%%%% Albert Gore Junior. I remember him well!

"Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced" <tim@somecallme.net> wrote in message
news:Xns942FEFC3F1757timsomecallme@216.168.3.44...

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

%%%% Albert Gore Junior. I remember him well! The man who not only his home
town rejected for President but the whole state of Tennessee. You have to be
real sleeze bag for your own neighbors to reject you.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:33:00 -0000, Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced
<tim@somecallme.net> wrote:

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Ah, yes. I remember Al Gore. The man the American people elected
President.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:33:00 -0000, Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced
<tim@somecallme.net> wrote:

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Ah, yes. I remember Al Gore. The man the American people elected
President.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:33:00 -0000, Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced
<tim@somecallme.net> wrote:

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Ah, yes. I remember Al Gore. The man the American people elected
President.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:33:00 -0000, Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced
<tim@somecallme.net> wrote:

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Ah, yes. I remember Al Gore. The man the American people elected
President.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 07:33:00 -0000, Patriotboy is Fair and Balanced
<tim@somecallme.net> wrote:

Excerpts from Gore's speech on Sunday. Read or view it in its
entirety at http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html

Ah, yes. I remember Al Gore. The man the American people elected
President.

"President Bush is claiming the unilateral right to do that to any
American citizen he believes is an 'enemy combatant.' Those are the
magic words. If the President alone decides that those two words
accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately
locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the President wants,
with no court having the right to determine whether the facts
actually justify his imprisonment.

Now if the President makes a mistake, or is given faulty information
by somebody working for him, and locks up the wrong person, then it's
almost impossible for that person to prove his innocence – because he
can’t talk to a lawyer or his family or anyone else and he doesn’t
even have the right to know what specific crime he is accused of
committing. So a constitutional right to liberty and the pursuit of
happiness that we used to think of in an old-fashioned way as
'inalienable' can now be instantly stripped from any American by the
President with no meaningful review by any other branch of
government.

How do we feel about that? Is that OK?

Here's another recent change in our civil liberties: Now, if it wants
to, the federal government has the right to monitor every website you
go to on the internet, keep a list of everyone you send email to or
receive email from and everyone who you call on the telephone or who
calls you – and they don't even have to show probable cause that
you've done anything wrong. Nor do they ever have to report to any
court on what they're doing with the information. Moreover, there are
precious few safeguards to keep them from reading the content of all
your email.

Everybody fine with that?

If so, what about this next change?

For America's first 212 years, it used to be that if the police
wanted to search your house, they had to be able to convince an
independent judge to give them a search warrant and then (with rare
exceptions) they had to go bang on your door and yell, 'Open up!'
Then, if you didn't quickly open up, they could knock the door down.
Also, if they seized anything, they had to leave a list explaining
what they had taken. That way, if it was all a terrible mistake (as
it sometimes is) you could go and get your stuff back.

But that's all changed now. Starting two years ago, federal agents
were given broad new statutory authority by the Patriot Act to 'sneak
and peak' in non-terrorism cases. They can secretly enter your home
with no warning -- whether you are there or not -- and they can wait
for months before telling you they were there. And it doesn't have to
have any relationship to terrorism whatsoever. It applies to any
garden-variety crime. And the new law makes it very easy to get
around the need for a traditional warrant -- simply by saying that
searching your house might have some connection (even a remote one)
to the investigation of some agent of a foreign power. Then they can
go to another court, a secret court, that more or less has to give
them a warrant whenever they ask.

Three weeks ago, in a speech at FBI Headquarters, President Bush went
even further and formally proposed that the Attorney General be
allowed to authorize subpoenas by administrative order, without the
need for a warrant from any court.

What about the right to consult a lawyer if you're arrested? Is that
important?

Attorney General Ashcroft has issued regulations authorizing the
secret monitoring of attorney-client conversations on his say-so
alone; bypassing procedures for obtaining prior judicial review for
such monitoring in the rare instances when it was permitted in the
past. Now, whoever is in custody has to assume that the government is
always listening to consultations between them and their lawyers.

Does it matter if the government listens in on everything you say to
your lawyer? Is that Ok?

Or, to take another change -- and thanks to the librarians, more
people know about this one -- the FBI now has the right to go into
any library and ask for the records of everybody who has used the
library and get a list of who is reading what. Similarly, the FBI can
demand all the records of banks, colleges, hotels, hospitals, credit-
card companies, and many more kinds of companies. And these changes
are only the beginning. Just last week, Attorney General Ashcroft
issued brand new guidelines permitting FBI agents to run credit
checks and background checks and gather other information about
anyone who is 'of investigatory interest,' - meaning anyone the agent
thinks is suspicious - without any evidence of criminal behavior.

So, is that fine with everyone?"

"I want to challenge the Bush Administration's implicit assumption
that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to
be safe from terrorists.

Because it is simply not true.

In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault
on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it
did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin
Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and
unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much
more important challenges that would actually help to protect the
country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and
misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative
presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political
gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while
actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in
order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press
and the people."

"But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in
secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal
information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting
national security, they have obtained new powers to gather
information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time
they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly
relevant to the war against terrorism.

They are even arrogantly refusing to provide information about 9/11
that is in their possession to the 9/11 Commission -- the lawful
investigative body charged with examining not only the performance of
the Bush Administration, but also the actions of the prior
Administration in which I served. The whole point is to learn all we
can about preventing future terrorist attacks"

"In an even more brazen move, more than two years after they rounded
up over 1,200 individuals of Arab descent, they still refuse to
release the names of the individuals they detained, even though
virtually every one of those arrested has been "cleared" by the FBI
of any connection to terrorism and there is absolutely no national
security justification for keeping the names secret. Yet at the same
time, White House officials themselves leaked the name of a CIA
operative serving the country, in clear violation of the law, in an
effort to get at her husband, who had angered them by disclosing that
the President had relied on forged evidence in his state of the union
address as part of his effort to convince the country that Saddam
Hussein was on the verge of building nuclear weapons.

And even as they claim the right to see the private bank records of
every American, they are adopting a new policy on the Freedom of
Information Act that actively encourages federal agencies to fully
consider all potential reasons for non-disclosure regardless of
whether the disclosure would be harmful. In other words, the federal
government will now actively resist complying with ANY request for
information.

Moreover, they have established a new exemption that enables them to
refuse the release to the press and the public of important health,
safety and environmental information submitted to the government by
businesses -- merely by calling it 'critical infrastructure.'

By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are
dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and
balances. Because so long as the government's actions are secret,
they cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by
the people must be transparent to the people."

"The constant violations of civil liberties promote the false
impression that these violations are necessary in order to take every
precaution against another terrorist attack. But the simple truth is
that the vast majority of the violations have not benefited our
security at all; to the contrary, they hurt our security."

"Rather than leading with a call to courage, this Administration has
chosen to lead us by inciting fear."

"But President Bush has stretched this new practical imperative
beyond what is healthy for our democracy. Indeed, one of the ways he
has tried to maximize his power within the American system has been
by constantly emphasizing his role as Commander-in-Chief, far more
than any previous President -- assuming it as often and as visibly as
he can, and bringing it into the domestic arena and conflating it
with his other roles: as head of government and head of state -- and
especially with his political role as head of the Republican Party.

Indeed, the most worrisome new factor, in my view, is the aggressive
ideological approach of the current administration, which seems
determined to use fear as a political tool to consolidate its power
and to escape any accountability for its use. Just as unilateralism
and dominance are the guiding principles of their disastrous approach
to international relations, they are also the guiding impulses of the
administration's approach to domestic politics. They are impatient
with any constraints on the exercise of power overseas -- whether
from our allies, the UN, or international law. And in the same way,
they are impatient with any obstacles to their use of power at home -
- whether from Congress, the Courts, the press, or the rule of law."

"Incredibly, this Administration has attempted to compromise the most
precious rights that Americahas stood for all over the world for more
than 200 years: due process, equal treatment under the law, the
dignity of the individual, freedom from unreasonable search and
seizure, freedom from promiscuous government surveillance. And in the
name of security, this Administration has attempted to relegate the
Congress and the Courts to the sidelines and replace our democratic
system of checks and balances with an unaccountable Executive. And
all the while, it has constantly angled for new ways to exploit the
sense of crisis for partisan gain and political dominance. How dare
they!"

"The question before us could be of no greater moment: will we
continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our
Constitution? Or will we fail future generations, by leaving them a
Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have
inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear."