"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin
The essential liberty of American Citizens to be able to carry on a private conversation in their home, bedroom, office, yard, vehicle or what have you without the fear of their own government eavesdropping on said conversation WITHOUT A WARRANT inside of The United States ..
"Enemy of the State" http://movieweb.com/movies/poster.php?id=1935&p=1&ps=enemy+of+the+state lesson over....
Liberty not to have the government interfere in private business, private activities and specifically private conversations. I am shocked you had to ask, are there any conservative principles left that conservatives have not yet betrayed in the last 5 years?
The monitoring is done only to intercept the international communications of people inside the US who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al- Qaida or related terrorist organizations. Get it? Joe Average Citizen on his cell phone to his cousin across the country is not being monitored. The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program. Congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities. Intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated. So unless the two of you have some reason to be monitored, i.e. you are calling or sending e-mails internationally in order to plot the deaths of Americans, you have nothing to fear (assuming you are American in the first place). This is not a partisan issue, for chrissakes, but a security issue. If Kerry was President right now and he was doing the same thing, I'd be pissed as hell at whatever publication leaked the story, and would defend his actions. He would be doing what I would expect the President to do - protect Americans. Stop living in the World of Denial and allowing your hatred of Bush to derail your ability to analyze events objectively. Wake up.
Bush refuses to answer questions about spying on Americans....??? I dunno about Bush but Clinton and his wifey got caught red-handed at it. Did those darlings ever answer questions?
Why don't they get a warrant then, any reasonable judge would be more than happy to oblige. Your blind faith that the government can do no wrong, is not corruptable and will not abuse its power is amazing given that you're supposed to be a freaking conservative. As I said before is there a single conservative principle you people have not yet betrayed. That's what they were telling the russians in 1930s, that only the enemies of the people should be concerned with unlimited and unchecked government power, that Ivan V. Ivanov has nothing to worry about. We all know how it all ended.