Remember when Dubya referred to the Constitution as "that goddam piece of paper" when explaining that he wasn't going to heed the document where it concerned his ability to invade an innocent nation without Congressional consent?
Now another government entity has adopted Dim Son's colorful vocabulary to describe its disdain for the foundation of our democratic republic. I love the title of this piece: FBI Admits That Obeying the Constitution Just Takes Too Much Time...
"While much of the news coverage of FBI Director Robert Mueller's Congressional hearing this week focused on his admission that the FBI has used drones domestically, there were some other points raised, including his 'defense' of the broad surveillance techniques that appears to amount to the idea that it just takes too long to obey the Constitution and go through the proper procedures before getting information:
"Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mueller addressed a proposal to require telephone companies to retain calling logs for five years -- the period the N.S.A. is keeping them -- for investigators to consult, rather than allowing the government to collect and store them all. He cautioned that it would take time to subpoena the companies for numbers of interest and get the answers back.
"'The point being that it will take an awful long time,' Mr. Mueller said."
Not to be too dramatic, but how long did it take those early American revolutionaries to defeat the British and draft the philosophical ideals that are the framework of our nation? Ideals that guarantee our protection from intrusive governmental practices that would threaten our liberty, security, and civil rights?
What exactly is Mueller's idea of "an awful (sic) long time?" How long does it take to obtain a phone record from Verizon in this instant information age? A few hours or days, if there is a matter of national security at stake?
And is anybody else troubled by the line "rather than allowing the government to collect and store them all"? Store them all? All? If that's even possible, would it mean that our government has stored every...single...phone call (or Internet "transaction") from millions of Americans over the last decade?
No wonder The Bush Crime Family constructed the enormous, expensive Department of Homeland Security. Gotta have some place BIG to store all our private phone calls and email, and plenty of personnel to scour them for juicy details .
And, or course, they need a large area to construct the coming telescreens and interrogation rooms.
