#lance

Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth. ↗

— E.L. Doctorow

#bias #fairness #ridicule #satire #truth

Authorities this broad give the national security bureaucracy the power to scrutinize the personal lives of every law-abiding American. Allowing that to continue is a grave error that demonstrates a willful ignorance of human nature. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete disregard for the responsibilities entrusted to us by the Founding Fathers to maintain robust checks and balances on the power of any arm of the government. That obviously raises some very serious questions. What happens to our government, our civil liberties and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked? As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government. ↗

— Ron Wyden

#national-security #secrets #surveillance #intelligence

Your relationships with others are always a direct reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. ↗

— Michael Thomas Sunnarborg

#relationship #relationship

A more effective international disease surveillance system is essential for global security both against a bioterrorist attack or a naturally occurring disease. ↗

— Daniel Akaka

#attack #both #disease #effective #essential

My favourite plant is the foxglove. I think they are a perfect balance between being a garden plant and a wild plant, as at home in woodland as they are in a city. ↗

— Clive Anderson

#being #between #city #favourite #garden

You can do gross-out until the cows come home but if there isn't something to balance it, then it's not going to work at all. ↗

— Curtis Armstrong

#come #cows #going #gross-out #home

It's so hard to keep everything balanced in life. ↗

— Rosanna Arquette

#everything #hard #keep #life

Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances. ↗

— Steve Allen

#bank #businessmen #checks #compromised #crooked

Even in modern art, artists have used methods based on calculation, inasmuch as these elements, alongside those of a more personal and emotional nature, give balance and harmony to any work of art. ↗

— Max Bill

#any #art #artists #balance #based

We have seen segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action, adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as "vacuum cleaners", sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings. Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data. And once intelligence has been collected, there are strong pressures to use it against the target. ↗

— Church Committee

#data #national-security #predictions #prescience #secrecy