**Disclaimer--this is not addressed to freepers, bushbots, or neo-cons that think that the current group occupying the while house can do no wrong. This is addressed to true Conservatives that think the principles of freedom laid down in the Constitution of the United States of America are a pretty darn good thing.**
I'm extending an olive branch branch here. We desperately need to work together on the incident in Miami that went down yesterday. If the "Miami 7" debacle does not send a shiver down your spine it very well should. This is the closest thing to using the Patriot Act for the express purpose of declaring of a fascist state of law in the country, that I have seen from this Administration so far. As an American that believes in due process, and the 4th amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, this disturbs me to no end.
"Yeah. So what? They were just a bunch of radicals living in a warehouse. Screw 'em, they have to be guilty." If that's what your thinking, you need to step back and see it for what it really is; a blatant attempt to bolster a flailing administrations poll numbers at the expense of the lowest rungs of our social ladder.
Let's look at the facts:
Full story here.The group of men, who were arrested Thursday when authorities busted their alleged hide-out in a Miami warehouse, had no explosives and lacked adequate funding. Their only link to al-Qaeda was through an FBI informant fronting as a member of the terrorist group, authorities said Friday.
But U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said it was exactly the right time to dismantle the group, before it was able to execute a plan that one member said he hoped would be “as good or greater than 9/11.”
“You want to go and disrupt cells like this before they acquire the means to accomplish their goals,” Acosta said.
Investigators said all members of the alleged plot were in custody on conspiracy charges.
Five of the defendants, including alleged ringleader Narseal Batiste, appeared in federal court in Miami on Friday under heavy security. They were brought in and out in single file, chained together at the wrists and wearing ankle chains.
“This group was more aspirational than operational,” FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the men as “homegrown terrorists” who “view their home country as the enemy.”
Their only link to al-Qaeda was through an FBI informant fronting as a member of the terrorist group, authorities said Friday.The group of men, who were arrested Thursday when authorities busted their alleged hide-out in a Miami warehouse, had no explosives and lacked adequate funding.These two snips above show complete lack of any type of evidence what so ever, and FBI entrapment. What they are doing is the legal equivalent of arresting someone because they wanted to buy a bag of dope from a cop. The defendant didn't HAVE any dope, but they arrested them because they THOUGHT about buying weed.
This is an absolute slippery slope. Thought crime style legislation is the same style of government that the old style Soviet "Eastern-Bloc" countries practiced. This has no place in a democracy such as ours.
**Now don't react just yet, hear me out, and read the rest of the post.**
How long before this affects one of you; a regular person like most of us here that works their jobs, supports their family, and spends time with their kids on weekends?
Say you are going hunting this weekend, and are at K-Mart buying some ammo for the trip. You joke with the clerk about "going postal at your job with some of these." The clerk smiles and laughs back, but the second you walk out the door, he's on the phone with his manager, and says a guy came in and talked about invading an office building. He calls the Feds and tells them the same. They track your credit card number to your house, and all of a sudden you start hearing these weird "clicking noises" when talking on your phone.
You're walking out the door to go to work monday morning, and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose.
All of a sudden you are surrounded by people in body armor, and ski masks. They break down your front door and tear the hard drive out of your computer and use it to show on a 7 by 24 basis, on all the cable news channels, all the emails you've written to subversive home grown terrorist organizations. You refer to them as "hunting_boards.com", or "how_to_reload_your_own_ammo.com" bulleting boards. They show all the posts of how pissed off you are at how the gas prices have risen so much in the past year, and how, hundreds of times, you said that "we need to do something about this, NOW." They hammer this for days on every cable news channel.
Next thing, you wind up sitting in jail for a month. Maybe you don't have the money or the credit to bail yourself out. So you just sit there, while all anyone including your boss, your friends, and your family knows, are what the newspapers and fox news is telling them about what you did. A month goes by, and luckily, a decent lawyer from the ACLU (hey--don't knock them, they got Rush Limbaugh off) works pro-bono and gets all these false charges tossed out on their ear. Guess what...your life is still ruined. You got fired from your job, no one wants to hire you now, your landlord sends you a thirty day notice, and your friends and family all look at you differently from that point on.
I'm just asking you to think about all of this. Think about how thought crime legislation is creeping into our lives via the Patriot Act. Think about warrant less wire tapping, and what a slippery slope it is presenting. Think about the security of our nation before the Patriot Act.
Yeah, 9-11 Hijackers. Terror terror terror. Listen, the security system that was in place before 9-11 worked back then, without the Patriot act to snoop into everyones life, and voyeuristically tap our phones. What were the 9-11 hi-jackers able to get on those airplanes with? Bombs? Guns? Sarin and Mustard gas? Suitcase nukes? NO THEY WERE ONLY ABLE TO GET ON WITH BOX-CUTTERS FOR CORNS SAKE! That's it. They didn't take advantage of superior weaponry. They took advantage of the attitude that Americans have, that it was better to preserve ones own life, instead of sacrificing it for the good of thousands. Somehow, that attitude is still prevalent today, as millions of scared cringing people run home to daddy Bush and mommy Cheney with their tails tucked firmly between their legs, begging them to take away our right and protect us from the big bad brown people.
If this doesn't disturb you, well, then you are getting the America that you deserve.
If it does disturb you; write your congressman, your senator, your newspaper. Make some noise. I want my country back damn it. I want the place I knew that we could protest, and speak our minds without fear of retribution. I want the country that I didn't think that someone was going to break down my door in the middle of the night and haul me away.
That's all. You can go back to making fun of all of us again.
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