It's broken and no one in Washington will try to fix it. The great bipartisan slaying of liberty by Congress last weekend should have widened George the Lesser's smirk and made Dick Cheney lick his forehead in rapture.Neither party nor house paid attention in civics class and the vast majority of the largely baby boomer legislators have disgraced their WWII-era parents. They have kicked aside the love of liberty that their parents fought for and taught. They have completed their sell-out of the separation of powers for an abrogation to the executive branch.
They tamped the dirt firmly on living Americans Sunday by giving the startlingly (to the rest of us) anti-freedom President even more power than he demanded. When they should have screamed that he could not ever have the right to spy freely and without accountability on us, in or out of the physical borders, they instead gave him free rein to warrantless wiretapping other other surveillance, data storage of private communication, and spying on citizens without any cause or reporting.
Just the facts, Ma'am: The overview is at the WaPo, and analysis at Slate.
In addition, this appears to have the shameful side-effect of preemptively preventing legal action against previous criminal surveillance acts by the Bush government. In effect, Congress pardons the Bushies retroactively without them even asking for it.
Your very own White House site has an unbelievable and dishonest justification, linked off the front page. To read it all, go to the security section. In part this reads:
What Is Not AcceptableYou have to have your dunce cap on, and pulled down over your eyes and ears, to buy any of that. What is unacceptable is what both houses of and parties in Congress did here.
- Some have proposed that the Government must obtain pre-approval from a court before it conducts critical surveillance of targets located overseas. This is unacceptable. The Government must be able to act immediately, particularly in the case of national security emergencies, to protect the Nation.
- Some have suggested that FISA must be reformed, but only to permit collection against certain overseas threats like al Qaeda terrorists. This is unacceptable. There are many threats that confront our Nation, including military, weapons proliferation, and economic, and we must be able to conduct foreign intelligence effectively on all of them.
- Some have suggested that we must wait to modernize FISA. This is unacceptable. Congress must act now to give our intelligence professionals the tools they need to uncover plots in time to protect our homeland.
- Some have suggested that a court order should be necessary before our intelligence professionals are able to gather any information about a foreign target who happens to contact someone in the United States frequently. This is unacceptable.
We are only a little over a year from electing a Democrat as President. With a little good fortune, we should have 60 Democrats in the Senate, so that we can pass some solid legislation without the GOP tricks and throttle on democracy.
Now though, if you look at that the alleged Democrats will do, do you have hope that they can pass a single piece of progressive legislation or protect American freedoms?
Tags: massmarrier, George W. Bush, Cheney, wiretapping, Congress, DINOs
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