General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHayden: "I didn't need to ask 'mother, may I' from the Congress or the president or anyone else."
Michael Hayden's Hollow ConstitutionHe explained that as the NSA's leader, tactics he found unreasonable on September 10, 2001 struck him as reasonable the next day, after roughly 3,000 were killed. "I actually started to do different things," he said. "And I didn't need to ask 'mother, may I' from the Congress or the president or anyone else. It was within my charter, but in terms of the mature judgment about what's reasonable and what's not reasonable, the death of 3,000 countrymen kind of took me in a direction over here, perfectly within my authority, but a different place than the one in which I was located before the attacks took place. So if we're going to draw this line I think we have to understand that it's kind of a movable feast here."
I think I understand.
The Bill of Rights may guarantee certain limits on government today. But if there is a terrorist attack tomorrow, a bureaucrat within the national security state may decide, without asking permission from any elected official, that the people are actually owed less protections than before. The more innocent people that terrorists succeed in murdering, the less our own government is limited by the Constitution. With every attack that the government fails to prevent it gains new powers.
http://news.yahoo.com/former-nsa-director-nsa-doesnt-just-listen-bad-110000822.html
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)OldRedneck
(1,397 posts)"Ve know vhat ist gut for you Untermenschen!!"
GeorgeGist
(25,321 posts)niyad
(113,336 posts)The CCC
(463 posts)I'm opposed to the death penalty for sedition, but I'm staring to change my mind.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)of Rights.
Madison and his friends never thought that a total heel like Hayden would ever be born in America.
He's a disgrace to our country. A disgrace. Shame on him. Yes. We ask ""Mother May I" of Congress and the courts before we violate the constitutional rights of others. That's what the American Revolution was about -- the Fourth Amendment and taxation without representation. The Fourth Amendment is the cornerstone that protects the rest of our rights.
Let's see what other bad words can I call Hayden? How about ignoramus.
Well. It didn't change anything, but it felt good. Shame on Obama for keeping Hayden on.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)....and Hayden is getting ripped by nearly all.
Good quote posted:
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague. Cicero, 55 BC in Roman
Senate