The Land of the Free
I got to thinking last night about just how free Americans actually are under a President that seems to demand that his power be treated as absolute.
We now know that Americans are not free to phone anyone privately without their government having a record of who they have called and for how long they have talked.
Journalists are not allowed to pursue any Presidential actions they suspect may be illegal without the government bugging them to find their sources. The entire concept of whistleblowers has been abandoned if it is the government that you are blowing the whistle about.
Indeed, they even include Catholic priests in their long lists of "threats."
As I pointed out yesterday, protesting could have your very sanity questioned.
Of course, citizens should be happy that they are having their sanity questioned at all. Members of the US armed forces with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness.
And if Americans do discover that the President's narrowly tailored "terrorist surveillance program" is actually a vacuum cleaner sweeping up "everything related and not" - to quote Rumsfeld - then the solution is very simple. Deny all knowledge and engage in semantics. For instance, collecting information about Americans making calls within the privacy of they own home is easily dealt with. Negroponte: "I wouldn't call it domestic spying." There you are. Short and to the point.
And, if you don't find this answer satisfactory, then we will allow you to express your rage in one of our custom made Free Speech zones.
But most Americans should keep a sense of perspective about all this and thank their lucky stars that they're not in Russia, where you can be locked in legal blackholes with no chance of escape and no ability to appeal.
Oh shit, that last link was to Cuba wasn't it? Well, they're bad guys. And anyway, when it's us doing it, it's different because... well, because we're good guys.
Hell, God talks to our main man.
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