Letters to the Editor
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Why should Durbin be held accountable for Webb's vote?
Both of my Senators (Durbin and Obama) voted against this bill; but because they are also members of the Democratic Party, Glenn Greenwald says that they bear responsibility for Bush’s radicalism, and they are responsible for this vote, even though they opposed it.
Now I’m outraged by this vote, and I don’t understand it, particularly someone like Jim Webb who isn’t up for election for years and not subject to immediate 2008 political pressure.
So, if I were to express my outrage to Durbin or Obama, what would I say to them when they ask me why they should be held accountable for Jim Webb’s vote?
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NYT 12/2005 re: routing switches and the NSA contoversy
This is what Anonymous Liberal quotes, my emphasis:
Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.
The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.
One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.
The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.
Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.
http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2007/08/senate-caves-in.html
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If it looks like a duck
Someone said this:
>>Then he could ask himself how much better off the country would be if those 16 Democrats were replaced by Republicans
Uh, if they are voting the same as Republicans, what is the difference? Isn't that the point?
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@DCLaw1
Just my quick read of the statute - correct me if I'm wrong. Gotta go!
No can do, cuz I'm no expert either. But consider the NYT piece I quoted, and this from today's Wapo:
Adding to the urgency for the administration is a secret ruling by a FISA judge earlier this year that declared surveillance of purely foreign communications that pass through a U.S. communications node illegal without a court-approved warrant -- a requirement that intelligence officials have described as unacceptably burdensome.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/03/AR2007080302296_2.html
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@ just about everyone.
First of all, I ask that nobody get angry at me for not being angry enough, or for failing to comprehend just how horrible this legislation is. I'm angry, and I comprehend.
But a lot of the comments on this thread seem unrealistic.
Particularly since my Democratic Senator voted against this bill, my Democratic Congressman is going to vote against it (I expect), and my favored Democratic candidate for president, Barack Obama, voted against it (and spoke out against the war in Iraq as well), I don't see how swearing off voting for the Democratic party in this upcoming election would be helpful.
Guys: it's VERY, VERY important to me that the Dems have a veto-proof majority. It's VERY, VERY important to me that a Democrat select the next several Supreme Court justices.
Let's not forget, also, that only 18 Senate Dems voted for this awful bill. Don't just shout at me that that's a huge number, and an incredible sellout, and the bill is awful -- I get all of that. But there isn't unanimity in the Democratic Party that the Constitution should be shredded. And there really does seem to be unanimity in the Republican Party on that question. Republicans like Ron Paul are rare and marginal figures. It's the Republican voting base -- not my saying so -- that makes them marginal. (I'm not calling Ron Paul "unserious," in other words.)
So: I shouldn't vote for politicians who voted the right way on this issue, because others in their party voted the wrong way? I don't get it.
Also, support for a third-party candidate isn't always an act of political purity. When friends were trying to goad me into voting for Nader in 2000, they always assumed that if I merely "followed my heart," I would cast my vote for the Greens. No way! I couldn't stand Ralph Nader, and I liked Gore. "Bush bad, Democrats good" isn't the only oversimplification being peddled around here.
The missteps, sellouts, and cynical political moves of some Democrats cannot retroactively absolve 2000 Nader voters of their share of the responsibility for the last six years. And when I say "responsibility," I don't mean to suggest that voting for a particular candidate is some sort of crime. It isn't merely crimes that involve consequences and responsibility; even well-intentioned actors, acting within their rights, bear responsibility for the consequences of their decisions.
These Nader voters made a strategic decision; they believed that the Democrats and Republicans were so similar (identical, I often heard), that the best way to move the country to the left was to support a strongly progressive third-party candidate for the presidency. The strategy was dead wrong: the Dems weren't "scared left," and the Republicans (as should have been obvious to everyone from the start) were in fact creatures very different from the triangulating Clinton and his cronies.
I don't want to revive the Nader/Gore debate yet again (I don't have the energy -- and can't bring myself to keep going through the motions of a discussion when I know there's no possibility of my mind being changed; after six years of arguing about Nader, and even attending two of his speaking events, I know exactly what I think about him and his disastrous candidacy). I simply want to say here that supporting a third party candidate for president doesn't seem like a good idea to me, and I'm not going to do it.
On the other hand, a protest candidacy like Cindy Sheehan's -- or a third-party movement whose first and final gesture is not fucking up a pivotal presidential election -- is different. I would be strongly tempted to vote for Sheehan if I were in Pelosi's district, for instance. Threaten the Dems at the Congressional level, where a victory for the left isn't necessarily a victory for the right!
Threaten them in the primaries! Maybe we should work on making it easier for "average Joes" to challenge Democratic incumbents in House races. I've often thought, "Fuck -- I'm going to run for office myself one of these days." And then the next thought, of course, is: "Ah -- but that would be impossible." Is it impossible? And if so, is it possible for us to work to change that?
A lot of people on this comment thread are asking, not as a rhetorical strategy, but in all sincerity: "What can I do about this FISA outrage?" I'm not going to do something that ends up helping the Republicans. And I'm not going to pretend that the Dems and Republicans are "the same." So: what else have you got? Only William Timberman seems to be addressing this question in a productive way.
As a postscript, Glenn, I've noticed that, at times, you really jump down the throats of commenters who challenge you. "Bush bad, Democrats good" is an unhelpful simplification of the point that the earlier commenter was trying to make about defections away from the Democrats aiding Karl Rove. In dismissing these commenters -- who aren't being nasty at all, and who agree with you on many of the fundamentals -- you're ironically oversimplifying things yourself. Cut it out.