The right consistently constricts rights....

[LeftHander]

When it comes to freedom the Bush conservatives have a pretty poor track record.

Lets take stock:

1. No Fly Lists
2. Warrant less surveillance by NSA.
3. Bans on same sex marriage, and equal right for same sex couples
4. Narrowing the definitions of free speech and dissent.
5. The creation of "free speech" zones.
6. Limiting the ability of people to gather
7. Border fences and rules restrict the rights of people to move freely.
8. Suspension of Habeas Corpus
9. Extraordinary Rendition
10. Elimination of Due Process
11. Caging, voter purges and other election scandals
12. Eliminating equal rights protections for minorities
13. Taking away the ability for women to be responsible for their own body
14. Racial Profiling by FBI, CIA, TSA, and local police backed up by political Justice Department appointees.
15. Closing up open government gains made by increasing administration secrecy and weakening the FIA.
16. The use of evidence obtained by torture in a court of law.

I know there are many more....feel free to add to the list in subject lines...

[BOSSHOG]

1. On the other hand there are some rights they strive hard to retain

- insider trading for abramoff schooled young republicans
- getting multiple deferments for cowardly chickenhawks
- military desertion for those who don't want to take a drug test
- profiting from forced prostitution and forced abortion for workers in a foreign country
- advocating perjury "when there is no underlying crime"
- exposing the identity of covert operatives for political purposes
- just saying fuck you to whomever wants to hold you accountable
- Immunity for prosecution for doing something silly like telling the truth

So I think its really unfair of you to impugn the integrity of members of the party of responsibility.

[txaslftist]

2. So does the so-called left.

1. Hate Crime enhancers.
2. Restrictions on gun ownership.
3. Bans on "hate speech" and "politically incorrect" speech.
4. Suspension of Habeas Corpus.
5. Extraordinary Rendition.
6. Torture and Guantanamo.

After all, there were enough democrats in the House and Senate to stop these things if they'd had the nuts to fillibuster or stand up and be counted.

There's just about nobody left in DC who thinks our "rights" are worth protecting, left or right.

[deadmessengers]

3. Huh?

Rendition is a Wolfowitz/Cheney/Rumsfeld idea - so was the MCA (suspension of Habeas) and Gitmo. Hardly leftists, those guys.

[txaslftist]

5. Oh. You mean there weren't any Democrats in congress when they passed?

I must have misrememberated that.

See, 'cause JUST ONE could have filibustered, highlighted, stood up for our liberties. But NOT ONE did.

The only people in congress interested in our personal liberties and rights are either "fringe" like Ron Paul, or ineffective and overriden, like Russ Feingold.

Whenever the president has asked for the ability to strip us of our rights, nobody has stopped him, and they aren't stopping him now, even when they are supposedly in the "majority".

There aren't many congresspersons on the "left" to speak of. There are authoritarian Republicans and authoritarian Democrats.

[Beelzebud]

4. There are control freaks on all sides of the spectrum.

[txaslftist]

6. And they are in control.

[treestar]

8. 1-3 maybe; but 4-5 are solely RW projects

[txaslftist]

9. That the so-called left, had they any nuts, could have stopped.

But we didn't. For whatever reason, fear of AIPAC, fear of seeming soft of terror, fear of being seen as coddlers, fear of association with the ACLU, fear of losing an election...

We didn't stop them. So we're stuck with hoping in some distant time we'll have the votes to fix them.

And we won't, Guaran-damn-tee-ya, ever reach that distant time.

Habeas Corpus, for example, is gone for good, absent a war to bring it back (which is how it was created in the first place).

[treestar]

7. Provisions in laws that there shall be no judicial review of executive

branch decisions.

On this or that little question, there will be no chance to go to the courts to challenge the executive's decision, effectively freeing the executive from applying the law, since there is no way to challenge it. The executive can say black is white and there is nothing that can be done to challenge it.

Then letting that cancer spread from one thing to another will allow a dictatorship to be made out of the executive "legally."