{"quotes":[{"text":"It is a fundamental principle of American democracy that laws should not be public only when it is convenient for government officials to make them public. They should be public all the time, open to review by adversarial courts, and subject to change by an accountable legislature guided by an informed public. If Americans are not able to learn how their government is interpreting and executing the law then we have effectively eliminated the most important bulwark of our democracy. That’s why, even at the height of the Cold War, when the argument for absolute secrecy was at its zenith, Congress chose to make US surveillance laws public. Without public laws, and public court rulings interpreting those laws, it is impossible to have informed public debate. And when the American people are in the dark, they can’t make fully informed decisions about who should represent them, or protest policies that they disagree with. These are fundamentals. It’s Civics 101. And secret law violates those basic principles. It has no place in America.","author":"Ron Wyden","tags":["constitutional-law","law","national-security","secrets","surveillance"],"id":49591,"author_id":"Ron+Wyden"},{"text":"No,' Foyle roared. 'Let them hear this. Let them hear everything.'You're insane, man. You've handed a loaded gun to children.'Stop treating them like children and they'll stop behaving like children. Who the hell are you to play monitor?'What are you talking about?'Stop treating them like children. Explain the loaded gun to them. Bring it all out into the open.' Foyle laughed savagely. 'I've ended the last star-chamber conference in the world. I've blown that last secret wide open. No more secrets from now on.... No more telling the children what's best for them to know.... Let 'em all grow up. It's about. ","author":"Alfred Bester","tags":["1956","awakening","common-man","complacency","duty","elitism","gully-foyle","national-security","responsibility","scapegoat","star-chamber"],"id":58652,"author_id":"Alfred+Bester"},{"text":"When national ideals are confined to insignificant issues reflective primarily of a personal choice, there lies a problem of distorted priorities.","author":"Moutasem Algharati","tags":["awareness-of-guilt","choice","choices-and-consequences","confining","corruption","corruption-politics","decision-making","decisions-inspirational","distorted-thoughts","distortion","experience","freedom","freedom-of-choice","global-community","government-corruption","idealism","ideals","inspirational","issue-importance","making-a-difference","national-security","nationalism","patriotism","personal-development","personal-planning","personal-responsibility","political-correctness","political-philosophy","politicians","politics","primary","priorities","priorities","prioritizing-your-goals","problems-of-today","reflections","role-of-government","role-playing","self-esteem","selfishness"],"id":103223,"author_id":"Moutasem+Algharati"},{"text":"The New START accord cuts the strategic nuclear arsenals on each side to 1,550 warheads. Can any of its critics make a case that our security would be imperiled if, the very next day, Obama and Medvedev made moves to take the levels down to 1,000—then to 500?If so, come show us the math. If not, it may be time to stop making arms control so politically complicated—time to stop letting arms control get in the way of disarmament.","author":"Fred Kaplan","tags":["arms-control","barack-obama","dmitry-medvedev","geopolitics","national-security","new-start","nuclear-disarmament","nuclear-weapons","politics","russia","united-states"],"id":116779,"author_id":"Fred+Kaplan"},{"text":"Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.","author":"Barack Obama","tags":["accountability","national-security","patriotism","whistleblowers"],"id":126511,"author_id":"Barack+Obama"},{"text":"Authorities this broad give the national security bureaucracy the power to scrutinize the personal lives of every law-abiding American. Allowing that to continue is a grave error that demonstrates a willful ignorance of human nature. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete disregard for the responsibilities entrusted to us by the Founding Fathers to maintain robust checks and balances on the power of any arm of the government. That obviously raises some very serious questions. What happens to our government, our civil liberties and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked? As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.","author":"Ron Wyden","tags":["law","national-security","secrets","surveillance"],"id":128245,"author_id":"Ron+Wyden"},{"text":"However, this court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules—a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.","author":"Colleen McMahon","tags":["executive-powers","law","national-security","orwellian","surveillance","surveillance-society"],"id":169189,"author_id":"Colleen+McMahon"},{"text":"From time to time our national history has been marred by forgetfulness of the Jeffersonian principle that restraint is at the heart of liberty. In 1789 the Federalists adopted Alien and Sedition Acts in a shabby political effort to isolate the Republic from the world and to punish political criticism as seditious libel. In 1865 the Radical Republicans sought to snare private conscience in a web of oaths and affirmations of loyalty. Spokesmen for the South did service for the Nation in resisting the petty tyranny of distrustful vengeance. In the 1920's the Attorney General of the United States degraded his office by hunting political radicals as if they were Salem witches. The Nation's only gain from his efforts were the classic dissents of Holmes and Brandeis.In our own times, the old blunt instruments have again been put to work. The States have followed in the footsteps of the Federalists and have put Alien and Sedition Acts upon their statute books. An epidemic of loyalty oaths has spread across the Nation until no town or village seems to feel secure until its servants have purged themselves of all suspicion of non-conformity by swearing to their political cleanliness.Those who love the twilight speak as if public education must be training in conformity, and government support of science be public aid of caution.We have also seen a sharpening and refinement of abusive power. The legislative investigation, designed and often exercised for the achievement of high ends, has too frequently been used by the Nation and the States as a means for effecting the disgrace and degradation of private persons. Unscrupulous demagogues have used the power to investigate as tyrants of an earlier day used the bill of attainder.The architects of fear have converted a wholesome law against conspiracy into an instrument for making association a crime. Pretending to fear government they have asked government to outlaw private protest. They glorify 'togetherness' when it is theirs, and call it conspiracy when it is that of others.In listing these abuses I do not mean to condemn our central effort to protect the Nation's security. The dangers that surround us have been very great, and many of our measures of vigilance have ample justification. Yet there are few among us who do not share a portion of the blame for not recognizing soon enough the dark tendency towards excess of caution.","author":"John F. Kennedy","tags":["anti-terrorism","anticommunism","association","civil-liberties","civil-rights","fear","first-amendment","free-speech","freedom-of-association","government","national-security","oppression","war","war-on-terror"],"id":189146,"author_id":"John+F.+Kennedy"},{"text":"There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court—and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki.","author":"Mark Gevisser","tags":["2009","african-national-congress","apartheid","communications","crime","criminal-justice","cronyism","jacob-zuma","justice","minister-of-state-security","national-security","police","reconciliation","south-africa","stalinism","thabo-mbeki"],"id":232015,"author_id":"Mark+Gevisser"},{"text":"During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and 'experience' to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband’s help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration?","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["2008","al-gore","ba-ath-party","ba-athism","ba-athist-iraq","bill-clinton","george-w-bush","hillary-clinton","iowa","iowa-caucuses","iraq","iraq-war","lies","national-security","saddam-hussein","united-states","united-states-elections-2008","united-states-senate"],"id":240183,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":24,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}