FISA, Illegal Government Wiretaps, Telecom Immunity and Congress Avoiding Responsibility

Posted on November 18th, 2007 in Civil Liberties, Partisan Free Politics by Andrew MacRae
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill is making quite a few appearances in the MSM these days. Apparently, Congress is debating whether or not to grant telecommunications companies immunity for working with the National Security Agency (NSA) post 9-11 to spy on each and every American Citizen. AT&T is taking the brunt of the criticism, but Verizon is also know to have co-operated (providing the gov. with all of my phone calls). (Qwest is the only company known to have declined the NSA's request, and also maintains that the warrantless wiretapping began 7 months prior to 9-11.) Suspending the questions of whether or not the government should have co-opted the Telecom companies into violating the law, and ...
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One writer who isn’t on strike

Posted on November 5th, 2007 in Civil Liberties, Elections and Election Reform, Gender by Greyson
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It isn't easy to walk in another man's shoes, granted.  But of all the most senseless misguided professions to unionize, Hollywood writer's have to take the cake (or at least finish a close second to actors, and just ahead of directors.)  In this day in age, with the rise of blogging ushering in thousands of new could-be wordsmiths, it seems like the "professional" writers have little advantage in the market outside of their old-boy's club union (yes, the same "professionals" that gave you titles such as "Prison Break," flood the nightly airwaves with rehashed Monica Lewinsky jokes, and pen the endless forensic banter for all the 16 different CSI shows.  And yes, the same guys that single-handedly ruined the ...
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There and back again…

Posted on October 12th, 2007 in Civil Liberties, Culture, Partisan Free Politics by Greyson
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For those of you who didn't know, I spent most of the last couple weeks on a journey to Washington D.C.  Overall, it was a great trip, thanks to the hospitality of my good friends Andrew, Ruben and the Matts, as well as the many new friends I was lucky enough to meet.  It was the coming and going of it all though, that made me feel the need to relate my story.  First, as a devoted fan of ABC's LOST, I found it hard not fantasize while I waited for the call to board Zone 6, thinking about the potential new life awaiting me upon the crashing of the plane in a remote, paranormal paradise.  Unfortunately, as I ...
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A Right Not Exercised…

Posted on September 6th, 2007 in Civil Liberties by Greyson
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One of my good friends, Pete Eyre, from the DC area has an interesting story to tell, that I'm sure some of our readers in the area will be interested in.  Despite the District's draconian gun control laws, the State of Virginia has done a slightly better job of maintaining the liberty that helped to produce such patriots as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry and George Wythe.   As Pete recently discovered, Virginia allows for the open carry of firearms, which of course inspired my freedom-loving friend to go for a test walk.  It didn't take long for Pete to discover the truth of his words from his first post on the subject: "a right not exercised will soon be ceded to the State."  In short, while ...
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Government pulls plug on two invasive programs

Posted on August 28th, 2007 in Civil Liberties, Government Reform, Partisan Free Politics by Andrew MacRae
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Since 9/11 the federal government has been doing it's utmost to protect us from ourselves. Thankfully however, the plug has been pulled on two controversial data-mining programs citing massive privacy invasions. The first program was called ADVISE (Analy­sis, Dissemina­tion, Visu­ali­zation, Insight and Semantic Enhance­ment), brought to you by Michael Chertoff (a possible candidate for replacing Alberto Gonzales) and the Department of Homeland Security. The CS Monitor reports that ADVISE was "designed to ingest information from scores of databases, blogs, e-mail traffic, intelligence reports, and other sources". Apparently the DHS missed the memo about the constitution (that it indeed exists). The project was discontinued after a report released by the Office of ...
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