Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans’ Credit Cards in Real Time

Perhaps I was unclear. When I say an agency can issue a subpoena, I mean exactly that: rather than requesting one from a court, an agency can issue one under its own administrative authority - within the limited scope authorized by statute. The IRS can subpoena your bank statements, say, or the EPA could subpoena a suspected polluter's freight delivery data. Many agencies have limited powers to investigate and then prosecute or impose financial penalties, otherwise the court system would need to be considerably expanded. After going through any dispute/appeal process of the agency, then a matter can be heard in state or federal court as appropriate. It's good to get proper legal advice and do everything in writing from the beginning, or you can waste several years fighting the inevitable!

The 'preferred method' mentioned in the Hotwatch briefing does involve going to a judge too, but that's for the separate purpose of getting a secrecy order to avoid tipping off the suspect. The government did get a lot of new powers to investigate things under the PATRIOT act. Though some expired or were amended later, civil liberties were a low priority in October 2001 when people were still feeling panicked about terrorism.

I agree that the DoJ should call back and say 'we're looking into that, give us a few days' - but you know, people would find a reason to be paranoid about that too. Newspapers used to say 'had not called back by press time,' but with blogs that might mean anything, such as waiting only an hour (I consider Wired a responsible news source in this respect, but I still don't know how long they actually waited, and would sort of like to). Remember this Hotwatch powerpoint is 5 years old, and agencies are being told to tighten their budgets a great deal lately; press & public relations departments are often the first to see cuts because they're considered 'fluff' expenses compared to the core mission of a department.

No, it's a onepercent tax to use any old ATM out there. Use your bank's or credit union's and you done have to pay a thing (outside the normal fees incured by using any finacial institution).

Its also probably worth noting that most will reimburse you for a numer of ATM fees a month...

great quotes!

Agreed, see Weber's focus on government legitimacy. In particular, government's role is to hold a monopoly on the use of force.

There's truth to that, but don't forget that NAFTA and "house for every family" also came from Clinton. Obama has done a few things differently than Bush to be sure, but not as much I think most would have suspected given a majority in the House and Senate.

The last time the U.S. had no deficit was 1845. The largest rampup of government spending and deficit spending was under FDR.

The most responsible presidents post-WWII seem to be Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Clinton. I've got LBJ pegged as the least responsible, with no one else coming even close. Carter didn't run much of a deficit, but caused a lot of problems with price controls.

I'm much less of an admirer of Reagan than most people. He did some important consolidation and his tax cuts seemed to fuel a lot of the money that then went into the tech boom in the 1990's, but I agree his domestic policies were so-so. The first Bush seems like he was a decent president. Clinton had a good run. G.W. Bush had a mix of good and bad policies. The book's still open on his foreign policy, and will be for 10-20 years. If Iraq and Afghanistan become allies of the USA the way West Germany, Taiwan, and Japan became following WWII, and South Korea became following the Korean War, then we might look much for favorably upon him later. (Remember, Truman was despised following his leaving office, about as much as Bush. Now he's generally regarded favorably)

Obama's presidency seems like a mess to me, but I think McCain's would've been a mess too.

I think it's fair to say that Republicans tend to make larger short term deficit expenditures for war, but create less permanent structural spending. Even that's not entirely true though, since Eisenhower went isolationist, and LBJ greatly ramped up America's military involvement following Kennedy's assassination.

This is before even getting in Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, etc. Jackson was a Democrat, but I think you'd consider him an ancestor of the modern Republican Party. Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican, then a Progressive, but I think it'd be fair to say he was an ancestor of the modern Democrats.

Anyways, it's complicated. I'm not in love with either of the parties. I was originally happy with Obama winning, but I hope he's defeated next run by a government that focuses on consolidation, investing, cutting/paying off bad debts, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, along with no moral/social controls or social engineering.

I'm not sure how likely that is to happen, but one can hope.

> Well, consider the '3 strikes' law in California - commit three felony offenses, go to jail for life.

Three strikes is one of the most misunderstood laws on the books. The first two offenses have to be deemed "serious" offenses - which, if memory serves, only includes a violent felony or child molesting.

If someone commits two violent crimes and then commits a third felony, they're probably not someone who was going to wise up. A guy who commits third degree murder once, gets out of jail seven years later, commits aggravated assault, gets out of jail five years later, and then commits a third felony just doesn't get it, and is obviously going to keep committing crimes.

There was a famous case people were outraged about where a guy got three-strikes life in jail for stealing a stereo system. What the newspapers didn't report enough was that he'd already mugged someone with a knife and stuck up a convenience store at gunpoint. I think there's a pretty reasonable case that that guy was going to keep doing stupid violent stuff until you locked him up forever...

(I did a little research into this - I was really against three strikes at first, until I actually learned more about it. It actually seems pretty sensible. The overcrowding problem at prisons is largely unrelated to three strikes, and has more to do with prison sentences on some offenses that you could probably just issue a fine and move on)

You know, referendums sound great on paper, but there is so much subterfuge, you almost need a professional to figure out what many of them actually mean.

If only you could hire someone that agreed with your values and made it his career to effectively pursue your interests as you define them. Some sort of "representative"

Well, that was the whole point behind representative government. Except that in the US and many other places, the system works as if geography is the only thing that matters.

In a system using proportional representation that is not the case. You don't have to settle for someone who best pretends they agree with everyone in your area.

You can hire an expert to handle your legal matters, your health, your mechanical needs and hundreds of other things. And they do what you tell them to do. Why can't you have your chosen expert represent you in government?

Consider the power of this. If we had PR in the US Congress from the very beginning, African Americans could have had representatives in Congress the instant they got the vote, even if half their votes were never counted.