I am not a lawyer, nor do I have any special knowledge of applicable laws. I do have a good sense of practical reasoning. So when I read about the seemingly obvious violations of the constitution and its amendments, I get a bit miffed.
Why is it, that those meant to enforce and uphold the law, themselves act as if they are above the law? I am speaking of recent reports that the FBI once again finds themselves on the wrong side of the law and a federal judge who seems to be ignoring judiciary rules.
In the case of the FBI, they get away with about 2,200 violations, because it was merely a technicality that they violated National Security Letter's guidelines, as reported on:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/18/AR2010011803982.html
"FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
By John Solomon and Carrie Johnson
Special to The Washington Post and Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 19, 2010"
And in the case of The Honorable Richard G. Seeborg, who is seemingly in violation of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as described by:
http://epic.org/2010/01/epic-privacy-groups-oppose-fac.html
and specifically: http://epic.org/privacy/facebook/EPIC_Beacon_Letter.pdf
"Pursuant to the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the representative parties must be “fairly and adequately protect[ing] the interests of the class.”1
1 Fed. R. Civ. P. 23(a)(4)."
What happens when the rule of law is meaningless to a large class of people? What will eventually happen? In the short term, some organizations and a few additional concerned folks will huff and puff and little will change. The biggest current trend for those who choose to be vocal seems to be to join the Tea Party's non-party. However, to confuse everyone is a new group claiming to be THE Florida Tea Party party, who seems to have nothing officially in common with the National Tea Party, a non-party.
What am I saying? I am saying that there is a National Cluster F*ck brewing. Our elected officials won't get their own houses in order, they won't ensure that the other departments of our governments get their houses in order, but they'll all scream at the top of the media that the many other nations need to get aligned with the global agenda on human rights, internal spying on their own citizens, and mandatory Internet policing for copywrite violations so Hollywood & music publisher fat-cats won't go broke.
What ever happened to the principles of the rights to privacy, fair use, and the ability purchase a product (rather than have only a license to use something under very narrow conditions) in our very own country even? (I contend that there is very little material that is actually intellectual property, so these folks shouldn't be getting away with perpetual income on every dang item they think is their personal cache-cow). We really need to get our own house in order, first and foremost.
Smoke and mirrors, finger pointing, diversions and denials. Why take the planks out of the eyes of the U.S.A. when there are so many other foreign governments behaving as badly or worse then our own?
This isn't supposed to be a professionally sounding rant, just another rant. But can't somebody, anybody, within politics, government agencies, commercial business, anywhere at all behave appropriately? Is integrity too much to ask for? Is honesty totally outmoded? I see there is no shortage of loyalty, but to whom do those loyalties reside with? When the governments aren't serving the citizens, they are merely self-serving. Is mankind truly basically evil? Look at how our authorities are behaving and give yourself an honest assessment of our current culture.
Maybe next time I will include the several atrocities of the DEA, but for now, I've probably already raised too many red flags for the NSA's servers to ignore. Let's just say that this may be a new era of discontent for informed Americans. If ignorance is bliss, most of the citizens of the U.S.A. must be quite content.
Dang it anyhow.
(Well, I feel better for having said it at any rate)
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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