Pussy Dems in Congress Again Cave to Bush - Make His Illegal Spying Programs Legal
posted by
Wally
7:46 AM
Remember the controversy surrounding Bush's illegal warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens? Remember the outrage at finding out that Bush and Gonzales were breaking the law by bypassing or ignoring FISA and the courts, and secretly spying on anyone he deemed a threat (i.e. anyone he didn't like for whatever reason)? Remember how irate we were that aside from a small handful of players, the Democrats in Congress weren't doing anything about it?
Well, you can forget all that. The Democrats have actually done something to address the illegal wiretapping that's been going on. They made it legal.US intelligence agencies will no longer need a warrant to eavesdrop on US citizens' international phone calls and emails after George Bush signed a temporary surveillance bill yesterday.
The law, which was approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives just before Congress adjourned for the summer, had been made a priority by Mr Bush and his chief intelligence officials.
Guardian It wasn't enough that they could already listen in on anyone they wanted, and had 72 hours to retro-actively get a warrant from a rubber-stamp court that almost never turned down a request. It wasn't enough that the administration was violating even this already overly permissive law with secret domestic spy programs (the ones that Alberto Gonzales wasn't talking about, and wasn't able to talk about, thereby not perjuring himself when he didn't lie under oath about them because he wasn't talking about them). Bush wants total access to, and total control over everything, and the Democrats in Congress are all to happy to give it to him.
Some tidbits about the new law that you might find interesting:Intelligence agencies will no longer need a warrant to collect communications between the United States and overseas, including the conversations of Americans, so long as the intelligence investigation is directed at a person believed to be outside the U.S. The conversation does not have to be about terrorism, just a matter of foreign intelligence interest.
The administration has said its intent is not to collect information on Americans. But critics say intelligence agencies are only required to delete Americans' private information from their records if it is deemed not relevant to the investigation.
A little-noticed provision in the new law also suggests that warrantless physical searches of homes and businesses inside the United States may be allowed if the investigation concerns a foreign target of an intelligence investigation, a congressional aide said.
Baltimore Sun Fortunately, the Dems won one concession. Bush wanted Gonzo to make the call on who gets spied on and who doesn't. The dems, in a stroke of obviousness, deemed that he's not trustworthy enough, so insisted that both he and the Director of National Security (another Bush thug) make the decision. Big victory there. Yippee.
Also, the bill expires in 6 months, just in time for campaign primary season - just in time for the Dems up for election to show us if it's time to vote their asses out of office.
Of course, now that the bill she allowed to pass has been signed into law, Nancy Pelosi is talking tough about changing it."Many provisions of this legislation are unacceptable, and although the bill has a six month sunset clause, I do not believe the American people will want to wait that long before corrective action is taken."
Congressional Quarterly Hey Nancy, quick question: who's in charge of Congress? Specifically, who's the leader of the House? If "many provisions" were "unacceptable", why the hell did you pass it? Please step down now and let someone who will uphold their oath take your place at the House leadership.
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How much more of this before people come to grips with the fact that the Democratic party is "not your fathers Democratic party", to steal an advertising jingle, but nothing more than a wing of our one party State? Liberals you say? You won't find any with a voice among the Democrats. Arlen Spector is more of a Democrat than Hillary and her cohorts. Which shell is the peanut under? Give it up, Republicrats are all you will find inside the whorehouse called Washington D.C., and you're kidding yourself if you think otherwise. You don't want to "waste" your vote? Is that your argument? That's wrong on too many levels to go into here, but if you insist on voting for the 'lesser of two evils' don't forget or let yourself off the hook that you are voting for evil, no matter how you cushion the travesty to comfort your integrity, or soul if you will. Yea I'm a broken record on this subject but I'm also right and it makes me a little crazy that people keep supporting this bullshit so called 'party'. They laugh at you with their Republican cohorts. You are nothing more than the 'great unwashed' that they have to put on a performance for every 2 or 6 years depending which side of the trough their feeding from. That's right, they LAUGH AT YOU!
posted by
at 2:11 PM |
