Originally posted by: palehorse74
Litmus test.
Answer the following questions:
1) Are you against the Patriot Act?
2) Are you against the racial profiling of ME men/women at airports?
3) Are you against the NSA wiretap program?
4) Are you against the existance of Gitmo?
5) Do you believe that habeas corpus has been suspended in the U.S.?
6) Are you against the death penealty?
7) Are you against the monitoring of bank traffic?
8) Are you against the new Detainee Bill?
...
1) Not all of it, just the less useful and/or more intrusive portions of it. There ARE some good ideas there, however.
2) Yes, please note that this doesn't mean I'm against ALL profiling, I just happen to think racial based profiling is a crude, ineffective and offensive way to do profiling.
3) Not at all, I'm all in favor of listening to terrorist phone conversations (and email exchanges, IM chats, etc), I'm just not in favor of doing it in the US without a warrant.
4) Not at all, I'm against some of the activities that seem to go on down there, but clearly we need a prison facility for terrorism suspects, and Gitmo is a safe location for a number of reasons.
5) Yes, at least with regards to certain groups of people.
6) Nope.
7) Nope, but again, if it involves warrantless spying on Americans (for any reason) I'm against those particular activities. My understanding is that no such thing is happening, so I'm fine with it for the moment.
8) Yes.
Of course a litmus test for a joke that largely misses the point is kind of silly, but I'll play along