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December 21, 2005
What's Worse?

Actual question posed by Andrea Mitchell on Hardball last night. Seriously, she actually said this.

Andrea Mitchell: What do you think Americans really need to be worried about more...a terror attack or someone going into their hard drives and intercepting their emails?

Former Senator and Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham: Well, I think they need to be concerned about the effect of the United States seeing a retreat from our basic values at the same time we're trying to ask the countries from which the terrorists came to adopt principles of democracy and liberty. Wouldn't it be ironic if, at the same time, through our initiative, we were able to establish democracy in Iraq, but we were losing our basic liberties and freedoms at home?

Daily Kos

Yeah, I mean... come on.. if you don't have anything to hide, why should you mind if the government reads your email? Don't you care about avoiding another 9/11?

Holy shit.

Posted by ahecht at December 21, 2005 9:40 AM
Comments

Previous Comments

Well, that is the danger of letting the government snowball every which way using the same terrorist subversives excuse. They did the same thing back in the McCarthy days against Communism. It's the same tact used every time to justify allowing the government more negative intrusive powers than necessary. What is necessary is a more educated citizenry willing to better personally scrutinize information, as well as demand more objective, less big-money driven press coverage.

Posted by: Jer at December 21, 2005 11:27 AM

Don't you believe in military necessity? You know, the majority in Koramatsu?

Posted by: Fritz at December 29, 2005 2:17 PM

Are you fucking serious?

No, I most certainly do not agree with the majority in Korematsu, which basically legalized racism if the government found a "military necessity" for it. There isn't one now and there wasn't one then.

Incidentally, until the current jackasses took over, our government didn't agree either. See the 1983 Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, titled Personal Justice Denied.

Also see the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, signed into law by that god of conservativism Ronald Reagan, which provided for individual payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee and a $1.25 billion education fund among other provisions.

Seriously, you have got to be joking.

Posted by: Anthony at December 30, 2005 12:09 PM

So, you don't believe in justification by military necessity? You don't agree with the reasoning of the Koramatsu decision, whatever the paticular effects? Remeber, what's important about Supreme Court decisions is not the paticular effect of a decision, which, in the case of the Japanese, was ghastly, but the reasoning that will inform future decisions.

Posted by: Fritz at January 3, 2006 8:55 AM

What a load of shit.

The particular effects of a Supreme Court decision aren't important? Where do you get that crap?

You're nuts, Fritz. Maybe one day the military will deem it necessary to put you in a prison camp. How'd that be?

Posted by: Anthony at January 3, 2006 11:33 AM