So what did you think of the State of the Union address last night?
The first portion of the speech was more of the same old stuff that pretty much everyone agrees with. Democracy is good, terror is bad. He just didn’t need to state it over and over. I get it.
What was a bit interesting was his talk about reducing our “addiction” to oil, and wanting to look at alternative sources of energy. That, and increasing funding for Math and Science.
However, I’ll believe it when I see it. Bush didn’t have a good record last year with what he set out to do. So I guess time will tell if anything actually happens.
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4 replies on “State of the Union”
i can’t believe that the 5th time around (this was the 5th, right?), you still have the stomach to watch it. i purposely avoided it and any mention of it in the “news.”
It is his 5th State of the Union address.
I just can’t believe he thinks he can conduct warrentless wiretaps on people inside the country. And then claims a law from 1978 that created that Foreign Intelligence Court (I think it’s called FISA) is antiquated. FISA is basically a rubber stamp for getting wiretaps and other surveillance. Now I’m not against spying on the bad guy. But do it within the boundaries of the law. And if he doesn’t agree with the law, then he can ask Congress to change it. But he can’t disregard it.
More scary is that a lot of people are okay with conducting warrentless wiretaps. As Ben Franklin said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
even FISA is a joke. sure, it provides legal authority to do searches and wiretaps and whatnot, but the Court is totally secret. that seems just as scary since they can go get a warrant to place a tap on you, but you have no notice of what their probable cause is, and no opportunity to defend yourself. i think that’s as much a denial of a person’s due process rights as not bothering to get a warrant at all. (of course, i don’t support either.)
At least using FISA does give someone else a chance to look over a wiretap. Now I don’t agree with the idea of FISA either. But using it isn’t against the law. That’s the biggest problem I have with what he’s doing. It’s the whole attitude of, “Trust us, we know what we’re doing.” It’s the total disregard for the law and any sort of due process (however little there may have been).