Ahh yes, the liberties card, because the law suddenly grants government more power, somewhere, somebodies liberties must have been violated. Live free or die, is a nice catchy little slogan. Yet if your dead you can't live. Lets ask the 3000 people who died on September 11th how important their privacy is to them. Oh that's right we can't now can we???

Despite all the crying of foul, no one has shown that their rights have been violated in any way. All we have are a bunch hypothetical what ifs. What if this board is being monitored, or what if they are seeing what I am reading, or what if they are listening to my phone calls.

As a conservative, I hate government intruding in people lives, yet at the same time I recognize that without the government protecting my life, I would have no rights whatsoever.

The Patriot Act has given the government the ability to use roving wire taps, once again, technology has changed, once upon a time, government could monitor the phone calls of an individual without the use of a roving wire tap, why??? Because there were no cell phones. Today, more people have cell phones than land lines. The technology changed and so too should the law enforcement techniques.

The Patriot Act declares terrorist suspects as foreign agents. Prior to the Patriot Act, terrorist could not be monitored under FISA, by changing their classification, the government has allowed the intelligence of our country to monitor them as foreign agents.

Following the attacks on September 11th, Congress gave the President the power to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent further attacks against American citizens. Words have meanings, and now Congress doesn't even know what they meant when they offered that resolution. The President is using what he has been advised as legal to prevent further attacks.

The 1972 Keith decision by the Supreme Court held that the President does not have the inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats. However, the court said explicitly that this does not question the President's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad. The NSA does not trap calls in the US, they intercept the calls overseas. They are targeting the known foreign terrorists, if in doing this they intercept calls made by US citizens, they have not broken the law. The target was not the US citizen but rather the foreign agent.

Thus far, all we have heard are unsubstantiated allegations. And of course, everyone is pandering to the press and the citizens by demanding investigation. SO lets have the investigation and see what the facts truly are before we decide who is right and who wrong.

dmk