"Ooops they did it again.."
Hello folks,
For those of you finding my blog from the internet, welcome to my first real political rant on this blog. The piece on Nagin doesn't really qualify as a rant. I am more amused by that whole mess than outraged. And as folks who read my livejournal will attest, I was very gentle in that piece. But tonight? Not so much.
What's got me all fired up is a report in the AP that the Bush Administration was trying to get Google to turn over all their records of searches that were made during a certain period of time. Google, god bless their pointy little heads, told them to fuck off and die.
The original request- subpoena actually- was made last summer and Google refused to comply. So Attorney General Gonzales has gone to a federal judge seeking enforcement of the subpoena.
Google is refusing to comply on these grounds: (ganked from the AP story)
"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept," company attorney Ashok Ramani wrote in a letter included in the government's filing.
Complying with the subpoena also wound threaten to expose some of Google's "crown-jewel trade secrets," Ramani wrote. Google is particularly concerned that the information could be used to deduce the size of its index and how many computers it uses to crunch the requests.
"This information would be highly valuable to competitors or miscreants seeking to harm Google's business," Ramani wrote.
Here's the government's position: Obtaining the subpoenaed information from Google "would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, (and) to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches," the Justice Department wrote in a brief filed Wednesday
Yeah, right, and if you believe that one I've got a bridge to sell you.
Now this is where it gets more hinky. The government had subpoened other companies as well- Yahoo caved in right away and turned over its records and Microsoft is acting French and playing coy.
This is coming on the heels of the shitstorm that erupted when it became widely known the Administration couldn't even be bothered to go to a rubber-stamp court and instead take it upon itself to use the NSA to monitor all overseas communications.
Despite widespread accounts to the contrary, the Administration is portraying the NSA snooping as narrowly focused and only involving communications sent to Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, the public is only too eager to suck up that excuse and move on because dammit, there's some little crossdresser on American Idol who's claiming discrimination and that's something to get worked up about.
I just sit here in utter and complete amazement at all this shit. It's unreal. There will be no portion of the Constitution left unraped by the time these venal evil fucks leave in 2008. You might as well kiss your freedoms goodbye now while you still can.
And because there is no depth to which they will not sink, I find the timing of this "new" tape from Osama Bin Laden highly suspicious. And gee, if he's said that the groundwork is being laid for new attacks, wouldn't you think that the threat level would be raised from whatever it's at now to at least, say, a burnt umber?
Now this might all sound like paranoid babbling, but you know what- after all the lies of the past 5 years, how in the hell could anybody ever believe what these assholes say? It just boggles the mind. If Bush was a small child he would have been whipped to within an inch of his life and sent to bed without dinner every day for 2 years. And the arrogant little fuck STILL won't admit he lied.
But god love the United States, where you can get impeached for lying about extramarital blowjobs but not for lying to Congress or to the American People.
I heard a quote on the news tonight from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that was on a different matter but applies to this as well. The Senator said that he is voting against confirming Alito to the Supreme Court because he finds very troubling Alito's pattern of siding with the government and against liberty. If I wasn't driving I would have applauded when I heard that. Leahy's stance is one of courage, to not kowtow to this fearmongering to which we are subjected day after day after day. He speaks out about the sordid and shameful hypocrisy of our government that says the only way to defeat those who are seeking our liberty is to destroy it ourselves first.
tags:
politics Bush civil liberties domestic spying google subpoena Leahy Constitution lying
For those of you finding my blog from the internet, welcome to my first real political rant on this blog. The piece on Nagin doesn't really qualify as a rant. I am more amused by that whole mess than outraged. And as folks who read my livejournal will attest, I was very gentle in that piece. But tonight? Not so much.
What's got me all fired up is a report in the AP that the Bush Administration was trying to get Google to turn over all their records of searches that were made during a certain period of time. Google, god bless their pointy little heads, told them to fuck off and die.
The original request- subpoena actually- was made last summer and Google refused to comply. So Attorney General Gonzales has gone to a federal judge seeking enforcement of the subpoena.
Google is refusing to comply on these grounds: (ganked from the AP story)
"Google's acceding to the request would suggest that it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services. This is not a perception that Google can accept," company attorney Ashok Ramani wrote in a letter included in the government's filing.
Complying with the subpoena also wound threaten to expose some of Google's "crown-jewel trade secrets," Ramani wrote. Google is particularly concerned that the information could be used to deduce the size of its index and how many computers it uses to crunch the requests.
"This information would be highly valuable to competitors or miscreants seeking to harm Google's business," Ramani wrote.
Here's the government's position: Obtaining the subpoenaed information from Google "would assist the government in its efforts to understand the behavior of current Web users, (and) to estimate how often Web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches," the Justice Department wrote in a brief filed Wednesday
Yeah, right, and if you believe that one I've got a bridge to sell you.
Now this is where it gets more hinky. The government had subpoened other companies as well- Yahoo caved in right away and turned over its records and Microsoft is acting French and playing coy.
This is coming on the heels of the shitstorm that erupted when it became widely known the Administration couldn't even be bothered to go to a rubber-stamp court and instead take it upon itself to use the NSA to monitor all overseas communications.
Despite widespread accounts to the contrary, the Administration is portraying the NSA snooping as narrowly focused and only involving communications sent to Al Qaeda.
Unfortunately, the public is only too eager to suck up that excuse and move on because dammit, there's some little crossdresser on American Idol who's claiming discrimination and that's something to get worked up about.
I just sit here in utter and complete amazement at all this shit. It's unreal. There will be no portion of the Constitution left unraped by the time these venal evil fucks leave in 2008. You might as well kiss your freedoms goodbye now while you still can.
And because there is no depth to which they will not sink, I find the timing of this "new" tape from Osama Bin Laden highly suspicious. And gee, if he's said that the groundwork is being laid for new attacks, wouldn't you think that the threat level would be raised from whatever it's at now to at least, say, a burnt umber?
Now this might all sound like paranoid babbling, but you know what- after all the lies of the past 5 years, how in the hell could anybody ever believe what these assholes say? It just boggles the mind. If Bush was a small child he would have been whipped to within an inch of his life and sent to bed without dinner every day for 2 years. And the arrogant little fuck STILL won't admit he lied.
But god love the United States, where you can get impeached for lying about extramarital blowjobs but not for lying to Congress or to the American People.
I heard a quote on the news tonight from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that was on a different matter but applies to this as well. The Senator said that he is voting against confirming Alito to the Supreme Court because he finds very troubling Alito's pattern of siding with the government and against liberty. If I wasn't driving I would have applauded when I heard that. Leahy's stance is one of courage, to not kowtow to this fearmongering to which we are subjected day after day after day. He speaks out about the sordid and shameful hypocrisy of our government that says the only way to defeat those who are seeking our liberty is to destroy it ourselves first.
tags:
politics Bush civil liberties domestic spying google subpoena Leahy Constitution lying
posted by Stevie Z at 2:57 AM
1 Comments:
greetings from Penang Malayisa. I saw an Asian edition of Newsweek with Bush on the cover and caption "how much power should he have". I was wondering if this was also the cover caption in USA.
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