Junior, junior, junior, your position, as eloquent and as heartfelt as stated in your posting, contains some curious statements that compel me too respond with, what I believe, is a more holistic position (with all deference to School House Rock).

I too am careful not to wear my politics on my sleeve as I detest having to combat the emotional and intellectually empty responses from both head in sand far religious right wackjobs and head in the clouds Marxism really works if you throw enough money at it far left wackjobs. But let me get to the point; a couple of your statements beg to be challenged:

1) “I used to be able to say that free speech was inviolate in this country. I can't say that anymore.” Really? How has free speech been diminished in this country? Doesn’t the mere existence of this quote in a blog created by a private citizen without any government oversight disprove its very point? Even beyond the free speech enabling capabilities allowed by web 2.0 never in the history of any civilization has the ability to speak one’s mind been so available (radio and TV talk shows being the most prevalent). Perhaps you have mistaken the political bullets fired by each party at each party for facts. Having the party in power shout down the party that’s not is not the revocation of free speech, its politics.

2) “I used to be able to say that my country is not a country that would torture people, that we have due process in this country and, in fact, we would fight countries that would practice such evil. I can't say those things anymore either.” You’re throwing together two distinct notions of what a democratic society should support. Allow me to address them one by one:

Torture – Are you inferring that American citizens are being tortured or are you against the application of some pretty horrific treatment to enemy non-combatants (it’s taking a lot of willpower to not get myself started on the non-combatant thing – but I will say that the solution here starts with water boarding a few hundred lawyers)? First and most importantly, American citizens are not being tortured by their government, unless you want to include trying figure out exactly what you have in your Social Security account. Second, I’ll go all ‘get Mike Dukakis’ on you here and ask: If a family member of yours could be spared death or serious injury through keeping a brainwashed Pakistani awake for three days, would you approve?

Due Process - Your friends Jefferson, Adams, and please don’t forget James Madison, would respond with a loud ‘No!’ if you were to suggest that non-Americans, especially those charged with violent crimes and seditious acts against the United States, be treated the same as citizens. Yes, there is a due process in such cases but it does not encompass the same set of rights and privileges due you and me by the Constitution. The issue with our legal system is that common law has moved away from a process of law enforcement towards a process of policy enactment.

I too am ready for change but I could not bring myself to vote for Obama. My resistance came not from just his politics (BTW I’m not registered with any party) but from the pervasive feeling that every time he spoke I was listening to a charlatan. Someone who by saying nothing specific and issuing vague promises was able to create in his supporters minds an image of their personally ideal candidate. I wanted to peek behind the curtain but the curtain was never parted. So far his cabinet appointments have been reasonable and transition statements have been a mix of the reasonable centrist and the campaign era effusive. I have my fingers crossed – hopefully we’ll get a 21st century version of Harry Truman and not a Jimmy Carter from Hawaii.

Anyway, I cancelled out your vote but in Massachusetts that like shaving a snow cone off an iceberg.

Mike! I am so glad you found Last Ditch. I've been trying to get more people to comment on here. Mostly because it means that someone is actually looking and reading what I put up here and I feel less like I am just mentally playing with myself.

Thanks for the comments and the points you brought up. I am going to address each one, not so much to argue with you because I believe your points have some validity, but more to elaborate a little on what I was trying to say and what really was concerning to me about the policies of our current administration.

First of all, like you I am an Independent and have never belonged to either party and in the past I have voted for both. In fact, I think our current two party system and electoral college process is one of the biggest problems that we have with our government. It's the reason that your vote didn't mean anything. The electoral college may have made sense in the 1700 and 1800's when the only ones voting were the landed gentry but it doesn't make sense anymore. Also, the fact that it takes 100's of millions of dollars for a person to become president is just wrong. As long as that stays the case we will never get away from our current two party system and our leaders will continue to be representatives of that not very highly regarded species, "politician".

Let me address the free speech bit first. You are right in that our technology has allowed us an unprecedented number of ways to spread ideas and information, ways that most nations try to either control or curtail and restrict. The US even dabbles a little in that area. Fortunately, most people in the US, including the government, realize that they will always be a step behind the designers and architects of these different communication methods and so don't really bother trying to stop it. Google Earth is a perfect example of this. When companies first started serving up high resolution satellite images on the internet they had to do it from servers located outside of the US because the US military was horrified and tried to restrict it. They quickly realized it was pointless to try to stop it and they adapted to that fact. they knew Pandora had already opened the box so there was no point in closing it again. The result being that I can now go online and find, download, and print out a high resolution satellite image of Groom Lake Air Force Base (Area 51) in about 2 minutes. An image that had I had possession of 20 years ago would probably have landed me in jail on espionage charges.

However, these same technological capabilities can and are being used to monitor our everyday communications in ways most of us are not even aware of. Bush's secret executive order authorizing warrantless wiretapping by the NSA is one example. The fact is, unknown numbers of US citizens, the overwhelming majority of whom are perfectly ordinary people just living their lives, have been ID'd and categorized by our government based solely on what they say, not what they do. Just knowing that the government is doing this affects the way people communicate simply by making them fearful and intimidated. The intimidation may be subtle, but it is still there. On top of that, the whole policy, which Bush has said was for our own protection, is useless and based on flawed logic. Let's do some math that concerns the wiretapping and other ways the government is trying to protect us. It is based on a statistical rule called The Paradox of the False positive. This is how that paradox applies to terrorism (as put forth by Cory Doctorow).

Terrorists are really rare. In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twentythousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some softwarethat can sift through all the bankrecords, or tollpass records, or public transit records, or phonecall records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. Guess what? Terrorism tests aren't anywhere close to 99 percent accurate. More like 60 percent accurate. Even 40 percent accurate, sometimes. This is worse than useless simply because the resources that are being used for this are almost 100% guaranteed to be investigating innocent people. These resources could be used in much more effective ways to protect us.

I also realize that we still have freedom of the press and that journalists aren't being thrown in jail or being threatened with violence for what they report. Let's just say that the current administration shows a lack of respect for free speech that I personally find disturbing. Let's take just a couple of examples such as the "the free-speech zones" from the last couple of campaigns. These would be the locations that persons with dissenting opinions would be herded to by Republican officials during public events. These locations would typically be located 1/4 mile away and out of sight of the main event. This was done to keep them and their dissenting opinion out of sight of the event and the press covering the event. Or how about the journalists that were ejected from public, tax payer funded, Bush events by secret service because they were id'd as potential trouble makers based upon bumper stickers on their cars. Again, the message being keep dissent out of sight. I know that these don't seem like very big deals but I feel it is a slippery slope. Keeping dissent out of sight could easily lead to making dissent disappear. I would much rather live in a country where the phrase "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" actually means something as opposed to a country where the phrase "if you don't agree with me keep your opinion to yourself otherwise you are unamerican" holds sway. Just my opinion.

Now, for the torture bit. I did not imply that Americans were being tortured. In fact, I think that nationality should have nothing to do with this issue. It is my personal opinion that the US should have absolutely nothing to do with torture, period. Or enhanced coercive interrogation techniques as the Bush administration calls it (a rose by any other name...), with, as you said, the possible exception of lawyers. Not only because it is reprehensible, but because as an information gathering tool it really isn't effective. Let's face it, if I strapped you to a waterboard for a few days I could get you to admit to watching Hee Haw reruns with Gabe Kaplan and Nipsy Russell whilst planning an attack on the Pentagon. It wouldn't make it true. Also, as for the whole saving a family member thing, if I knew for a fact that by strapping a truck battery to some terrorist's naughty bits it would give me the information to prevent the death of someone in my family my response would be, which one's the positive and which one's the negative. The difference is that I am an individual. A nation can't act as an individual. Especially our nation. Our country stands for something very special in that it really is one of the few places on this planet where liberty is more than just a word. But liberty comes with risks, and I understand and accept that. I would rather live with the risks than see our country's core principals fade away.

Due Process. Do I think that non-Americans who have committed seditious and violent acts against us should be afforded the same rights as an American citizen? No, I don't. But that doesn't mean I think they should have no rights. We are at war, fine. Then the rules of the Geneva Convention should apply. Somehow, through some semantic shenanigans, our government has managed to get the ok to make people disappear simply by calling these people something other than POW's. These suspected terrorists are locked away with absolutely no representation and left to rot. The operative word here is "suspected". Do you know what that means? It means at least some of these people are not terrorists. They are innocent yet locked away indefinitely. The fact that our government can and will do this scares me.

As for your perception of Obama, I don't agree with your assessment of vague promises. In fact, for a politician, I have found his plans filled with a hell of a lot more details than other representative politicians and he certainly seems to be basing their success on facts as opposed to their innate "maverickness". His cabinet positions so far may seem either mundane or somewhat questionable but I am inclined to cut him some slack on this. Remember, he is inheriting a country that is in the worst shape it has been in for 30 years. I think he is trying to be careful here, but he has made some great ones, for example, Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Can you beleive that people are actually complaining about this choice because Chu isn't political? That right there says a lot about how our government works in that rather than having a leading expert in the relevant field in the position some people would prefer to have a clueless talking head whose most important skill was that they knew whose ass to kiss.

Anyway, I don't think we are all that different in our opinions. In fact, I was a little surprised to read about the way you voted. I mean, I liked and respected McCain as well, but come on, Palin? That choice was an insult to my intelligence. I certainly hope you will be pleasantly surprised with our new president and we don't get a new Jimmy Carter (Carter has a lot to answer for, especially giving away the Panama Canal). I also hope you will give him some time before you render your decision. The country is pretty much a clusterf*** right now and I have a feeling things might get worse before they get better. I, like you have my fingers crossed and remain hopeful. Unlike you, I don't have as much Scottish pessimism to overcome. You can't help it, man. It's genetic (I know, I know, you like to stress the Viking bits but those Scottish bits are still there).

Cheers

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