Thinking about Bush's Excessive Powers

Through some odd circumstances, I've met a number of writers in my life. I've noticed that some of the most elegant, precise and finicky writers tend to be conservative and, for some reason I've never been able figure out, most of them wear bow ties and have little concept of what's going on outside their tiny universe. Poets can even be more finicky about their language. I once saw a poet autograph a book by first scribbling a half dozen corrections the owner of the book probably would have been happy to do without.

I'm glad there are writers, both conservative and liberal, who have managed to tame the various gremlins of blogging. They are a model for the rest of us. But I'm less concerned about models than I am about people with something to say. Kmilyun of Bifurcate in The Road has a post that's worth thinking about:

We are sacrificing our privacy and freedoms for the cause of National Security while our President demands extraordinary powers (see post here) The legal protections that are essential to our democratic society; due process, presumption of innocence and rights against unreasonable search and seizure, arbitrary detention and punishment, interception of personal communications without warrant are being ignored. (example link to for each) Infrastructures for strategic mass surveillance and dissemination of propaganda are in place to support governmental agendas. (See Govt. pdf docs: Information Operations Roadmap, Information Operations: Doctrine, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures)

InfraGuard is Federal Bureau of Investigation program “that began in the Cleveland Field Office in 1996. It was a local effort to gain support from the information technology industry and academia for the FBI’s investigative efforts in the cyber arena. The program expanded to other FBI Field Offices, and in 1998 the FBI assigned national program responsibility for InfraGuard to the former National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) and to the Cyber Division in 2003. InfraGard and the FBI have developed a relationship of trust and credibility in the exchange of information concerning various terrorism, intelligence, criminal, and security matters.” Info Businesses are surrendering their databases to government agencies. Among them are commercial airlines, Universities, driving schools, Double Click, and Choice Point.

There are more links in the post that are definitely worth checking.