Don't you know that everything's changed in this post-9/11 world? We have no choice but to trust our betters, else they may allow death to rain down upon us. We dare not question, lest this shining experiment in liberty and democracy be weakened by our lack of resolve.

Who supplied the tip to Roll Call for Larry Craig's arrest? I am wondering if its someone that can spy without warrants.

Glenn,

I think Congress intends to make just the stand you are calling for in these paragraphs:

What these latest revelations about Coretta Scott King reveal is that it is not a hard case to make that we do not trust our government to spy on us without oversight. As is typically true, if the Democrats actually tried to make that case, rather than run from the debate and hope it disappears as quickly as possible, even more Americans would understand the need for oversight.

That is what a party does when it actually stands for something and believes in something -- it makes its case to the American public. If they are actually interested in restoring FISA safeguards and undoing the damage they just did once the six-month sunset provision elapses -- and that is a big "if" -- Democrats should try that.

In fact, they aren't planning on waiting until the revision expires. Pelosi announced very quickly after the early August cave-in and called for immediate action after Congress returns. Conyers is following through with hearings beginning Wednesday. I think the overwhelming response (wasn't there something about hundreds of thousands of emails to Pelosi?) has Pelosi and Conyers thinking that restoring true oversight is politically possible. Of course, as you point out, it has been logically, legally and morally required from the outset of the Bush abuses.

From Conyers' website:

For Immediate Release

Contact: Jonathan Godfrey

August 29, 2007

Melanie Roussell

(Washington, DC)- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) announced that the committee will hold a hearing next week titled, "Warrantless Surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): The Role of Checks and Balances in Protecting Americans’ Privacy Rights." The hearing will be held on Wednesday, September 5, at 10:15 a.m. in room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

At House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) request, Conyers and Intelligence Committee Chairman Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX) vowed to revisit the issue upon Congress' return.

This says it all. Risk averseness is at the heart of an inability to stop the advance of tyranny. We see it in the government, we see it in industry, we see it in geopolitics, and in medicine. The idea that there is some risk-free world where the return on investment is always many multiples of inflation, the students are all above average, and there is a thrill a minute with on possible danger.

The Democrats were afraid.

I remember that Reagan famously commented, while he was signing the act creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, "Time will tell if this man was a communist." Hence the files.

Time will tell whether you or I or any other of the 300 million people in this country are terrorists.

It's too bad time won't tell whether the Democrats will ever not be too afraid to get us our rights back. Fear of being to blame is for 5 year olds.

In fact, they aren't planning on waiting until the revision expires.

As Pelosi well knows, her calls for the repeal of this law are not realistic. As was true with the Military Commissions Act, it is much harder to reverse a law once it is enacted than to block its enactment in the first place. Reversal requires not only a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but also a veto-proof majority. That is never going to happen on this FISA bill, and everyone knows that.

The only realistic question is whether enough legislators can be persuaded to change their position so that they do not vote to renew this law once it elapses.

It is clear to me that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans represent 'we, the people'. There is only a small vocal minority who suggest that if there is not free reign to surveil, that the terrorists will win.

This is patent clap trap, and most thinking people know it. The only conceivable reason that the leaders of the Democratic party would not impeach Bush, and stop these anti-Constitutional attacks is because they expect to profit from them when they are in power.

Of course, the question should actuallty be 'if' they come to power. Bush may simply try to declare a national emergency, and institute martial law.

Many people think this is a long stretch, but I'm not so sure. Given your knowledge of the law, and all the revisions that Bush has made in it, what is your opinion regarding this possibility?

Warrantless wiretapping.

(from m-w.com)

Warrant

1 B 1 Ground, justification.

Warrant-less wiretapping = ground-less wiretapping, i.e., for no justicable reason.

Do the people advocating this understand what they are saying?

never underestimate the power of transparent manipulation

I find it helpful to think of the perspective of individual field agents. In many ways, they're in the same conundrum as our Congresscritters. If anything were to happen on their watch, the flak they would catch would be for being insufficiently intrusive. Can anyone imagine a scenario wherin an FBI agent gets in trouble for too aggressive spying? Not in this day and age. So the situation is guaranteed to get worse. Without any kind of check, the only way the system can evolve is toward more spying and less freedom.

The bottom of this particular slippery slope is of course the realization of Orwell's worst nightmares.

But I thought they hate us for our freedom? Right? So how do we combat that? By compromising and eliminating the very freedoms that they hate us for... in the disconnected world Dubya. When will the majority of Americans wake up and be as outraged as the rest of us are about the civil liberties that are being taken away? This isnt a "Republican" or "Democratic" thing, it's an "America."

And do we think that they are honestly going to give back some of the freedoms back once "the global war on terror" is over? To regain and reinstate the freedoms that have been taken away, slowly, over the course of these past 7 years, will take more than what is going on today. I guess we have not hit rock bottom yet, even with Gitmo, Abu Graib, the warrantless wiretapping, the disaster that is the Katrina recovery, the patriot act, the fired US attorneys. Who will lead? Not the democratic leadership...that is painfully obvious. This will have to start amoung the people, just like the Civil Right's movement (Civil Right Movement 2.0 can I say).

As the present administration continues to use the Constitution as toilet paper, the Congress of the United States public continues to tap it foot in accordance with their actions. Hopefully before it is too late, a few real leaders or true patriots can start to take further action to protect the liberties that our founding fathers wrote about.

GRG

GRG