I Will Miss You All

Aware that America’s ability to defend itself against terrorism would soon be weakened, House Democrats vainly attempted to extend the Protect America Act. Their valiant efforts to protect this city on a hill was thwarted by one man, President George W. Bush, who petulantly demanded that House Republicans vote against the extension, which they cravenly did. The very important Protect America Act will expire tonight. God help us all.

I just have one question: When will Bush and his hawkish cronies in Congress start taking this War on Terror seriously?

McConnell Thinks He Should be more Powerful

As Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is assumed to be two things: smart and a liar. The first thing, smart, is debatable. It could be that he merely has friends in high places. But I’m not talking about an innate intelligence. I just mean, an average, run-of-the-mill kind of smartness. The kind of smartness that comes from having “been around the block.” The world is overflowing with people of average or below average natural intellectual gifts; but many of them are smart just by the nature of having become familiar with their trade–the constant daily contact with the same materials, the same concepts, the same theoretical principles at work.

And the second thing, lying, I don’t mean as an insult. If our chief spy weren’t a good liar…well, I can only imagine the kinds of problems that may cause for us. But the chief spy should recognize something that the current chief (and his boss) seems to have missed: his enemy is not the American people. To use some of Bush’s own Unitary Executive Theory logic: what kind of sense does it make if the American people, being of one body, were to be its own enemy? With that in mind, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that McConnell use his deceptive powers for us and not against us.

I was initially going to do this great little cut and paste job where I pasted McConnell’s FISA lies from an OpEd in today’s Washington Post and then I would cut and paste from various Glenn Greenwald posts on the subject but it just wasn’t worth it. What is worth it, is reading the lies spewing from the White House in the guise of credible information from a “senior intelligence officer” and then going over and reading a handful of Glenn Greenwald’s posts on FISA and the Protect America Act.

Greenwald is a long-winded but fantastic commentator. I know it seems like a lot of reading but this is an important issue that it is worth being educated on. Here’s how Harpers’ Scott Horton talks about the issue to give you some idea of the times we’re living in:

…future generations looking back and tracing the destruction of the grand design of our Constitution may settle on yesterday, February 12, 2008, as the date of the decisive breach.

The bottom line here is this, George Bush and his cronies, if they want them, can continue to spy on all the terrorists they want. Under FISA and the PAA they have the power to spy on all communications where one person is on foreign soil. They have the right to spy on all communications that are routed through another country. What they don’t have the natural right to do is spy on calls between American citizens. And they can get that right if they go to the super secret rubberstamping FISA court which provides the very barest of oversight on a very powerful mechanism of the executive branch.

If the White House merely asked Congress to pass a permanent extension on PAA it would have passed in December.

The problem is that the White House wants to add a clause that gives retroactive immunity to telecoms that have broken several American laws passed by the American Congress (constituted of representatives elected by the American people)–laws that were passed to protect the American people from the potential abuses of an overreaching executive branch.

Now the executive branch has overreached despite the best efforts of Congress and the People to keep them in check and they have made very rich members of the private sector complicit in their tyrannical overreach. Now they demand immunity for those people–who, by the way–were paid to break the law…and who are now paying Senators and Congressmen to make sure they aren’t punished for it.

The White House insists that telecoms should be given a free pass this time so that they will be more willing to break the law in the future. Who cares what the White House wants? Is that what we want? Do we want insanely rich companies (and their senior staffs) to get even more rich by helping the government spy on us? The will of the government is always at odds with the will of the people and that’s why we have the very specific Constitution that we have–to protect the People from its Government.

This is a question of rewarding the greedy: those greedy for power and those greedy for cash. I’m not at all interested in rewarding either, doubly so since they were both gained at the expense of my personal liberty.

Laws that guarantee rights to privacy, protection from illegal searches and seizures, etc. do make law enforcement/criminal investigations harder to perform but they do so by protecting our civil liberties. It should be hard for them to invade our privacy. It’s a trade off, sure, but a good one–one that respects the rights of individuals and keeps governments weak enough that average law-abiding citizens need not fear their government. McConnell and the FBI want unlimited access to our emails, phone calls, etc…they are always going to tell Congress and judges and the People that such things are necessary…but they are liars. They are a vested interest whose motivations for such requests should be questioned.

Bush is “Teaching us a Lesson”

I totally forgot about this in my notes this morning: Bush wants us all to die to teach the Democrats a lesson. Seriously. For those of you who don’t know anything about this issue, here’s the (substantially pared down) skinny:

A long long time ago, when senators and representatives got mad that the president had too much power and couldn’t seem to use it properly (Nixon: Watergate, et. al.) they passed a law (FISA) that said (among other things) that when the president wants to spy on somebody he has get a warrant from the judicial branch. This law did not say that the president couldn’t spy on people, but that he would have to prove things like, the person deserved to be spied on.

Well, after George Bush became president, he immediately started using the NSA and various telecommunications conglomerates to spy on people…without warrants! But according to President Bush and friends, the president doesn’t have to obey laws. He’s above the law (seriously). And since the president is above the law, if he tells someone to do something that is illegal, then they are above that law too.

When the illegal spying on Americans was discovered Bush & Co. they said that 9/11 made it necessary for them to spy on Americans…y’know…to protect us. Except, it turned out, they had been doing it all along! So, who, exactly, were they spying on while they weren’t taking the terrorist threat seriously enough to do anything about it? The world will (likely) never know.

But, at any rate, the FISA legislation might legitimately have some restrictions that need updating given the particular nature of international terrorism in an increasingly mobile and connected world. So Bush said that Congress had to pass The Protect America Act. He basically said that if PAA was not passed, all Americans everywhere would die in simultaneous terrorist attacks everywhere all at once in a really bad, agonizing way and Congress would have no one to blame but themselves; and that’s how they would spend the last horrible seconds of all their lives: wishing they had passed PAA and President Bush, in his last seconds, would be somewhere bleeding nearby saying “I told you so.” And that thought, that mere thought, was enough for Congress to say, “OK fine.” And so they passed it. And ever since America has suffered no new terrorist attacks. Or something like that.

Well. The FISA amendment expires on Thursday. Congress has been considering renewing it but the White House wants to add something extra special to the renewal. Remember those telecommunications conglomerates that helped President Bush break the law? Well, he wants them to get off scott free. He wants immunity for them.

He says that America will become vulnerable if corporations have to follow our laws. Neat! Because, the way I see it, America becomes vulnerable if corporations don’t have to follow our laws. “We are a nation fo laws, not men…” and all that.

Well, Chris Dodd, the senator who recently dropped from the presidential race, has successfully had the debate postponed until this week (Congress was threatened to renew PAA back in December). And, as of yesterday, Dodd successfully started a Democratic filibuster. Because (God on Highest!) the Democrats think that America’s “deliberative body” should start deliberating.

Now, this deliberation could take a little while. And after their done deliberating, assuming they can come to some conclusions, they will have to vote on the bill. The bill will go to the House, which will have to vote on it. Any differences will have to be ironed out in conference, and then PAA can be renewed. Bottom line, the bill won’t be done by Thursday.

The Democrats, who have already been informed by the President that this bill is important lest we all face immediate and agonizing Death by Terrorism, tried to pass a 30-day extension to the current legislation which would both protect America and give Senators time to chat about “the rule of law,” “the fourth amendment,” and “the fate of the free world” and perhaps what to call the new soup offered in the cafeteria.

Well…

Bush threatened to veto an extension. Why? Because Congress should just do what they’re told, grant immunity to multi-billionaire lawbreakers and pass the damned bill. There is no thinking, there is no deliberation, there is no debate. The president says “jump” and bygollybygosh, senators shouldn’t even ask “how high” they should just fucking jump.

So, in effect, making America vulnerable to inevitable attack is the price we pay for Congress’s insistence on representing us in Washington.

Oh! did I mention that because the President childishly threatened to veto a 30-day extension the Republicans voted across the board to not even pass it? Because that’s what they did.

That’s right, every single Republican decided to not even try challenging the President’s will, even though doing so meant (supposedly) making America vulnerable to imminent attack.

Of course the reality is that PAA is not and has never been necessary. The President could always spy on people that he could reasonably show to a secret court were terrorists. PAA did not protect us from imminent attack and the only reason the new legislation is even up for consideration for renewal is because major political funders are at risk of being slapped on the wrist by Congress. I mean seriously, no one’s going to jail over this. Even without immunity the worst that will happen is that ATT (et. al) will have explained to them (again) that just because the president says it’s OK doesn’t mean it is. If FISA needs updating, and it is somewhat uncertain if it does, and it is even more uncertain where it needs updating, then that’s a topic that should be debated and discussed, heavily, in Congress and in the public forums.

Just know that your childish president hopes you die to teach those bastards in Congress a lesson.

Head over to Glenn Greenwald’s blog over on Salondotcom for a much more robust but ultimately more accurate and detailed rundown of the whole thing. He’s been covering it at least since the renewed debate in November/December but his two posts from Monday are as good an introduction as you probably need.