Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants
In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned. In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts.
“[ . . . ] plus similar sites in at least five other cities [ . . .]
How ironic for a historically patriotic and conservative town like San Diego; since the revelations of 9/11, you just know they’ve targeted us for heavy surveillance.
So I guess I’ll start smiling and waving to all the City and utilities workers I see around town, and quit wearing my Kafiya in the poolhall.
Leave it to Team Bush to do this shit and not beef up security around our own nuclear facilities. Not only are they breaking the law, they’re wasting money.
Oh, my dear lord. You mean federal agents are actually staying on public property and using utterly passive sensors to try to detect potential nuclear and/or radiological threats? Never setting foot on private property, never entering their space, only looking for evidence that has left that property?
Why, this is just one short step of tattooing people and sending them off to concentration camps! Why won’t anyone stop these madmen?
I must have missed those stories where these mosques have set up X-Ray clinics inside, to provide health care for their members. And I certainly haven’t heard of any Muslim ever using WMDs, or threaten to develop nuclear weapons and wipe another nation off the face of the earth…
J.
Tom Maguire says it best:
I would like to know whether or not agents actually “entered” the residence, mosque, or business. I would also know the rationale for targeting an individual site for detection. While monitoriing radiation output seems like the smart thing to do, this is where we come to that old cliche about not knowing when to draw-the-line on a subject. If we condone this and say that it is done in the interest of National Security, it is almost as we give our tacit assent to, “let’s keep an eye on these Arabs….especially those Muslim Arabs.” I would hope that hey already had compelling information that would make these people suspicious, not just the fact that they were Muslims.
Tom may say it, but he certainly didn’t say it best, and if you glean that sort of message from some of the questions raised you need to take the blinders off and look at this in full view. I can’t comment on whether it is right or wrong without knowing some of the answers to the questions I raised in my first post. That is why I stop short of saying that this is right or wrong. Do you know all of the particulars?
Dkel;
You can call this anecdotal, but I have some indirect experience
with how unchecked governmental power can work.
I have a friend of several years who lives in California and has
a sister who is active in the Democratic Party in Texas.
A few months ago he was visited by the Feds and asked questions
about a phone conversation he had with his sister a few weeks
before. They entered his replies in what looked like a Blackberry
and left. Shortly after he talked to his sister and found they also
had questioned her, but a little miore malevolently. A ‘one-way
ticket to Guantanamo’ was the reported threat made against her.
Again I say, it is not corroborated and the brother was reluctant to
give me any more details. But he was obviously shaken, as was
’sis.
Here is something even scarier….they have radiation monitors in subway stations!
I have patients who were treated with radioactive iodine for thyroid disorders who set off the detectors and were questioned by the authorities. I even have to write notes explaining the low level radiation they emit. Of course they aren’t muslims, so the leftists aren’t quiet as interested.
Oh…the humanity of it all…..
Oh, and Semanticleo, those weren’t the Feds, those were the “Men in Black”, your sister is an alien…..sorry to break the news to you.
Jay Tea Says: “You mean federal agents are actually staying on public property ..”
What was reported:
“To ensure accurate readings, in up to 15 percent of the cases the monitoring needed to take place on private property, sources say, such as on mosque parking lots and private driveways.”
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/nest/051222nest.htm
Idiot.
Moron, I don’t have a sister.
Done any ingrown toenail surgery lately? If so, it would explain
your mental fatigue.
You just THINK you don’t….that is what a neuralizer does to you…
Don’t let that tin-foil hat slip off
Where did you get your degree, Dr? Hollywood Upstairs Medical School?
Close, USC, it was right down the street from Hollywod Upstairs….
Go Trojans…..
HO,HO,HO,
Y’know, I think the feds are on pretty solid ground with this one.
What they’re doing doesn’t run the risk of disrupting or discouraging any legal activity. If my memory isn’t failing me (as it often does), I think case law will be squarely on their side this time.
Yes, profiling by nationality or religion is stupid and the targets they’ve chosen probably include some very unlikely places for anyone to be building a nuclear device. But this doesn’t strike me as rising to the level of an “unreasonable search.”
See, Cleo, you can’t even make up a believable scenario where monitoring for radiation is troublesome.
Have you ever been bothered by the police without cause? In the real world, they would have broke your head, or got you in a strangle hold before you could get to the phone to call the ACLU; forget the editorial desk of the New York Times.
Grow up, everybody! I’ve been stopped and searched, had my baggage checked ( in the street! ), been strangled by my necktie in Times’ Square, held without bail in Texas.
I’ll take that over being vaporized any goddammed day.
“I ll take that over being vaporized any goddammed day.”
Frank_D
Another strawman, another dollar.
This “leak” was politically motivated - by Bush, to distract from the current and coming scandals (Abramoff is pleading, Rove still may be indicted, Frist’s stock sale, DeLay’s one dismissed charge is being re-submitted, Bob Ney is dead meat, the illegal wire-tapping scandal, to name a few). It is meant to confuse the issue (and for some it has apparently worked) to show our “great leader” doing everything possible to “protect” us, when in reality it is used to increase presidential power. Your answer fails the “Clinton Test”; would you be so accepting of this if the president’s name was Clinton instead of Bush? I think not.
Spin yourself silly - what does “strangled by my necktie, and held without bail” contribute to the discussion? I’ve spent time in jail for false arrest, and been forced to sleep in a ditch before . . . so what?
That’s about as relevant as “strangled by my necktie, and held without bail”.
Although you say you were “strangled by my necktie, and held without bail”, you neglect to tell us; was your crime so serious that bail was denied you? Perhaps it (denying you bail) was warranted; but since you (like all republican propagandists) only tell the half of the story that furthers your interest, we are left to conclude your “tale” is bogus - otherwise, you would have given us the details of the arrest. So typical.
dano — you’re being idiotic. I suppose if I had posted a 2000 or 3000 word retelling of both the stories that would have been more helpfdul
So, since there is not enough of the story for you to question and doubt, I can save myself a lot of typing, because you called me a liar. That’s just plain stupid, and helps you to evade the point of the story: Many people have been the victim of police excess.
It’s a part of my life, and many other Americans’ lives. We don’t just shut down the police department, because there are “bad apples.”
The whole think about “piss - your - pants scared republicans are by nature” coming from a Democrat, with a tradition of better Red than dead for the entire Cold War, is laughable.
And, of course, the whole Indians story is a non sequitur of the highest rank.
Try again with a real argument next time.
And cowardly comments like “I ll take that over being vaporized any goddammed day” show how piss-your-pants scared republicans are by nature. The early settlers (not the land-hungry speculators who came later) had trouble differentiating between “good” Indians and “bad” Indians. Their solution in most cases was to try and not piss the Indians off - a lesson we might have learned, if the jingoist elements of society hadn’t overruled cooler heads, and insisted that the only reason they attacked us is because “they hate our freedoms”.
Hey dano, how’d that work out for the Indians?
“I can save myself a lot of typing, because you called me a liar.”
And you sure “saved your self” from telling the rest of the story - the part about why you were held without bail - it must have been quite a reprehensible act - or were you a flight risk?
The fact that you didn’t tell the whole story means that yes, functionally, YOU ARE A LIAR! You must think I’m a republican to swallow such fairy tails! Get you story straight and tell the whole thing, or spare us the self-righteous half-truths.
“It s a part of my life, and many other Americans lives. We don t just shut down the police department, because there are ‘bad apples.’
Did you get that Olive Oyl physique from battling strawmen?
Who said we should “shut down the police stations because there are bad apples”?
Is you favorite character of the from the Wizard of Oz the wicked witch? She like to pick on strawmen, too.
“Hey dano, how d that work out for the Indians? ”
Headcase
Been to a casino lately? Ha, ha, ha, … you kill me!
And Frank, your “I was once choked with my own tie” crap? Non-sequitur you say?
Try posting something that originates in YOUR head for a change - you’ll see it’s hard work! Happy holidays!
dano: Insult me all you want, idiot. Calling me a LIAR is no biggera deal than calling me a liar, understand?
“Olive Oyl physique” What a maroon! You don’t know what I look like, you horse’s patoot!
I will try this one more time. If you don’t get it this time, I will ignore you.
There will always be constitutional abuses by law enforcement, just as there will always be crime. That’s the way of the world. We can’t, IMHO, worry about Constitutional niceties to the degree that we leave ourselves unprotected from such dangers as “dirty bombs.”
Now, you can agree with me or not, you can formulate a real argument or not, but if you are going to continue to hurl insults and call me names, I will no longer respond.
You’re acting like a jerk, and I won’t encourage you.
oxymoron; unresponsive troll
incomprehensible : semanticleo
comprehension requires more than limbic activity.
(Let me say it for you. ‘Incomprehensible’)
Or post the facts and prove me wrong, Olive.
“Calling me a LIAR is no bigger[ ]a deal than calling me a liar, understand?”
But SHOWING IT was priceless; as anyone who read you trite, self-serving post (and my rebuttal) could see.
“What a maroon! You don t know what I look like, you horse s patoot!”
Nice to see that you could contribute to the “cartoonish republicans” theme, although truthfully, it would have had more impact if you’d thought of it first.
Remember upthread when I said: “Try posting something that originates in YOUR head for a change”?
I see you haven’t yet mastered that concept.
Typical republican. I whipped your behind by showing how you and other republicans only tell half of the story. Why you thought you could pass off a lame, obviously contrived example to support your “everybody does it” assertion, and not get called on it, is beyond me. Were you a flight risk? Were your actions so heinous that they outraged the citizens of you community - are these the reasons you “were denied bail” as you’ve previously stated? Since you balk at telling the whole story, we are left to assume that there are elements of your anecdote you find embarrassing - people are human; I could understand that (if you’d admit it) but since you only deflect, we are left to further surmise that not only are you embarrassed by the crime itself, but also that you were guilty of said crime. Another sad example of the republican “culture of corruption” that has infected the body politic.
(You’re calling me “Olive”? Is that supposed to provoke me? Do you “book” felons and live in Hawaii, Dano? hehe). I don’t have to prove you wrong. You don’t know me. I didn’t post those tiny little stories to brag or to prove anything to the likes of you. My post had nothing to do with you, so whether or not you believe it means absolutely nothing to me. My post on this subject was made twice, the last time at 4:26 AM.
And I didn’t tell “half the story”. I told about a tenth of the story, if not less.
The idea that you use the Imperial “we” and make a statement like “we are left to further surmise that not only are you embarrassed by the crime itself, but also that you were guilty of said crime,” is the most outrageously ignorant and stupid statement I have ever seen in the blogosphere. And, considering that people like Semanticleo and Jadegold post here, you have accomplished quite a bit.
And I like this one: Why you thought you could pass off a lame, obviously contrived example to support your everybody does it assertion, and not get called on it, is beyond me.
First of all, to clarify something for someone like you, who clearly never finished elementary school, It’s not an “everyone does it” assertion. It’s an “it has happened to almost everybody” assertion.
Second, it cannot be obviously contrived for two reasons: 1) It actually happened, so it was not contrived; and 2) If it were “obviously” contrived, why would you ask me for proof?
And if I could make up the three anecdotes, why couldn’t I make up background to convince you they were true, if that were my goal (it must be sinking in by now, that is not going to happen)
As to “getting called” on it, since it was never my intention to ‘prove’ the stories were true, I never expected to be “called on them.”
And, by the way, no one else seems to be concerned about the truth or falsehood of the anecdotes, except you, so it’s not as if there is a flurry of posts to get at the truth.
So here how it goes: The anecdotes I cited were not the big deal you are trying to pretend they are, or are trying to “surmise”: [ooooh - big word!] I am trying to pretend they were. They were simply three of several things that have happened to me in my lifetime. Perhaps you are misled by the fact that you think I am as young as you undoubtedly are.
I am nearly 60 years old. I’ve been a lot of places, and I’ve seen and done a lot of things. I have no reason to tell anonymous lies. Nothing could be a greater waste of time.
Except perhaps bickering with you.
Maybe being strangled by a necktie caused some oxygen loss to the brain, that would explain a lot. Bet it happened just before he became a conservative.
My bad- I was starting to care about Frank’s life events.
fastcheck - God forbid that that should happen, you might start acting like a liberal, instead of typing like one.