During the period when this eavesdropping was still secret, the President seemed to go out of his way to reassure the American people on more than one occasion that, of course, judicial permission is required for any government spying on American citizens and that, of course, these constitutional safeguards were still in place.

But surprisingly, the President's soothing statements turned out to be false. Moreover, as soon as this massive domestic spying program was uncovered by the press, the President not only confirmed that the story was true, but in the next breath declared that he has no intention stopping or of bringing these wholesale invasions of privacy to an end.

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA's domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and insistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men.

There is a transcript of the speech here but I recommend listing to it. You can also find some bits on video here.

]]> http://www.beeth.com/archives/2005/07/index.html#8878 www.beeth.com (Carl) 2005-07-01T11:44:36 Mainly to play around I have started a podcast, It's experimental and maybe even a little ethically dubious as I will be pointing to other peoples shows. I hope to do this to promote them.

So to spark of, I'll start with IT Conversations my favorite feed. This is really intelligent programs mainly about IT but also other topics and as a sample I'm linking to a presentation Human Nature by Malcolm Gladwell. It's about how we can not trust peoples expressed opinions.