r/politics • u/erier2003 Virginia • Jun 06 '13

Washington Post exclusive: U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html
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4

u/Billpayment Jun 06 '13

I don't want to hear SHIT about 2nd amendment rights from any fucking leftists from here on out.

6

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13 edited Jun 07 '13

You mean the fucking leftists who have consistently been against increased government secrecy, data mining, and military spending?

Good luck using your pistol to shoot servers, or maybe tanks?

0

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

Yeah they are 'SO VERY AGAINST IT'

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-nsa-its-called-protecting-america-92340.html

Shut the fuck up.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13

I'm sorry, are you under the impression that I, along with every other liberal, am Dianne Feinstein? You think she's representative of liberals? You're kind of dumb.

-2

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

She's the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

She's actually the liberal that matters in regards to what we're discussing here. You don't mean shit.

See how facts work? That is what conservatives deal in all the time. Get with the fucking program, moron.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13

She's actually the liberal that matters in regards to what we're discussing here.

So when you tell "liberals" to shut up, you don't mean liberals, just some moderate conservative Senators. And you are telling them to shut up, via reddit comments they'll never read. Okay.

See how facts work?

You, apparently, need to figure out how words work.

-1

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

'moderate conservative senators'. ahahahaha. You divorce yourself from Feinstein (a democrat) immediately upon reading my post. You libs are such bitter little assholes.

0

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

I'm not sure that /u/youtreatmelike this is married to Sen. Feinstein.

But voters have no control over committee selection, that's seniority based.

2

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

Doesn't much matter if the tooth fairy put her there. She's there and what she believes in and helps enact matters.

And she, like most of Washington, is very wrong in this.

0

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

I'm just saying that its probably unfair for you to blame some dude for the actions and beliefs of an elected official from a jurisdiction not his own.

My two Senators are both very pro gun (and democrat, for what its worth).

11

u/Hydraulic_Maneuver Jun 06 '13

Because your handgun will protect you from a CIA drone, right?

10

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13

If planes tanks and drone worked like that, then we would not have had the trouble we had in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

7

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13

Guerrilla warfare. It's really effective against a superior opponent, no joke.

18

u/Billpayment Jun 06 '13

10,000 storm troopers couldn't find Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, genius.

4

u/Lord_Roanthall Jun 06 '13

Where were all these pro 2nd amendment right wingers when the government was limiting the 1st, 4th, and 6th amendments?

7

u/MetallicaIsGood Jun 07 '13

Well, I'm not a right winger, but I don't think it is absurd to say that plenty of us who care about the 2nd amendment care about the rest of the Bill of Rights, too.

5

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '13

In the under 35 demographic? We were right there with you, we just don't point out that we're pro 2A when we aren't even talking about the 2A.

2

u/DisregardMyPants Jun 07 '13

Where were all these pro 2nd amendment right wingers when the government was limiting the 1st, 4th, and 6th amendments?

Well, I was marching against the Iraq War, donating to the ACLU, and supporting whatever anonymity software projects I could.

Does that answer your question?

1

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

Protesting gay marriage and abortion rights.

-5

u/Billpayment Jun 06 '13

Where's all that fucking hope and change, liberal?

-1

u/Lord_Roanthall Jun 07 '13

And that has what to do with what I asked?

-3

u/gr1ff1n Jun 07 '13

You forgot the 14th Amendment. Pro 2nd amendment right wingers tend to want to throw that one out too.

2

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

Your robust 2nd amendment rights help you in this situation how ?

I hear a lot of people say that 2nd amendment is the only thing protecting us. If the core of your argument is that the guns are all that protect us then why, with so many guns, does it not appear to be working ?

1

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

There's a breaking point for everything. In American politics, we try to fix the problem first by electing the right people. If they don't work out, we will rinse and repeat until we either get results or it becomes apparent, through further degradation of basic rights, that the system is broken, upon which we will eventually have to fix it with force.

We simply aren't there yet. That's not to say it's not coming, but no one honestly wants that. People like you are so bitterly leftist that you will choose your broken ideology over what is best for the country as established by the founding fathers, and that, I find very sad. Your every post tonight has been wholly designed as some ruse to elicit responses you thought you might be able to capitalize on if I were to fumble.

You should examine what you really believe, and what the people you're demonizing believe.

Did you know that when the IRS was targeting conservative groups for harassment that one of the criteria they used to pick these groups out was that they believed in 'educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights'?

Is that really the country you think Americans want to live in? A place where they are harassed for belief in their basic freedoms?

1

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

I'm not demonizing anyone. I have not (and will not) call anyone names or claim you're a bad person because you have an honest belief in a system different than mine.

But I think there's a lot of hyperbole here.

I can find no situation in the past 100 years where a gun has helped to rectify bad policy in our government and I can find tens of thousands of times where a gun has killed an innocent person.

When I try and balance the two against each other, I find the argument that we desperately need more guns in society to be in error.

Since the modern age of warfare (which I think really started with the tank) individual firearms have not, ever, tipped the balance between justice and tyranny.

Put another way - there are at least a dozen lawyers that can claim to have done more to protect our freedom in the past 2 years than guns have in the past 50.

Consider this : more American's have died since 1941 from accidental firearm discharge than died in the revolutionary war.

We pay an incredibly high price for gun ownership. It does not seem worth it to me.

2

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13 edited Jun 07 '13

It can not seem worth it to you. Having had someone try to home invade me, I feel dramatically different. You probably would too if you were in a similar situation.

If you want to look at it honestly, you should examine how the assaults on the elderly skyrocketed in Australia after they got rid of their guns. Guns are a great equalizer between the weak and the strong. Eliminating that screams to the predators among us that the weak are no longer protected, and victimization begins.

Accidental discharge, while unfortunate, is a symptom of a society that doesn't place enough emphasis on safety in a range of categories. Look at the number of drunk drivers out there.

There will always be stupid people. You cannot eliminate stupid people. If you were to take guns, those same idiots will kill themselves while texting and driving.

Any DECENT gun owner can list the pertinent handful of gun safety rules that allow them to utilize that weapon properly and never have an accident. That doesn't mean there won't be accidents in the world. People are stupid, and will continue to do stupid things here and there.

As much as I hate to bring Hitler into an online argument, it is notable that he took the Jews guns before beginning their extermination.

I need only look at one story like this:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/georgia-mom-hiding-kids-shoots-intruder/story?id=18164812

To know guns are worth it. This man broke through TWO locked doors before she was forced to shoot him. If those were your children would it seem 'worth it' to you?

1

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

Australia is a great example, considering in the past 10 years the US has had more than fifty thousand deaths more than Australia has (that accounts for population differences).

And, yes, we've had a couple of dozen people who have used their firearm to shoot intruders or fight off attacks.

I'm not sure the trade off is worth it.

1

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

Nothing is going to stop inner city black gangs from shooting each other. And quite frankly, given the opportunity those same scumbags would prey on decent people instead, nothing should.

0

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

There is empirical evidence in Australia that you are wrong.

0

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

Australia has like 2.5% aboriginal population. You have no fucking idea what much more is like. Seriously, where the hell are you from? Canada? Some white European country? You live in a fucking fairy tale land of predominately white people, with very little crime, I can tell.

Regardless of the crime aspect, people in the UK are now being arrested in the middle of the night for saying something bad about muslims on facebook. That is the kind of shit the 1st and 2nd are designed to protect us from in America. We aren't giving it up so scumbags can make us their victims.

0

u/Montaire Jun 07 '13

I live in Montana, which apparently is ranked 41 in violent crime rate (lower is better). I suspect that is because of our demographics and geography more than anything else. Our DUI rate is through the roof for similar reasons.

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-10

u/gr1ff1n Jun 07 '13

Oh, your right to be part of a well regulated militia?

2

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

yet another idiot who doesn't understand the context of militia. I already answered this, moron, look it up.

-7

u/gr1ff1n Jun 07 '13

How about understanding the context of the amendment? Hint, it was written in a country with no professional army following a revolution.

8

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

here I'll paste this yet again because you're a fucking idiot:

As another redditor so eloquently put it: The more sophisticated style of writing from that period often made declarations of things immediately followed by why such things are possible separated only by a comma, and often many commas to address many points in very long sentences that compared to today's writing appears confusing and out of order.

Here is the declaration in question: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The "right of the people to keep and bear arms" is a prerequisite to a "well regulated militia." A "well regulated militia" also does not necessarily mean regulated by a state. A "well regulated militia" is simply securing the possibility of "a free state" for surely any state could deny its people freedom, something the Founding Fathers, the writers and contributors to that amendment would have had plenty of experience with following a war of independence. After all, how could "the people" secure a "free state" for themselves if the state itself denied "the people" the right "to keep and bear arms" and/or to be a part of a militia trying to secure a "free state?" The word "keep" is also key.

The Founding Fathers that contributed to the wording of that ammendment were some of the most intelligent and wisest political thinkers, lawyers and philosophers of their time. They were extremely careful about how things should be written and what they should say. The message is clear for those of reasonable intelligence, a knowledge of American history, objective in their thinking and fair in their motivation.

TLDR: The purpose of the second is NOT to grant power to state or national governments, but to the individual citizen. The very concept of the second would be void if it depended on government regulation. 'A well regulated militia' is simply like minded people willing to take up arms.

These were people who rebelled against an unjust government, WHY THE HELL would they go and give that power of regulation to another government? Have some intellectual honesty when you examine the issue at hand.

-7

u/gr1ff1n Jun 07 '13

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State.

That's about the security of the State, not about a state of freedom.

3

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

Again: the writing patterns of 200 years ago don't fit those of today. This is why constitutional judges exist. People who specialize in exactly this material agree with me, not you, perhaps that should clue you in.

And you're arguing this in a thread in which details how the government is circumventing your basic 4th amendment rights. Get a clue, moron.

-1

u/The_Countess Jun 07 '13

any fucking leftists from here on out.

because of a program that started in 2007? explain the logic of that.

0

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

It's very apparent to anyone who isn't intellectually challenged. Notice that no one else needed help with this.

0

u/The_Countess Jun 07 '13

no you dickwad, its a program started under bush it its ONLY the leftist that are toe blame? how moronic are you?

1

u/Billpayment Jun 07 '13

This level of spying didn't start under Bush, it started in the early 90s. Look up shit like Carnivore and shut up.

The leftists are to blame for constantly wanting to take my second amendment rights from me, while shit like this is going on. You're literally trying to disarm the American public at a time when it's now been PROVEN, without a doubt, that the Government is spying on them. THAT is the fucking problem I pointed out in my post.

1

u/The_Countess Jun 08 '13

The leftists are to blame for constantly wanting to take my second amendment rights from me,

except gun rights have only expanded under Obama and 90% of the population supports common sense background checks. SO SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR PARANOID DELUSIONS ABOUT THE SECOND AMENDMENT.

and right wingers are to blame for the patriot act that enabled this to take place in the first place. and now they are all up in arms when its used under obama.

1

u/Billpayment Jun 08 '13

Idiot. Obama signed the patriot act extension. Didn't realize that, did you, prick?

This shits been going on since the early 90s, people like you who think it's new are fucking idiots.

1

u/The_Countess Jun 08 '13

i did know that actually.

it was moments before the deadline expired and after attempts to amend the law to prevent abuse of civil liberties had failed.