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I'm not convinced a felony took place (please refer to Alex's post - I believe it is the 13th of the thread - edited - its the 16th).
Pelosi and Reid have both given statements that they were, in fact, briefed on the program. Apparently, they weren't concerned about any legal violations or civil rights violations until the story hit in the NYT.
I am also reading that certain parts of the Patriot Act may have trumped or overridden parts of FISA, but I'm still not quite sure on all the legal parts of it.
I am torn, quite honestly. I'm a "slippery slope" kind of guy. I guess I fail to see harm in massive computers monitoring communications and flagging those with certain key words for analysis. How does this harm me, I wonder. But, it is certainly government intrusion. What could it lead to further on down the road?
I look at Lincoln, widely regarded as one of the greatest Presidents, who was certainly involved in a unique war, and some of the actions he took. He suspended the writ of habeus corpus over much of the Union. He had journalists thrown in prison. He also had various political enemies thrown in prison because they had spoken of supporting secession for some Union states. Harsh measures. Some prewar, some during the war. History certainly casts lincoln in a positive light. Were all these steps necessary? Without them being taken, would the North still have won the civil war? Who knows.
Tough times we live in. I suppose I have to evalute if I consider it a threat to my personal freedom and liberty to have a giant computer monitoring electronic conversations. If I were tagged as a terrorist for saying that my son's performance bombed (good lord, perhaps I just was tagged), I'd probably be pretty concerned.
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