Fantabulous Day! Perhaps now there would be a voice of sanity to counter the Bush Administration's botched invasion of Iraq and its ongoing attack on our freedoms.
I guess not. The House voted to continue funding the war and this morning I woke up to a Sunday Chicago Tribune article (from AP) titled:
House Approves Foreign Wiretap Bill
WASHINGTON - The House handed President Bush a victory Saturday, voting to expand the government's abilities to eavesdrop without warrants on foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States. Full article...Yes, folks, the Democrats also caved when it came to our fundamental civil liberties. Here's how one US rep described this bill:
"This bill would grant the attorney general the ability to wiretap anybody, any place, any time without court review, without any checks and balances," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., during the debate preceding the vote. "I think this unwarranted, unprecedented measure would simply eviscerate the 4th Amendment," which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
But this is not to say that the Democractic Party did not put up a fight. Oh, no. As the article tells us, "Congressional Democrats won a few concessions in negotiations earlier in the week. New wiretaps must be approved by the director of national intelligence and the attorney general, not just the attorney general."
Oh yeah. This is good stuff. They don't trust the current Attorney General (Gonzalez) and well they should not. He is a crony through and through, but at least historically the position of the Attorney General has implied some level of distance from the White House itself. How do they fix this problem of trust by pretending that the director of national intelligence, another person appointed by the President and without any semblance of independence, is any sort of check-or-balance? Ridiculous!
You can almost see the Democratic Party writing laws today with the hope or expectation that they will win the Presidency this next time.
So....one step closer to a police state we come.
2 comments:
yes, heard about it this morning. Scary.
It's the same here in Israel. It's the so called leftist labour party who brought us the 2nd Lebanon war, continues to starve Palestinians and build apartheid walls.
The scarier thought is that there is no real alternative in the US or anywhere else, is there?
Scary, yes. I've had bad feelings how the US develops, for years. This is yet another reason why I won't travel there, even for conferences like those of ODTUG.
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