Dems Prove Incompetence Rivals Malice

[Ian David]

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501404.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2171747/


More:
http://massmarrier.blogspot.com/2007/08/dems-prove-incompetence-rivals-malice.html

[polichick]

1. Yet another national disgrace...

They've outdone themselves ~ again!

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[Perry Logan]

3. Here's a more reasoned point of view...

"1. Despite the amount of false propaganda spread by the Republican Party, our
nation does in fact have dangerous enemies. The terrorist threat is very real,
though it is also very different from the way the Republicans, and in particular
the administration of George W. Bush, have described it.
2. FISA has needed an overhaul for many years now. Be thankful that it will be
Democrats that will rewrite this bill instead of the Republicans. If Republicans
rewrote this bill most Americans would end up being implanted with microchips
to monitor their private thoughts.
3. FISA is broken and the George W. Bush broke it. Because Bush and his
cronies pushed the exisiting law too far, they ended up losing a court case and
severely damaged our ability to obtain intelligence. This was the result of
sloppiness and a total disregard for the rule of law on the part of the
Republicans.
4. It will take time to rewrite FISA, and in the meantime we needed some kind
of temporary legislation to buy time for Congress to work on a new version of
FISA. The bills Jim Webb voted for provide for this temporary bridge.
5. We may need another temporary extension of FISA, lasting until the end of
the Bush administration. When this law is rewritten it needs to be rewritten by
Democratic-dominated Congress and signed off on by a Democratic President.
Any rewrite of this law under the current administration would bear the unholy
fingerprints of Bush, Cheney and Gonzales--and in consequence would be
deeply flawed from its outset."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/5/124531/4040

[Ian David]

4. I hope their cheery optimism isn't misplaced. n/t

[Usrename]

5. I thought the reason they lost in court is because they broke the law.

"3. FISA is broken and the George W. Bush broke it. Because Bush and his
cronies pushed the exisiting(sic) law too far, they ended up losing a court case and
severely damaged our ability to obtain intelligence. This was the result of
sloppiness and a total disregard for the rule of law on the part of the
Republicans."

How is FISA broken because Bush refuses to comply with the law? It doesn't make any sense.

"4. It will take time to rewrite FISA, and in the meantime we needed some kind
of temporary legislation to buy time for Congress to work on a new version of
FISA. The bills Jim Webb voted for provide for this temporary bridge."

How are they going to pass an updated version over a presidential veto? It doesn't make any sense.

Someone should tell you that it isn't really raining, no matter what they told you. Someone is pissing in your ear.

[Lerkfish]

6. I am not encouraged that the strategy is to pass a bad law in order to rescue us with

a good law later.

Since the bad law gives unprecedented power to a provably corrupt administration, who is provably using their power to grab more power, I'm at a loss as to what makes anyone think that they can let the rabid bear eat their leg today, in hopes of getting it back next week.

[Zodiak]

7. Another counterpoint

"FISA has needed an overhaul for many years now. Be thankful that it will be
Democrats that will rewrite this bill instead of the Republicans. If Republicans
rewrote this bill most Americans would end up being implanted with microchips
to monitor their private thoughts."

Ummm...hate to break to this poster, but the Democratic version of the bill was defeated. The version that passed was the White House version, so get ready for your microchip.

And I still am not convinced that FISA needed an overhaul. What part of three days after the fact do they not understand?

[IndianaGreen]

8. More lame excuses! Instead of fixing FISA, Democrats gave more power to Bush and Gonzo!

The latest Democratic cave-in was so outrageous and shocking that even many voices in the Establishment took the Democratic Congress to task for fumbling the ball and failing to protect the Constitution and our freedoms.

Here is but one sample, this one from the NY Times:

Published on Tuesday, August 7, 2007 by The New York Times

The Fear of Fear Itself

New York Times Editorial

The votes in the House and Senate were supposed to fix a genuine glitch in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping on electronic communications that involve someone in the United States. The court charged with enforcing that law said the government must also seek a warrant if the people are outside the country, but their communications are routed through data exchanges here - a technological problem that did not exist in 1978.

Instead of just fixing that glitch, the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill railroaded Congress into voting a vast expansion of the president’s powers. They gave the director of national intelligence and the attorney general authority to intercept - without warrant, court supervision or accountability - any telephone call or e-mail message that moves in, out of or through the United States as long as there is a “reasonable belief” that one party is not in the United States. The new law all but eviscerates the 1978 law. The only small saving grace is that the new statute expires in six months.

The House handled this mess somewhat better than the Senate, moving to the floor a far more sensible bill. Mr. McConnell certified that the House bill would address the problem raised by the court. That is, until the White House made clear that it wanted to use the court’s ruling to grab a lot more power. Mr. McConnell then reversed his position and demanded that Congress pass the far more expansive bill.

In the Senate, the team of Harry Reid, the majority leader, gave up fast, agreeing to a deal that doomed any good bill. The senators then hurriedly approved the White House bill, dumped it on the House and skulked off on vacation. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the fourth-ranking member of the Democratic House leadership, said yesterday that his party would not wait for the new eavesdropping authority to expire, and would have a new, measured bill on the floor by October. We look forward to reading it.

But the problem with Congress last week was that Democrats were afraid to explain to Americans why the White House bill was so bad and so unnecessary - despite what the White House was claiming. There are good answers, if Democrats are willing to address voters as adults. To start, they should explain that - even if it were a good idea, and it’s not - the government does not have the capability to sort through billions of bits of electronic communication. And the larger question: why, six years after 9/11, is this sort of fishing expedition the supposed first line of defense in the war on terrorism?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/07/3033/

[creeksneakers2]

10. The same thing will keep happening

until the Democrats have the courage to say liberty is more important than safety. Otherwise there will always be threats brought up and our rights whittled away.

It shouldn't be that hard to defend liberty. Ben Franklin is remembered to this day for it.

[polichick]

9. Dems sold out cuz they were running scared...

They didn't want to be blamed for a terrorist attack that happened while they were on vacation (imho).