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Monday, August 6, 2007

Am I Now an Enemy of the State?

Why, oh why don't the Democrats in Congress listen to me? Okay, a little snark there, but STILL! I told them what this FISA "modernization" crap was all about...legalizing Bush's NSA spying program (at least, the one we KNOW about).

The "conservative" Democrats in the House and the Senate were just terrified enough of being called Weak On Terrorism to capitulate to Bush's strong-arming over the weekend. And guess what?

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

I am extremely depressed that the Bush Administration, after all the lawbreaking it has done, was given such broad powers by Congress. As Senator Russ Feingold says on the Huffington Post today, the lessons of the Patriot Act have still not been learned by some Congressional Democrats. He and his non-insane compatriots will try to rectify this horrible legislation when Congress comes back from recess in September.

I don't believe that Democrats and Republicans are the same. The majority of Democrats voted against this bill, whereas almost every Republican voted for it. But, I do believe that some Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, and should be pushed out of office by true progressives.
Did your representative put his or her rubber stamp on this atrocity? Find out...and let them know how you feel about them, especially when they're up for re-election!

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