Letters to the Editor
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Please don't let Glenn's excellent blog devolve into this
We will all want libertarian wars back.
Commenters at Think Progress:
majority party beaten down and embarassed again, no wonder cindy is running against pelosi!!!!!
Comment by liberals destroyed america — August 4, 2007 @ 11:37 pm
IT WAS ONCE NECESSARY TO RATIFY THE 22nd AMENDMENT TO STOP THE DEMS FROM DESTROYING AMERICA!!!!!!
NOW, IT IS NECESSARY TO REPEAL IT FOR THE SAME REASON!!!!!!!!
DEMLIB = TERRORIST = DEMLIB!!!
Comment by RALPH — August 4, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
Ralph's blog:
JOURNALIST AND POLITICAL THINKER MIKE SAVAGE HAS EXPOSED A DEMLIB ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE UNITED STATES CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS!!!!!
http://americaphile.blogspot.com/2007/08/assassination-plot-exposed.html
I'm going to get drunk.
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So the bill sucks - surprise!
Text of the bill:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:s1927pcs.txt
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:2:./temp/~c110iXXx8y:: (nicer formatting)
Some highlights:
1. Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General can grant the acquisition of foreign intelligence information on people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States." This includes US Citizens and the AG doesn't have to himself believe that the person is outside the US, instead he must only believe that "there are reasonable procedures in place for determining that the acquisition of foreign intelligence information under this section concerns persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." So as long as the AG thinks the *method* is reasonable he doesn't have to actually agree with the findings or make those findings himself.
2. "Nothing in the definition of electronic surveillance under section 101(f) shall be construed to encompass surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." The language here is intentionally vague. At the very least it covers any conversation between someone in the US and someone outside of it. In addition the data must only be "concerned" with the person outside the US or the surveillance "directed" at them. That could very well mean that the person in question isn't directly involved in any way, it could be conversation between 2 US citizens about the third person. (I'm sure the AG will write a memo to that effect or Bush will write a signing statement to that effect)
3. "a significant purpose of the acquisition is to obtain foreign intelligence information" - not THE purpose, just *A* purpose. One of many, and not even the most significant one.
4. The court can not review individual cases at all, only the broad procedures used to determine if someone is outside the US. There is no oversight.
5. Incidents of non-compliance are reported by - the Attorney General! Who has already failed to notify Congress of similar non-compliance in the past. This is where you have to ask "so are they just plain stupid or what?" Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, we're congresspeople.
6. The justification for the bill was that we couldn't spy on foreign agents if their calls or electrons were simply routed through the US, emails stored on US servers or passed through US switches, etc. Obviously this goes far far beyond fixing that. It has virtually nothing to do with the Court decision that supposedly made this so pressing.
This is what is so annoying about claims that we needed just pass something, anything, or the terrorists win. We identified a potential problem, then instead of fixing that problem we used that problem as justification to shit out something almost wholly unrelated.
Does that sound familiar to anyone? Abusing the threat of national security to persue total non-sequitors? Anyone?
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer but I can read, which puts me well ahead of the game.
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@WT
Okay, that does it. I'm calling the full Central Committee into session....
Whenever I read something like this ahistorical treatise from ZoomersDad -- and there's been far too much of it lately -- I begin to think that the recent decision of our cabal to delay funding a full squadron of black helicopters was a mistake.
I'm calling a plenary session of the Central Committee next Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. to re-visit our decision. Our operatives in Bulgaria report that there are some swell bargains at an old Soviet base just outside Sofia, and Wal*Mart has plenty of flat black paint. It's not radar-absorbent, but it's cheap.
-- William Timberman
Greg Allport is an unapologetic utopian idealist, doesn't understand Thoreau and is a Ron Paul spammer. There are lots of them around and we've seen how they treat history. It just seems to me that no one with a sensible and functioning mind who comprehends the concept of the Overton Window and it's 40 year slide to the extreme right can be taken seriously if they argue that the cure for this is to move "The Window" -- even farther to the right! Part of our problem is that a few too many Democrats in office are to the right of the already too far to the right median line that the Overton Window now resides at. If someone can unconvince me of this, please do so.
Greg Allport coined a word: "unfreedom".
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Never mind the window, these folks walk through walls
The way it goes, L.W.M., is that once you've discovered the one secret key to history and men's motivations, everything that's ever happened, everything that's ever been written, points to a single conclusion. And of course, having come to that conclusion beforehand, you are by definition smarter than everyone else.
Except, of course, that it does you no good unless everyone else knows it, and when it comes right down to it, who better to tell everyone, everywhere, than yourself.
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It's the altitude, stupid
Why do the Democrats engage in such reckless self-defeating behavior? Nobody, it seems, has an answer. Greenwald himself points to the Democrats overreliance on the "Democratic Beltway consultant geniuses" who constantly give them pathetic advice to triangulate, triangulate, triangulate.
However, personally I think the crux of the problem is that the Democrats do not represent a coherent political force, but an amalgam of forces frequently at odds with each other. Judging from this roundup of blue dog Democrats, it appears that most Democrats-for-Bush are blue candidates elected from red states, or blue candidates of suburbia. My gut tells me that the divide between blue dog Democrats and their more progressive colleagues like Clinton and Obama is an altitude differential [as the term is used in Ken Wilber's Integral Politics]. Orange candidates are truly a force of progress in areas dominated by amber politics, and often successful orange candidates appear as blue dog Democrats. These orange Democrats ally themselves easily with orange and amber Republicans, contributing to the sense of futility and isolation experienced by green Democrats. Other major and minor scales of an Integral political analyses can surely be brought into play, but it's altitude that divides the Democrats most deeply. And it's altitude that the politicos of Left and Right alike are loathe to talk about. Altitude is the unmentionable, unaccounted-for factor at play in the Democrats' seemingly self-defeating behavior.Until the orange donkeys and green donkeys learn how to play on the same team, the Democrats will not constitute a coherent single political force.