Glenn Beck: The Drooling Face of Insanity

 

I generally don’t promote MSNBC

That said, watch this clip from Media Matters:

Here’s Beck’s original 1 February, 2011 show: Part A, Part B, Part C. If you’ve got a strong enough stomach and if the batshit booger-eating crazy of Beck isn’t enough for you, read the comments on YouTube under the videos.

 

Ancient Babylon.

Ancient Babylon.

Say it really slow and ponderously, you know, like you’re insane. Also, wave your hands a lot.

Aaaanciiet Babiloooooooon…

 

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I know a little something about Iraq.  I didn’t have anything to do with planning the first war there, but I was involved in plans for the current one.  Let me draw you a map:

 

Ancient Babylon sits in the Euphrates River Valley, between the modern day ports of Umm Qasr (about were the ancient city of Ur is on the map) and Al Basrah (a little north of Lagash) and Baghdad (which is up near where Assur is on the above map).

Now, here’s a map of the invasion:

Note that we rolled right through the middle of the ancient city state of Babylon. 

Right the fuck through the middle of it.

Bombing as we went. 

Now, we didn’t actually bomb the actual ancient city ruins of actual old Babylon. For good reason, because there’s nothing there but some old bricks, a museum, and an archeological dig.  It’s a big, desolate hole in the ground. 

Not to mention that we had orders not to destroy any more than we had to. 

Not to also mention that we were supposed to preserve Iraq’s national treasures for the Iraqi people.

And just to mention one more time that there wasn’t anything there of military value worth bombing.

We were only marginally successful.  Ultimately battles were fought all through this area and a lot of ancient ruins got chewed up.  Then, well then we built Camp Alpha on top of the old Babylonian ruins. We bulldozed helicopter landing pads, and parking lots for our Armor and dug latrines.  Our tanks crushed ancient paving stones into dust and the rumble of those 60 ton machines caused the ancient Ishtar Gate to collapse.  We were condemned by the British Museum and historians around the the world, including and especially American historians, for destroying priceless and irreplaceable relics of ancient Babylon. 

But Glenn Beck has been on Fox all week telling people this idiotic nonsense.  We didn’t bomb Ancient Babylon because of some secret Bible prophecy that we’re trying to bring about. According to Glenn, Satan, the Communists of the old USSR, the Socialists, Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood, American Progressives (members of the Republican Party I’d just like to point out) and Barack Obama are all scheming together to bring about the Shiite dream of a reborn Islamic Caliphate which is also the New World Order run by the Illuminati and the Masons and George Soros.  Everybody, and I mean every damned body, is out to get us - and by us, Glenn means the five people he considers actual real Americans.  If he could work in Napoleon, a couple dozen Flying Saucers, the National Inquirer’s Pig Boy he’d have a SyFy movie of the week.

Now, you wouldn’t think that anybody capable of feeding themselves would listen to this raving loon with anything other than utter disbelief. No, you wouldn’t think so.

But there are. There are whole forums of these brain damaged spasm monkeys who believe him.

As Eugene Robinson said on Hardball, if you were saying this crap anywhere but Fox or in church the guys with the butterfly nets would snatch your ass off the street and pump you full of happy juice before you started eating your own excrement. 

Look, I’m not a clinical psychologist, but even I recognize gibbering paranoia when I see it.

Responding to Creationists, Cranks, Conspiracy Nuts, Zealots, Deniers of All Stripes, and other Crazies.

A couple of days ago, I made a smart Alec comment on Facebook.

This is not unusual, I make a lot of smart Alec comments on Facebook.

But in this case I was commenting about the Texas School Board’s recent decision to remove discussion of any religion other than Christianity from US history books and to actively foist their warped, verifiably wrong, and willfully incomplete view of history on America’s school children.  Specifically, I said, “I’d like to personally thank Texas for rolling the US educational system back to the 14^th Century.” Way to go, douchebags and etc. With a link to Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog at the Discover Magazine and a discussion of the same topic from the view of an actual no-foolin scientist who spends an admirable amount of time slapping around stupid people.

It didn’t take long for a creationist to show up, and not just a creationist but a global climate change denying, Big Bang denying anti-evolutionist who doesn’t understand the difference between the origin of life and the origin of a species. Here’s his comment:

Evolution has about the same evidence as global warming. No transitional forms and no missing link. Look it up. Even the Big Bang doesn't make sense without a creator or cause. Darwin’s book Origin of the species never addresses the Origin of the Species.

People seemed think I was going to debate this guy, and while I found their comments amusing – there was no way I was going to do anything other than point and engage in ridicule. Not that he wouldn’t have been easy to rip apart, mind you, and in fact I count over a dozen things in that ridiculous paragraph that are verifiably wrong, provably so, definitively so, obviously so, beginning with the fact that my post had nothing whatsoever to do with either global climate change or evolution but rather the Texas school board’s decision to edit out an enormous historical contribution to human history, science, culture, and language because they don’t like Muslims and don’t want them portrayed in a favorable light. Ever. This pisses me off. I don’t give a flying fig what kind of ignorance they wish to indulge in down there in the land of pointy-toed boots, giant hats, and horny toads, but when their nonsense impacts my child’s education and makes my country the laughing stock of the of civilized world, then they are making it my business. I would feel the same way about it if they’d decided to edit Jesus out of the history books – if Jesus had actually invented optics, developed advanced mathematics and medicines, preserved human knowledge throughout the Dark Ages when Europe had fallen into illiterate feudal savagery while his Church was busy spreading the Black Death and burning people for hearsay, carried science and civilization to a third of the known world in his caravans, or explored more of the planet than the fifty miles of desert surrounding the place where he was supposedly born. It is true that I could have resoundingly debunked that creationist nonsense. Hell, I could have done it when I was ten.  Scientists like Plait and Michael Shermer make a career out of refuting this kind of bullshit, and I admire them for it.

But it doesn’t make any difference.

Not to the crazies anyway.

And it is my policy not to engage in debate with willfully stupid people.  Mostly I point and laugh. When that doesn’t work, I tend to resort to violence.

Now look, I’m not saying that debunking the cranks isn’t an honorable and worthwhile endeavor and a crappy job that has to be done. But people like the commenter mentioned above simply don’t operate within a fact based, reality oriented framework. Through design or defect, they are functionally incapable of processing input in a rational manner. Instead they see the world through some kind of warped goggles the way a mental patient views the world and no amount of debunking will ever change their delusional outlook. Period. In other words, it doesn’t matter how debugged the program is if the processor circuitry adds 2 and 2 and gets the square root of negative one, and in fact always returns (i) no matter what numbers you put in. You can keep plugging in the proper values, checking and refining your input, but the machine relentlessly spits out (i) and only (i). That’s exactly what it’s like to debate a creationist, or scientologist, or a moon landing denier, or an anti-vaxxer.

Oh, you can maybe force these nuts to eventually modify their silly nonsense – take for example how Creationism evolved (sorry) into Young Earth Creationism (Dino Variant) when the creationists simply could not deny overwhelming fossil evidence any longer. Like a psychotic incorporating the doctor and mental ward into his delusional world, the creationists simply put vegetarian dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark and then twisted bible quotes to make them fit. When debunkers pointed out that it would have been impossible to feed such creatures on an extended sea voyage, let alone shovel hundreds of tons of dinosaur manure over the side every single day in pitching seas (you know, like you would have when God drowns the whole damned (heh) world), hell eight people with shovels couldn’t do it in calm seas – and never mind the utter idiocy of this scenario in the first place. Creationists then decided that the thunder lizards were either carried onboard as eggs, babies, or that God put the full grown adults into some kind of divine stupor where the giant beasts neither ate nor shat. Asked where the creatures are now, Creationists claim they died out around about the time Jesus showed up.  God changed his mind about saving them apparently, the big sinners, guess they shouldn’t have eaten from the coconut tree of knowledge.  When the utter implausibility of the Deluge itself was painstakingly pointed out, Creationists invented an elaborate fantasy structure of an Earth that was as flat as a billiard ball (despite biblical references that contradicts this silly bullshit, not to mention, you know, actual science) and a globe-circling floating orbital water shield of Jesus that rained down for 40 days and nights to become a world drowning ocean that was also supplemented by geysers and fountains and other such juju magics and later just completely disappeared after turning into dinosaur bones or something – I mean, Jesus, web-toed Kevin Costner’s Water World makes more Goddamed sense and it had Jeanne Tripplehorn in a fish skin bikini. But, no matter what evidence is presented, the creationists will keep moving the goal posts like mental patients to persist in their increasingly elaborate and bizarre delusions. (Now, I suppose I must digress for a minute and admit to a certain mean spirited enjoyment when I see creationists get into deadly serious screaming matches over the fine points of their shared delusion – like when I listened to a couple of YECs arguing over the depth of the Deluge’s world girdling ocean, the point of their argument hung on a mere two foot difference (100 feet or 102 feet) based on what each of them thought it would take to drown a full grown brachiosaurus.  It was so like watching the class spaz argue to the verge of tears with the class dork over who would win a fight between the Gorn Captain and Boba Fett, entertaining if you have nothing better to do.) 

But see, that’s the point, I do have something better to do.

And it is neither my job nor my duty to debunk the idiots or pamper the mental patients.

In America, the Constitution may give these people the right to speak their bilge in public, but it doesn’t require that I have to respect it.

And I do not.

I cannot, and will not, suffer fools gladly. And I really can’t understand people who do.

Arguing with these people, attempting to reason with them, is a lost cause – because they are not reasonable people.

The only proper response to this nonsense is: Shut Up.

Let me give you an example.

Remember Marshall Applewhite?

Marshall was a fun guy. He got fired from his job for “emotional issues” (HR speak for “basket case”). In fact, he had a whole host of mental issues, which included hearing voices in his head and the belief that he was storing the preserved mind of Christ in his noggin (I guess if you’re going to keep Jesus in your head, you should have somebody for him to talk to – or at least cable basic). I don’t suppose it will come as a surprise to you that he was a big believer in UFOs and alien visitors.  Marshall, who preferred to be addressed by his secret space alien name “Do” (as in doodoo), also had himself surgically castrated, because, and dig this, the Jesus voice told him to cut his balls off. He founded an outfit named Heaven’s Gate.  Maybe you’ve heard of it – the whole bunch of them committed mass suicide back in 1997 so they could go meet an alien spacecraft hiding in the glowing tail of comet Hale-Bopp.

Marshall was nuts, right? (or rather no-nuts, if you want to get technical about it).

Here’s the thing, he didn’t get that way overnight. He didn’t just wake up one day and decide to cut his balls off. He got there a piece at a time, little by little, over years and years, because people indulged his bullshit rather than telling him to just shut up.

I know, I know, I see you over there waving your arms. You going all 1st Amendment in the face and shit. Hang on.

Hear me out.

You’re sitting on a bench, reading a book, enjoying the sun, poisoning the pigeons in the park. Whatever it is that you do in the half hour when you’re not pestering me here. This strange old dude with a funny walk and bleached hair comes mooching up. He asks if he can sit down. He seems harmless enough, so you nod to the empty half of the bench, and raise your eyebrow so he knows not to start anything.  He sits down in sort of a weird space alien sort of way, and after a minute says: “Say listen, after work a bunch of us are going down to Mexico for margaritas and to have our funberries hacked off by a drug lord’s plastic surgeon, then we’re going to dress up in purple capes and white sneakers and drink the strychnine Kool-Aid and put plastic bags over our faces. We’re doing this because Zombie-Jesus-who-lives-in-my-head says the Earth is about to be destroyed by aliens but we’re going to abandon our bodies and go live on the comet with the comet people.  We’ve got an extra seat, you interested?”

To which you reply, (a) “Whoa Doggies, count me in!” or (b) “Piss off you creepy little eunuch or I will snatch you up by the top of your pointy bald grape and jam my Thick Tip Sharpie into your eye so deep that I’ll be able to write Fuck You on the inside of your skull in four inch high indelible ink.”

The correct answer seems obvious doesn’t it? (it also explains why I always carry a Sharpie, just in case you were wondering)

But, see, here’s the thing: thirty nine people chose option (a).

It wasn’t a secret. They told people. They put out movies. They had a website – they still have a website. And nobody said to them, listen here, you stupid silly bastards… Everybody just sort of said, well, they’re a little odd. 

And it happens all of the time. Jonestown. The Branch Davidians. That bunch in France what burned themselves up along with their kids. Those obnoxious goofs who like to wave their bibles in your face while you’re waiting for the light to change. Creationists. Tom Cruise.

And people shake their heads and say “how could this happen?”

How could it happen?

It happens because nobody told these deluded idiots to shut up and stop acting like fucking retards – until it was too late (Note: about the use of the term “retards,” yes I know it’s offensive to some people. It is however an accurate description in certain cases. I don’t use it lightly. Further explanation in the comments section). It happens because we are far too indulgent when it comes to this kind of nonsense.  It happens because when somebody looks you in the eye and says with a straight face, “I believe Jennifer Love Hewitt really does talk to ghosts, it’s totally true,” you don’t immediately break into gales of taunting laughter and follow them about for the rest of the day ridiculing their stupidity with sarcastic barbed wit in front of their friends and co-workers.

Look, if you tell people you hear voices in your head commanding you to kill the President because Jodie Foster will dig it and want to have your babies, we lock your silly ass up and make fun of you on TV.  But if you tell people you hear a voice in your head and he’s telling you the president is a space alien in a rubber human suit, the TEA Party of Nevada will ask you to be their Senator – as long as you say the voice in your head sounds like Jesus. 

Sure, Jim, OK, but that’s not the same as creationism, or holocaust denial, or moon landing hoaxers, or the Anti-LHC crowd, or Neo-conservatism.

Yes it is, it is exactly the same.

Look, I’m not talking about restricting the freedom of speech or freedom to worship – what I’m talking about is intervention. I’m talking about cranking the public bullshit filter up to 11.

If somebody tells you that that the magical science fiction power of L. Ron Hubbard gives them the ability to fly, are you denying them their 1^st Amendment rights when you prevent them from stepping off the roof? Or, in my case, not.  Because to be perfectly honest, personally, I don’t really give a fig if they jump off that roof or not. Stupid is a terminal disease, it’s going to get you sooner or later – hopefully before somebody convinces you to cut your balls off. And, hey, you know, if they do fly well maybe I’ll go pick up a copy of Dianetics, and if they go bounce bounce squish well that’s just one less moron in the gene pool as far as I’m concerned – speaking of Scientology, hopefully it’s Vinnie Barbarino, that way I don’t ever have to watch another one of his shitty movies, I’ve never forgiven that hammy bastard for Battlefield Earth. 

But what about the people on the sidewalk below? Don’t we have a moral obligation to keep those poor bastards from getting crushed by falling idiots?

Yes. Damn it.

We do.

But you can’t do that by debate.

Debating them only rewards their bad behavior. Debating them only encourages them more. Having a real scientist like Plait engage them in debate automatically elevates their nonsense to legitimacy. When PZ Myers goes after creationists, he gives them equal footing with science.  Again, don’t get me wrong here, those scientists are professionals and I have nothing but respect for people like Michael Shermer – but they should come with the same warning as those Mythbuster Guys, i.e. don’t try this at home. Ever.

And it wouldn’t be necessary if more people would tell these idiots to step off.

The proper response to crazy is: Shut the fuck up.

It’s not for the government to tell people their beliefs have jumped the sharktopus, it’s up to us. Each and every one of us.

Oh, and pick yourselves up a couple of Sharpies.

My Security is in the Hands of Idiots

The name, it's all in the name, folks.

Meet James Robinson, retired Air National Guard Brigadier General and now commercial airline pilot. Captain Robinson is also one of the few commercial pilots who fly for a major airline and is certified by the Transportation Security Administration to carry a weapon in the cockpit - and he does.

He's also a terrorist.

See, James Robinson is on the TSA's "No-Fly" list.

Here's a guy who spent a significant fraction of his life serving the country and fighting the nation's enemies, is certified to carry a weapon through airport security and into the cockpit of a commercial aircraft in order to defend his passengers should the need arise, is trusted to pilot a multi-million dollar jet over American territory loaded with civilian passengers and explosive jet fuel, has been issued a flightcrew security badge and trusted with airport security access codes - and has to go through terrorist screening every single time he checks into his job.

Ridiculous?

Not so - not yet anyway, but give me a minute here.

It should be fairly obvious that this particular James Robinson is not one of the droids we're looking for. Nor is James Robinson, former US District Attorney and Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton Administration. And neither is James Robinson, who doesn't currently have an occupation - no, he's not some unemployed slacker, give him a break, he's only eight years old. But because of their names, James the General, James the Attorney, and James the Fourth Grader are on the Government's Terrorist Watch List. All have been stopped at the ticket counter and detained multiple times by TSA. And while they all eventually made their flights, they can expect to jump through hoops every time they try to travel via air, which in the case of James Robinson the Pilot, is pretty much every day.

Sounds crazy doesn't it? But such is the price of freedom from terrorism. As Americans, each and every one of us is a Security Soldier in the Great Patriotic War on Terrorism and we cannot be too careful. Somewhere, somehow, somebody named James Robinson did something that somebody in some division of the TSA took some kind exception to. It's all a little vague.

Who exactly is this mysterious James Robinson? Who is this underworld figure, this James Robinson, who lurks at the shadowy periphery of society? What crimes has he masterminded? What grave national threat does he pose? What has he done to attract the attention of the watery-eyed T-men? Has he tried to sneak more than one ounce of bottled water through security? Was his luggage found to contain an improvised nail clipping device? Did he attempt to board a plane with a pack of matches stuffed into his sock? Did he demand a second bag of peanuts in the air? Was he that coach passenger who attempted to use the first class lavatory after pounding down two jumbo bean burritos and a pint of Porter at the airport Chili's? What could it be?

Well, nobody outside of TSA knows exactly - and from the external indicators it would appear that nobody inside of TSA has a clear idea either. Be that as it may, James Robinson is on the list.

The problem is that there are, well, a lot of James Robinsons.

Over a million, world wide.

In fact, I personally know three James Robinsons myself, any one of which could be the James Robinson.

The mind boggles at the shear magnitude of TSA's job. Imagine the scope of this enormous search, the vast assets necessary to keep the airport bars and boarding ramps and skies clear of James Robinsons. Imagine, any one of those thousands of passengers jamming the concourses of O'Hare, or JFK, or LAX, or BumpPucker, Heartland America could be the man himself, James Robinson, wily terrorist, enemy of the state, hater of freedom and the American way.

Is it James Robinson, Professor of Government at Harvard? Maybe, you know how those liberal longhaired tree-hugging bastards like to blow stuff up. And Harvard is a veritable hotbed of Jihadism. Timothy McVeigh himself was captured wearing a Harvard hoodie (What? Facts? Don't cloud the issue with your facts, we're talking national security here. Start talking facts and you'll be on the list).

Could it be James Robinson, "The Map Guy?" Who makes "art on maps" and is a business partner of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration? It just could be that ole' James Robinson The Map Guy is hiding a few terrorist messages in those maps. Think of it, secret communications embedded in AAA Flip Books and Auto Club maps, undetectable, hidden in truck stops and gas stations across the county. Why any of James Robinson's Jihadist associates could pick one up for free with their rental car at the airport kiosk! No, best we keep this bastard on the ground.

Maybe it's James Robinson, the British comic book author and screen writer. It's a good bet, the shoe bomber guy was British and we can't be too careful when it comes to the English, after all they did burn down the White House once. The country is full of dukes and earls and knights and other such soccer hooligans - any one of which could attempt to headbutt their way into the cockpit and fly the plane into a Manchester United match.

Is it James Robinson, Director of the Colorado Opera? Opera is often in Italian for crying out loud. There is a lot of terrorism in Italy and it's a pretty good bet that James Robinson is attempting to unleash the basso profondo power at his disposal to destroy America. No, best he be kept off air transport and confined to the mountains of Colorado where the worst he could do is cause avalanches with his terrorist artform and bury a few foreign skiers and a beer brewery or two.

Is it James Robinson the filmmaker? James Robinson the Trombonist? James Robinson the Brooklyn community activist? James Robinson the biblical scholar? The list, it goes on, and the haystack is full of needles.

If only there was a way to sort them all out. If only the technology had advanced to the point where there was a way to sort through this endless parade of Xeroxed James Robinsons. If only there was something like a unique identifier issued to all Americans. If only a government agency could come up with a unique identifier, some agency that could do more to support this war on terrorism, say like the Social Security Administration maybe. Hey, "Security" is their middle name! Or if only each human had some unique identifying feature, damn this bland bilateral sameness we all share. If only the Lord had seen fit to give us unique finger prints, or retinas, or DNA, or street addresses, or even driver's licenses, then the James Robinsons wouldn't be able to hide so easily amongst us.

And if only my security didn't rest in the hands of complete and total idiots.

Yeah, if only.

"Because then the terrorists will win"

Let's look at a couple of simple paragraphs, shall we?

- The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Amendment IV, US Constitution.

I gotta tell you, that seems pretty clear cut to me. American citizens have the right to be secure in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their effects against unreasonable search and seizure. I think any reasonable person would agree that their 'effects' include correspondence (both paper and electronic) and private phone conversations. With my background, I know for a fact that the Armed Forces Security Act of 1949, the National Security Act of 1952, and the Foreign Intelligence Act of 1978 were very clear about this - and in my previous profession the quickest way to go to Fort Leavenworth for an extended stay was to violate the 4th Amendment rights of an American citizen. Things have changed.

Now, does the 4th Amendment mean that Americans can violate the law freely, up to and including treason and there's nothing the Government can do to protect the people or the Nation? No, of course not, the founders were idealists, not idiots. It's right there in the 4th Amendment, if the Government can show 'probable cause' before a judge, then they can get a warrant and the search and seizure of persons, property, papers, and other effects are then no longer 'unreasonable.' If the government can't provide enough evidence to convince a sympathetic judge - well, that would be a pretty good indicator that either the government doesn't really have a case, is just being lazy, or that the suspect in question really isn't doing anything they shouldn't be doing.

But, Jim, doesn't this make intelligence work more difficult? And if intelligence gathering is more difficult, doesn't that make us more vulnerable to the TERRORISTS (queue hair raising music).

Yep.

That's the price you pay for freedom and liberty. That's also why the first thing that goes in a tyranny is the right to privacy from the state; law enforcement is always easier in a dictatorship - there's a reason for that. The 4th Amendment is one of the fundamental rights of all Americans (yep, even Americans who wish to do the rest of us harm) and it makes it a hell of a lot harder for the government to act like a tyranny - which is why it's always the first right tyrants seek to destroy under the banner of patriotism. And it's always something, some terrifying threat used to justify the dismantling of the Constitution, fascist sauerkraut-smelling Nazies, Godless red commies, towelheaded Jihadi terrorists, Canadians, something.

- The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Amendment X, US Constitution.

Again pretty straight forward, if it isn't in the Constitution or specifically agreed on by the states, then the Federal Government can't do it. Cannot. Powers not delegated to the United States are reserved for the states themselves - or to the people. This is clearly stated. And it's interesting, because nowhere in the US Constitution or it's Amendments can I find anything that gives the Executive Branch the power to violate the 4th Amendment. No. Where.

Which brings us to this: President Bush Seeks Broader Wiretapping Authority.

Look, I used to do this for a living. No, not monitor Americans - emphatically not Americans - but I spent much of my career in the electronic intelligence field, and while I may occasionally talk out of my ass about things outside my area of expertise - this is something I know a great deal about, including the legal and Constitutional aspect - these principles were pounded into our heads over and over and over.

The article above says, "U.S. intelligence agents currently monitor international phone calls between people in the United States and suspected terrorists under a law known as the Protect America Act." You probably haven't heard of it, but basically the PAA was passed last year and what it does is amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so that instead of an actual warrant as specified in Amendment IV, an internal National Security Agency review process will determine the legality of each wiretapping and surveillance operation involving Americans. Read that again - an internal NSA review process, not a court, not Congress, not even the President. Lawful warrants are specifically not required.

That law expires next Friday, and Bush is quietly having a cow about it.

The article I linked to above uses the term 'intelligence agents,' but what they actually mean is the National Security Agency. Most Americans have little knowledge of this agency or it's mission and up until a couple of years ago even admitting that it existed was considered an act of disloyalty boarding on treason. When I worked there, we used to call it No Such Agency (or No Shit, Again?) Now, I have no intention of violating my oath, but I will say that NSA can be a damned scary place. It's big, bureaucratic to a degree that defies comprehension, complex beyond understanding, and compartmented like a nautilus shell. Some fairly strange folks do some fairly strange things there. Their business is secrets. Everything at NSA is classified. they'd classify the lunch menu in the cafeteria if they thought they could get away with it. It's an easy place to hide things, and it's any easy place for things to get out of hand, very, very quickly. NSA employees (there is no such thing as an NSA agent, NSA people are analysts or paste eating geeks or peons or military folks) are specifically trained not to ask about projects and departments they're not involved in. Information is disseminated strictly on a need to know basis - and you can guess who decides who needs to know. It's a place where it has become increasingly easy to break the rules, ignore the Constitution, and violate the basic rights of Americans. NSA was once an organization of idealists, but that idealism has been perverted, corrupted, diverted in the guise of false patriotism.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is an old, old platitude. It was true in the time of the Roman Emperors, and it's true now. The Protect America Act puts the fox in charge of the hen house. Not only does this violate the 4th Amendment directly, by bypassing the need for a Constitutionally required warrant, it violates the 10th Amendment because neither the states nor the people have formally given up their rights to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government as specifically required. More than that, the Protect America Act violates the very spirit of the principles of the Constitution, specifically separation of powers and the system of checks and balances. The PAA places power squarely in the hands of one person (something the Constitutional framers were adamantly opposed to, so much so that they fought the Revolutionary War to rid themselves of a King), it uses the military against America citizens (NSA is part and parcel of the DoD, and manned in many positions by military personal, especially at field sites), and it concentrates power behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy in the name of patriotism and national security.

This act is a mistake. It's renewal will be an even bigger mistake. Terrorism is the Red Scare of the 21st Century. Like I said above, it's always something. Commies, Nazis, Terrorists. The Patriot Act and the Protect America Act are the second coming of the same old calvary. Last time it was Joe McCarthy in the Senate and the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, this time it's George W Bush and the Protect America Act.

Just as with ole Tail Gunner Joe and HCUA, the Protect America Act isn't about any external threat to America - it's about power, corrupt absolute power, in the hands of one man. And call it whatever you like, it's as unAmerican as it gets and it's contrary to everything our Founding Fathers stood for.

Here's what I know, the Constitution of the United States has stood for 220 years, and it has survived the Commies, the Fascists, Civil War, and every other threat that has been thrown at it. It'll survive the terrorists too.

Unless we, and our elected leaders, give it away.