No Checks and No Balances

Bush and Co.: "What, warrants? Why would we want those? Those are just going to slow us down in the War-Against-Terror."
Typical American: "Rights? We don't need rights if it stops the terrorists! Freedom's not free!"

W wants an immunity provision in a bill that will protect telecommunication companies against being sued for freely giving up information to authorities without warrants. This should not be allowed! If you decide to break the current law, then you should reap the consequences of breaking that law. If you change the law later, you still broke the law when it was a law!

Of course everyday it would seem as if America is getting farther and farther away from what the Founding Fathers had intended for this country. The Bill Of Rights and other laws protecting you and me were implemented for good reason. But after the terrorist attack of Sept 11, 2001, Americans will freely give up their rights without question in the name of national security. National spying is okay now. Rendition is okay. Torture is okay, even though the "United States does not commit torture." Searching your house without you even knowing about it is acceptable (Hey, they don't leave a mess, right?).

The government thinks their own laws do not apply to them. This is a very dangerous thing to have happen in a supposedly free country. The FBI has abused and probably still does abuse national security request letters. Sometimes they would try to get a warrant, but other times why bother? If their request was denied by a judge, they thought, "Let's do it anyway." You can't just sideswipe civil liberties whenever you feel like it. But Americans are okay with this if the T-bomb (yes, I did) is thrown around. If you don't see something inherently wrong with governmental abuse of power, then you are a typical dumb American sheep. This kind of abuse of power leads to very bad things. I'll let your imagination run wild.

Now usually when polarized issues like this get discussed, the George Orwellian counter-argument shows up: "Well if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear." Whenever I hear this neo-con crap, it makes me want to puke. Tell you what, give me a key to your house, because I will gladly poke around and invade your privacy. I don't care how clean you are, I will find something you wouldn't want me to see after going through your financial records, phone calls, and computer files. Care to take this challenge?

More arguments against the "nothing to hide or fear" statement can be found here and here.