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Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers

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40hz:
Your post implies that this is a time of war.
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Seems to me that it's a "time of war", even though it might not be a declared war.  For my money, hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed people are proof enough.

-mrainey (June 28, 2010, 12:27 PM)
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+1 w/mrainey

When you can deploy over a quarter of a million US service people overseas and keep them there for going on a decade, and spend three trillion dollars in the process - then we are at war.

And all the legalese, think tank mumbo-jumbo, and Washington double-talk isn't gonna change that.

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg.   - Abraham Lincoln
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Same goes for not calling something what it is.

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Note: Funny how this whole thing was called a war until we learned we weren't going to "win it" as quickly and decisively as we thought. And as time drags on, it's becoming increasingly questionable whether we can "win it" (whatever 'it' is) at all.

But since the US never loses a war, it's now become quite obvious to some that this 'military engagement' can't be considered a war. Because if it were a war, we'd have already won it! QED

 :-\

Deozaan:
Now, if you are so worried that declaring a state of emergency will mean the automatic shutdown of the internet, don't be. Just because a number of provisions exist within the law for a president to take certain actions doesn't mean he will.-app103 (June 28, 2010, 12:47 AM)
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Maybe this president won't, but some future president might. I don't like anything that brings the President's powers closer to that of a totalitarian.

Besides, why should the government have a kill switch on the entire internet? What does the nation's security have anything to do with my house getting some bandwidth? In this day and age it's like shutting down the telephone system (thirty years ago) because a terrorist is using a phone to organize attacks.

Kill the internet to the White House or the Pentagon or whatever is under cyber attack, but there's no need to kill it in my local community. The only reason to shut it down everywhere in the nation is for conspiracy theory reasons, like the government being overthrown or the government suppressing the people/citizens to cover something up.

CWuestefeld:
When you can deploy over a quarter of a million US service people overseas and keep them there for going on a decade, and spend three trillion dollars in the process - then we are at war.
...
Same goes for not calling something what it is.
-40hz (June 28, 2010, 04:47 PM)
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The thing is, your logic gives government unlimited power. On the one hand, they've transgressed, upsetting the lives of millions of Americans (not to mention the foreigners), and spent hundreds of billions of dollars of our money.

Now, you're saying that because they've done that, we should knuckle under and accept other curtailments of our freedom as well? That just doesn't make sense.

40hz:
The only thing I see that's different is the President now has the legal authority to hit the kill switch.

The ability and power to do so were already there.

Not that it matters. The US government has become very comfortable with legal and constitutional ambiguities. And the Executive Office has always been granted considerable flexibility and discretion when it bumps up against laws limiting its powers. And in situations where this flex doesn't exist, the Executive Branch often creates it's own. 

I view this as something akin to the warning label on cigarettes. You knew those things could kill you before they issued the warning. The only difference is that now the risk has been officially acknowledged.
    

40hz:
When you can deploy over a quarter of a million US service people overseas and keep them there for going on a decade, and spend three trillion dollars in the process - then we are at war.
...
Same goes for not calling something what it is.
-40hz (June 28, 2010, 04:47 PM)
--- End quote ---

The thing is, your logic gives government unlimited power. On the one hand, they've transgressed, upsetting the lives of millions of Americans (not to mention the foreigners), and spent hundreds of billions of dollars of our money.

Now, you're saying that because they've done that, we should knuckle under and accept other curtailments of our freedom as well? That just doesn't make sense.
-CWuestefeld (June 28, 2010, 08:20 PM)
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That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that trying to put a pretty face on a situation by calling it something it's not plays into the hands of those who are abusing their political power.

The first step to overcoming an addiction is to acknowledge you have an addiction. And the first step to finding a solution to a problem is to accept that you have the problem. But you're never going to solve the problem or right the wrong until you stop trying to get around an unpleasent reality by calling it anything other than what it is.  

Right now it's not so much a question of preventing the governent from doing a power grab. They've already done one. Now the question is how do you get the control restored to the citizens. Because as things stand with all the new 'emergency' powers the government has been procedurally (since I'd hestate to characterize it as legally) granted, the United States meets the definition of a police state.

So I'm not granting the government anything. All I'm doing is calling a duck a duck.

And like it or not, our government does have de facto unlimited power. How much of it gets used is only regulated by it's willingness to let itself be regulated by law. If it is unwilling to accept legal limitations, it ignores the law. This can be made easier if the citizens give government their tacit approval to do so. National emergencies and patriotic fervor are good for that. But that's not absolutely necessary for laws to be ignored.  Take a look at any good political history of the US for examples. Sidestepping the law is nothing new for our government. In some respects, the overall 'theme' of American political history is the story of how all real power gradually came to be centered in the federal Executive Branch.    8)

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