Power vs power as a free flowing dynamic within the government finding that the checks and balances do work for the most part, I think.

I am sure there are those agressive players within justice that want more than they can have, I saw it in the clinton admin. also, using the highway fed. funds as a power tool to make states do want they wanted or threaten them into submission. The ACLU ( the osama of lawsuits ) does it all the time, ‘if you dont take that cross off the LA city logo we will sue.’ The city may or may not win but usually don’t wnat to spend the money defending itself.

I remember in the last election one of the political operatives said he thought about starting a rumor about a candidate having sex with sheep. He knew it wasn’t true but just wanted to hear the person deny it on the news, for the tainting it would do.

I am cynical enough to think they ( the government ) play games like let’s sue and counter sue just to get in the NEWS. A little like Lindsey Lohan always having some drama and getting in yahoo alot. Today it was stitches on her leg. ARGGgg, I might have to switch to having google as my home page.

I think that this government honestly does think that it should be able to do stuff like this, and I think Google is just responding naturally to the fact that they don’t have to give up that kind of information.

If it went to court, the government would be easily defeated on this, unless they change the laws. Court orders and/or subpoenas for information have to be issued in relationship to specific cases, not just blanket requests for non-specific targets. This is why the went the route of “requesting” the information rather than going through legal channels.

This is the same thing for the wiretap controversy recently. The NSA has always been able to do wiretaps when they actually needed to, after getting the appropriate court orders, which were basically rubber stamps, as there have only ever been two or three denied requests out of thousands. If the timing was critical, they could even go back and get the court orders afterwards, assuming they were justified.

The problem was that now they wanted to tap any number of unnamed people at their discretion, without providing any justification or explanation for their actions, either before or after the fact. This is why this order was a crime, and in turn why they attempted to keep it secret (including the president outright lying about it, specifically). Coming up with the pitiful excuse of the violation of the law being justified in the name of “fighting terrorism” is even more ridiculous, because if you accept that then the same excuse could be applied to pretty much any action the government decides to take.

Note: I’m not trying to suck you in with this, so don’t comment if you don’t want to.

The clinton justice dept did it too. It’s called politics and intergovernmental diplomacy.

Not a conspiracy at all but a stupid little circle game where by each party knows when starting out how far this will go……..nowhere.
I know if I sue someone and the law is on their side then I know pretty much how it will turn out. etc.

The upstart at the justice dept. decides to try to get the info out of google, under the guise of proctecting kids from child porn, google of course has to resist thisand looks great doing it.
Lawyers present strong agruments back and forth and the result comes in the middle, anymore that results after the publicity for each’s own purpose is icing on the cake.

Notice how Every president and every major politician gets sued and they start some investigation to ” get them “. With or without merit - it’s part of the mean game of politics to slander, distract, throw your opponent off track so they won’t get re-elected.
It’s a big (ugly at times ) game.
Anyway.