#253 GoogleFeds

Benjamin Franklin said, I paraphrase, that those who would sacrifice essential freedoms to gain a little security deserve neither. The point being, it is through not nurturing ours fears that we can enjoy our freedoms. Sky-diving is an exhilarating enterprise. Hanging from a rope not so much. Of course skydivers can be prudent, no one says you have to jump without a parachute or sell your ports to a foreign country. But tying everyone up and throwing them into sacks, while making our country more secure, will nonetheless cut down on productivity. Thomas Jefferson, another one of those founding father dudes, said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism. I’m feeling a little patriotic today. To me it comes down to this; you descend to the level of the enemy or you take the high road. We beat the Soviet Union not because of Joe McCarthy and the red scare of the 50s but because of our free-wheeling unfettered economy and enthusiasm. Sure you need defense, you just need to set a shining example as well. Living in a lead barrel was one way to ride out the atomic fifties. But exuberantly sock hopping at the malt shop was better.
The Feds are going after Google to turn over internet records again. But there’s a new twist, foiled by their attempts to invoke the specter of national security, they’re now appealing to the moral outrage in all of us. This time they’re saying it’s about combating child pornography. The government is asking Google to turn over a “random” sample of search requests. Oh yeah, been there, done that. The first seemingly innocent step sets the path. Yeah, you’re Jewish how’s it gonna hurt to wear this red star on your chest? It’ll just help the administration with mobs and such. It’s for your own protection...
Personally, I think it’s a little odd how long it takes me to even get on the internet these days. Kind of like in the sixties when J. Edgar Hoover was at the height of his paranoid crimes. It took a little longer to connect the phone to the person you were calling when illegal wiretappers were online. Hmmm...
And now it turns out the goverment didn’t follow their own rules in their one high profile case against a confessed terrorist. So the judge threw a bunch of stuff out. She ruled that a prosecuting attorney violated federal rules when she sent trial transcripts to seven aviation witnesses, coached them on how to deflect defense attacks and lied to defense lawyers to prevent them from interviewing witnesses they wanted to call. The judge said the prosecutors actions and other government missteps had left the aviation evidence "irremediably contaminated.”
Remember how in that football movie, “The Longest Mile,” you hated the guard team because they had all the power and they still bent the rules in their direction. I mean heck, presumably they were the good guys right. Too bad those commie-pinko film makers took the side of the prisoners.
America, ya gotta love it.