The US and especially George Bush claim that these tools are only used to root out terrorists, but that is just what they tell us, what else are they listening to? If this law become permanent and the government no longer needs warrants to listen in on Americans, then how can we call ourselves the Land of the Free? The longer time marches on the more of a farce the myth of America has become. A society can only be as free as a people allow themselves to be - the incredible political stability of the United States has in many ways taken the fight out of the American patriot. What was once a population that stood up to tyranny now seems castrated and impotent in the face of it.

Remember what old Ben Franklin said (not the paraphrased version):
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

We are no safer now than on 9/10/01, if anything, we are more vulnerable thanks to a proxy war in Iraq. We are less free now than at any point in our history since the Civil War and we are losing more and more civil liberties all the time. What will you do America? Restore our freedoms and Constitution or let the Bush crowd retire in style?

One last note: Republicans are always shouting about less government, but always want a huge military budget. Bush has repeatedly attempted to enhance executive powers at the expense of Congress, and also tried to fill the Supreme Court with cronies. So complete the picture - weak congress, strong president, partisan judges and a big ass military. Put in warrant-less wiretapping and you have a police state ala Soviet-era Communism. Remember, the only thing Democratic about the old German Democratic Republic was in its name.