Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil, in its worst state in intolerable one.
Thomas Paine
dys, What am I saying? Just call it my 'Senior Moment,' and forget I even said anything. ;( c.i.
c.i. i grew up in saudi arabia, have traveled extensively in north africa, and the middle east and along the way have spoken with 1,000's of people.
Checked the website again. Because of heavy traffic, the site has broken down the information into parts, but it still is very slow. Obviously. a LOT of people are interested in this.
Cicero,
You've asked me to look at these materials and comment. I'm in the process of looking at the document that seems to have caused the furor. As you know, this is a large document that takes forever to down-load. I've read maybe twenty percent of the document so far.
A few things already occur to me. First, this is a confidential draftdocument representing some thinking within the executive branch. Confidentiality is necessary so that all ideas can be freely explored and debated. Who would ever voice a risky, or unpopular idea if they thought it would be held against them. Policy is developed by having staff explore every idea, no matter how off=the-wall, crazy, or impractical it might seem. This appears to be such a document. Secondly, this is a draft document not intended to be the final expression of a policy proposal.
Proposal is another word that occurs to me in reading this document. That's what the final document will be, a proposal. The proposal itself will probably undergo numerous changes before it leaves the Executive Branch and is carried to the Hill. Once introduced, the Bill will go through numerous filters before it ever has a chance of passage. Legal council to Congress will weigh in both for and against sections of the proposal. Committees will alter, add and subtract language. Passage of identical language in both houses is relatively rare, especially in legislation as sensitive as this promises to be. So this document shouldn't worry anyone at this point very much. It's a long, long way from any semi-final form. Save the concern for something a little more likely to actually find its way into law. That the document was shared with the House leadership demonstrates that the Executive Branch isn't just trying to put one over on the Congress.
So far the document appears to be clearly and narrowly focused on the effort to protect the United States from the sort of terrorist attacks we saw on 911. The direction appears to enable the Intelligence Community to better gather information relevant to identifying and stopping terrorist acts. I've seen nothing, so far that appears unconstitutional, though some of these ideas are pushing the limit. I believe that there is a risk that these provisions might be misapplied and abused. Similar risks existed when Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus and imposed far more draconian measures during the Civil War. Wilson's administration also pushed the boundaries, and we are all agreed that the Constitutional limitations were surpassed in internment of Japanese-American Citizens during WWII. The thing that is different here, are the problems inherent to modern communications technology. This is a very sensitive area, and it will be some time before a good Stare Decisis is reached that takes the new environment into consideration.
I'll read further, but this will take some time. Probably days given the slowness of the downloads.
