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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Suma who wrote (8327)	1/4/2006 3:47:10 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 541556

isn't the controversy about this issue more that authority to do it was usurped Interesting question. I guess it depends on whom you talk to. Technically it certainly is. At least that's my understanding, as well. It's also been my observation over the years that people, in general, don't care about technicalities, only the bottom line. They don't care about the first amendment, for example, only that flags shouldn't be burned. Or the way people react when I talk about federalism and private vs. public when they couldn't care less how poor people get help as long as they get it. I was talking about this to a friend right after this came out. He couldn't understand why I was so engaged by the issue. (I haven't been this engaged by an issue since Schiavo.) I was trying to explain going on about balance of power and the constitution and he clearly thought I was nuts. According to him, of course we need to spy on the enemy, bottom line. I think I saw a survey that asked about the technical issues. It asked whether the President broke the law or some such. I remember thinking that was a dumb question. Who the hell knows? The experts have lots of opinions. The only people who "know" whether he did or not are the fanatics who operate off of faith. I'd be surprised if even ten percent of the population knows that there are any technical issues here. They just know the degree to which they want us safeguarded vs the degree to which snooping makes them itch. Seems to me that there are multiple threads running through this issue and we should be looking at all of them. The technical aspects are important as are the structural ones. So is the bottom line. And then there are the ubiquitous partisan aspects. IMO, the bottom line should drive us with due attention to structural issues. Others definitely differ.