The Surveillance Society

Link here. The president doesn't realize that this type of tyranny is what the founding fathers so vehemently fought against. Fighting terrorism may be a noble intention, but the eroding of our freedoms makes stories like this extremely disturbing. I'm glad the Senate rejected the extension of the Patriot Act today.

Anyone see Enemy of the State? Rent it if you haven't. Fiction, yes, but it should be worth noting what could happen in a surveillance society when we can't trust the integrity of those doing the watching. Where do you draw the line? At stopping terrorism? Or any other type of political opposition? I had a discussion with a friend of the family this past Thanksgiving who's quite apprehensive about all of this. He said to me, "I do not know where the prison begins or ends. If it's there or here." At face value he seems a bit paranoid, but then I remember that he escaped from Czechoslovakia during the Soviet days, so he has more of a first-hand perspective on civil liberties, or the lack thereof.

Bush: Mea Culpa

President Bush today admitted to going to war on faulty intelligence. Before you go all whooping and hollering yet, remember that this is coming a year after he won reelection (a safe move), and he still has three more years in office. Though this move was based on the hope that it would somehow boost his approval ratings, I don't see how it should when he continues to insist that removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do. No one's going to argue against this side benefit, but remember that the entire march to war was predicated on the false link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda and the looming threat to U.S. national security, the evidence for which the president himself now has refuted. Bush isn't the only one to blame, and even though he fooled Congress into approving the war resolution, Republicans and Democrats share blame for not scrutinizing the evidence they saw and demanding the evidence they did not see. The media shares the blame for not scrutinizing the whole process.

It amazes me especially how many Democrats who voted for the war are so quick to attack the President for all of this. Sure, I'll give it to them that they were duped or misled, but there were plenty of Democrats who voted against the war, and they are the most credible in my mind to criticize. 2000+ Americans are dead for a war justified by faulty intelligence, and it is that reason why I will not support any presidential candidate (regardless of party) who voted for this war. If the Democrats want to retake the White House in 2008, they'd best start looking for a candidate who voted no.

Just finished watching Texas's defeat, rout, dismantling, demolition, obliteration (actually, my vocabulary doesn'’t contain a sufficient description) of CU. 70-3. And Texas's 70 points came in the first three quarters. Wow. Can'’t say I'’m all that surprised, though.

EDIT: Embarrassment comes close to being a good word, but the Buffs were that after the first half. 70-3 is way beyond embarrassment. We'll see if Gary Barnett has a job for much longer.