it might be hazardous to ones mental health to learn that one’s statists assumptions were not supported by any of the Founders.

So true… I can’t imagine that many of our founding fathers would be caught dead in either party at this point. (Unless of course, the Dems are counting the voting dead again )

Too bad the leftists memebots don’t spend more time reading such books instead of posting 3rd and 4th hand observatons cribbed from Bartlets. If they did, they would quit offending Franklin’s memory with such blatant out of context hackery.

Heck, it’s not even a difficult read. We aren’t asking for essays on the Federalists Papers (though passing acquaintance with Fed #10 would be nice). Of course, it might be hazardous to ones mental health to learn that one’s statists assumptions were not supported by any of the Founders.

Yep, both parties are responsible for this. I often think that neither Liberal, nor Conservative politics win in Washington, but only Authoritarian ones.

Also, it was a Democratically controlled Congress that passed legislation in 1994 (signed into law by Bubba himself) that mandated the phone companies turn over information to law enforcement agencies. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.

As I said… it was unscientific. And no, I’m sure those folks weren’t vetted. But, having worked with people who have been vetted and trained I can tell you that human nature, does seem to be human nature, and it appears damn hard to cull.

I recall a great (unscientific) experiment by Penn and Teller on their show “Bulls*it”. In it they hired multiple people to work for Homeland Security. They placed them in a van with survailence gear and told them that they had a secret warrant to watch 1 house. The car in front of the house, they told the subject, belonged to a terrorist. They left the subject for several hours of boring survailence. Hours later, a buxom woman on a cell phone and wearing not much in the way of clothing, walks through the survailence area. Its obvious from the conversation that she is having an affair with a married man, who lives in the house next door. Eventually, it also becomes obvious that there will probably be sex happening in the house next door.

In almost every instance, the subjects moved the cameras to watch the house next door, one not covered by the “warrant”. In fact, according to Penn and Teller, the only person who didn’t disregard their fellow citizens privacy was an immigrant.

Now, as I said… twas an unscientific experiment. However, I find that this seems quite in line with my experiences over the past decade or so, with people who’ve been granted access to ’sensitive’ information. I don’t trust the government, but that’s usually because I don’t trust any beuraucracy, because they all seem to breed incompetence. However, I really don’t trust people, particularly people that get access to what they percieve as “secrets”. Most folks simply don’t seem to have the psychological/clinical view to remain neutral and focused.

And about the Franklin quote.
I’m far from an expert on US history, but my understanding was that Franklin meant that appeasement is not going to work. (That is, assuming it’s a genuine Franklin quote, there’s debate about that too.)
Franklins comment, as I understand it, was directed against those who argued that the US shouldn’t declare independence, because it was temporarily more secure to be under Brittish rule, without the essential liberty of selfrule.
His comment was not meant as “we better not check which way the Brittish troops are moving, because we might happen to see a few americans while we’re doing so.”

If anyone has any context to the quote that prove my understanding wrong, I would very much like to know it.

The Constitution was never designed to be a suicide pact. No, the reality is that you donít really believe we are engaged in a legitimate war on terror. This is supposedly a con game by the Bush administration to justify a power grab. Worldwide Islamic terrorism is essentially a figment of the paranoid rightís imagination. Sadly, you speak for the Democratic Party ìmainstream.î