Saturday, August 04, 2007

How Do You Spell Eunuch?

D.e.m.o.c.r.a.t. perhaps? Wimp is much too tame to describe it. In follow-up to my post from yesterday, Which Side Are They On?, the Democrats in the Senate should be ashamed.

Democrats "have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word 'terrorism,' they roll over and play dead," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
From the Washington Post, Senate Votes To Expand Warrantless Surveillance, which explains:

The Senate bowed to White House pressure last night and passed a Republican plan for overhauling the federal government's terrorist surveillance laws, approving changes that would temporarily give U.S. spy agencies expanded power to eavesdrop on foreign suspects without a court order.

The 60 to 28 vote, which was quickly denounced by civil rights and privacy advocates, came after Democrats in the House failed to win support for more modest changes that would have required closer court supervision of government surveillance. Earlier in the day, President Bush threatened to hold Congress in session into its scheduled summer recess if it did not approve the changes he wanted.

The legislation, which is expected to go before the House today, would expand the government's authority to intercept without a court order the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who are communicating with people overseas.

As currently written, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act already gives U.S. spies broad leeway to monitor the communications of foreign terrorism suspects, but the 30-year-old statute requires a warrant to monitor calls intercepted in the United States, regardless of where the calls begin or end.

The NYTimes describes it thus, Broader Spying Authority Advances in Congress:

A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory on Friday night after the Senate approved a measure that would temporarily give the administration more latitude to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism.

The House is expected to take up the White House-backed measure on Saturday morning before going into its summer recess.

Democratic leaders acknowledged that the bill would probably pass.

I don't know how furious the push was, but I can assure you that this makes me furious.

This is not the Terrorist Surveillance Act -- it's the American Surveillance Act that is really at issue here. See Bush Isn't Spying on al Qaeda ... He's Spying on You.

Keith Olbermann discusses the issues on his Countdown Program with Jonathan Turley:

GWB: It's important for the American people to be afraid. And you dumb democrats in Congress too. (OK, maybe I paraphrased a bit.)

Jonathan Turley: The Republic will be safer if Congress stays out of town for long periods of time. (Got that right.)

(Full Countdown video also available at Crooks & Liars, FISA and Fear Mongering)

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