Just exactly how has my civil liberties been infringed?

[FogerRox]

:sarcasm:

I just dont see it, Ive done nothing wrong, so nobody is tapping my phone.

[iconoclastic cat]

1. You fools! They've already stolen your subject-verb agreement!

Fight for your lives!

[Sugar Smack]

2. You're both making me --->

:rofl:

[Marnieworld]

19. First they came for the subject-verb agreement

but I did nothing ...

:P

[whistle]

3. They heard your conversation about this with a friend earlier this

...morning and the answer is still the same, "If you are doing or saying nothing wrong, then you don't have to worry." :hide: :yoiks: :sarcasm:

[Grillydad]

6. I have a suggestion

Tell him to let the police/NSA/Dick Cheney (yuk) watch him and his wife have sex. There's nothing wrong or illegal in it, but it is private. Civil liberties are about the things the government is not permitted to to. A government limited by design. My bet is your friend has something he wouldn't consider "wrong" or immoral, but he doesn't want the world to know... internet poker, herpes or other STD, he picks his nose, whatever. It's about making choices without government interference.

[FogerRox]

4. I want to know, seriously... whats the impact on me

[Rosemary2205]

5. Maybe nothing -- YET.

As for myself, I want my government to follow the laws and protect human rights for everyone - even if the targeted group isn't me. If the gov't is torturing innocent people (mentally or physically) then IMHO we ALL have the responsibility to step forward and demand it stop.

And I'm not talking about just Abu Ghraib type torture. I'm talking about when the IRS makes an accounting error and chooses to push an innocent person to bankrupcy, heart attack or suicide with their shitty tactics. -- or when an innocent 16 yr old boy gets constantly pecked by the local cops to the point the poor kid is ruined forever. -- Or when the Rodney kings get the shit beat outa them -- or 7 yr old girls get tasered -- or 90 yr old women are getting abused by the TSA -- etc etc etc etc ad nauseum.

[Virginia Dare]

8. I'll give you a little scenario....

say you piss off your neighbor, say your dog shits in his yard one too many times and he's had it. Let's just say that said neighbor is also big buddies with the local political honcho, they went to high school together or something. Okay, so let's just say that this neighbor convinces his buddy to have you "investigated". So pretty soon, there are strange clicks on your telephone. Your mail starts coming to your house already opened. Then one day you come home and the cops are there, say Mr. Rox, you're under arrest for seditious activity, slap your mug against the wall, put the cuffs on and haul you away. At your trial they produce all sorts of evidence that they've gathered about your anti-government activities, including some posts you've made on DU, and lock you away for, oh let's say, 20 years or so.

[treestar]

16. Exactly, and the reason there are a million piddly laws on the books

is so that most people will be guilty of an infringement of one of them.

I challenge those with that argument to allow the cops to search their house. Invite them over. Then stand there and watch and they search and ask questions and comment.

Some people have no imagination. These morans are dangerous. They really can't see past their own noses.

[Virginia Dare]

17. This actually happened to an acquaintance of mine..

she ended up in the hospital on an emergency basis one night, and it was suspected she had had a heart attack (it ended up she didn't).

Anyway, she is a single mother with children in high school. Her older college age son called the school trying to explain to them why the kids weren't in school that day. He said "My mom is lying in the hospital on morphine and can't call you herself". The twit in the school office totally misconstrued the whole thing and called the cops. She told them there were kids alone at home on drugs (like the kids would call the school and tell them that???).

The cops came in and searched the ENTIRE house, made the kids pull every bottle of pills out of the medicine cabinets, etc. You can imagine how scared and upset they were. They were real assholes and never apologized for the incident.

We truly are living in a police state.

[treestar]

18. The show "cops" never shows stuff like that on film, for obvious reasons

I was thinking a film on something like this might wake the sheeple up.

Premise: get a retired police officer to go to a volunteer freeper's house and do a search. Freeper standing there beaming happily at the beginning, because he/she has "nothing to hide."

Even if the cop doesnt' find anything, the experience could wake the freeper up to get the concept that it's not that doing nothing wrong saves you, it's that you just don't want the government to have the general power to search your house.

The colonists in Massachusetts protested this general power of search, so another argument you can use with this is that the freep making the assertion would have been a Loyalist or indifferent to the American Revolution, since the general power of search the British claimed is OK with them.

[ProfessorGAC]

10. Harm One, Harm All

E pluribus unum and all that.

Spy on ONE person who wasn't doing anything wrong, and the we're all harmed. WE THE PEOPLE are the country, not bureaucrats and politicians. WE! That's a first person plural pronoun. Hurt one, hurt all. It doesn't matter if nothing has personally happened to you or me, yet.
The Professor

[uppityperson]

13. Seriously?

Every time the constitution, the ammendments, are infringed upon, it makes it easier to do so again, and again and again and then where will we be?

Seriously, anyone that thinks this is ok behavior, they can just go live somewhere where this is standard and try it out for a while. (my response to "if you don't like your freedoms getting taken away go move you anti-american librul")

[treestar]

15. If you speak out in disagreement to the government, then you know

they will tap your phone. They have the power to do it. Will they admit that your speaking out against them is "nothing wrong?" and leave you alone? Of course not.

[Lars39]

7. Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

Overview of Changes to Legal Rights
The Associated Press
September 5, 2002
the Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal rights by the Bush administration and USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:
* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.
* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public records requests.
* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.
* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.
* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.
* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

[FogerRox]

11. thanks lars39... we are all doomed.......

[Lars39]

14. I don't think we're doomed, it's just going to be much harder

to claw our way back to a semblance of what we used to have.

[OneBlueSky]

9. infringement of ANYONE'S civil liberties is infringement of . . .

everyone's . . . because you could be next . . .

[uppityperson]

12. If you're not doing anything wrong, why would you care?

:sarcasm:

Besides, its kept us safe since Clenis let 9/11 hapon. We havn't bin attached again since then, we are safer now wiht pResidnet Bush keeping us safe.