Bop - Verily I say unto you, my comrade, Soar!

I have no ponies, but your gracious and silver-tongued eloquence prompts me to offer you a choice between two aging, er, seasoned quarter horses; a black (gelding) or a buckskin (mare).

:-) Thanks for the giggle. FWIW, I also think Mona oughta pony up.

The script is in and has been approved:

The telecoms were acting patriotically in a time of need, responding to the desperate demands of a President caught in a new and dangerous terrorist filled post 9/11 world. Why should they be punished for this?

Of course, that last rhetorical question in the script sounds nice and supports the telecoms as the innocent victims. (Hmmm kind of like when Bush claims he was the victim of bad intelligence) Unfortunately, inconvenient questions are ignored since it fuks up the script.

What about the companies that refused to go along - were they traitors?

What if this was just a stupid idea from an administration full of stupid ideas, and in practical reality there is no intelligence value in what the telecoms did?

If the telcoms are proven to break the law, this leads to the conclusion that the president was breaking the law - is this an impeachable offense?

Don't we want to know if the president was strong-arming telecoms to break the law?

Don't we want to know how and to what extent the law was broken?

Don't we want to know where is all of this data they collected?

For Crissake don't we even at least want to know if the telecoms actually are continuing this behavior to this day?

There is another contradiction with the immunity wishers: If, as Mr Rockefeller and many others claim, the telecom companies did nothing wrong, they should not fear any prosecution. To the contrary, they should actually be after it, to show their critics that they [the companies] did right!

I never understood why someone who is innocent should run from prosecution - provided he lives in an Open Society with sensible laws and jurisdiction.

who is in on the joke.

The Senate is taking a roll (I think) and C-SPAN has cut away from live audio and is playing Shostakovich’s 5th symphony, a rather dark piece first performed in the U.S.S.R. in 1937 - the height of Stalin’s Great Terror.

That’s just a coincidence, right?

Right?

@ Tiberius:

Now that we know what you are, we can get down to haggling about price.

I just spoke with Senator Reid's office to express my disappointment with his support for telecom immunity.

I was of course told that he is against telecom immunity. If that is the case I asked, why wasn't he honoring Chris Dodd's hold? They said that a hold doesn't prevent a bill from coming up for a vote. I assume this is more nonsense but would like to be informed.

Could Reid prevent the vote if he wanted? Does a hold prevent a bill from coming to a vote? Has Chris Dodd's hold somehow been over-ruled by a vote (as Reid's office implied)?

Even after the official expiration of the Protect America Act on February 1st, all currently-authorized surveillance and acquisition orders continue until they expire, which may be for as long as a year after 2/1/08, so there will be no sudden cessation of spying when the PAA expires, contrary to all the over-heated, exaggerated claims to the contrary (which also overlook the reinstatement of the original FISA law post-PAA).

S. 1927, Section 6.

(d) AUTHORIZATIONS IN EFFECT.—Authorizations for the acquisition of foreign intelligence information pursuant to the amendments made by this Act, and directives issued pursuant to such authorizations, shall remain in effect until their expiration.

Of course, even Harry Reid doesn't want to acknowledge this inconvenient fact, because he's grateful to Mitch McConnell for "forcing" the issue by objecting to a 30-day PAA extension, and the issue would be a lot harder to artificially force this week if it were widely known that the core spying allowed under the PAA won't be immediately cut off en masse as of February 1st.

Let me make sure I understand this--Telecoms are innocent victims who should be excused from following the law because, amongst the thousands and thousands of lawyers they employ, not a single one knew the law.

Thanks for the reference to the Kevin Phillips book. I checked it out on Amazon and have ordered it: it looks useful for my continuing education.

State Secrets Act? Rockefeller cites a "State Secrets Act?" As far as I know, we do not have such a law on the books. Parts of the Patriot Act require silence from librarians and others served with the proper security letter, but a "State Secrets Act" we ain't got.

And this guy is a US senator?

Save us from ourselves!

Ed

The word you uttered "revolutionary" is exactly what is going on at this time in our nation. The more these global agenda freaks expose what they are doing the more people have their eyes opened and the ranks of the "informed" become more numerous.

They are killing their own agenda by enacting it. There will come a time when people will say enough, and that will probably be when the dollar collapses totally. That will probably not be long from now.

The Zionists are right now doing all they can to keep the dollar from failure so not to become exposed in such a radical way.

The nation is hanging by a thread, due to criminals like rockefeller and his criminal conspirators.

Someone posted that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was meant as kabuki. No intention of removing him from office, but to take impeachment off the table for future presidents. I agree that that has been the result, but disagree that the repugs didn't want Clinton removed from office. They would of loved to have had impeachment succeed against Clinton. They hated the man and still do to this day. But the result of the repugs "Get Clinton" mentality, did pave the way for Bush to get away with his crimes. If Clinton farted the wrong way, the repugs turned it into a huge "SCANDAL". The result was that the american people were numbed into complanency. So when Bush got into office and committed real crimes, the american people just shrugged it off. Just saying that's the dems playing partisianship. Of course the repugs had no way of knowing the crimes Bush would commit, when they were going after Clinton. But I do hold them responsible for where they have led this country.

As for writing my senators to oppose this immunity bill, I have. But my representatives in congress have longed stop responding to my letters. That's what happens when you contact them too often. Anyone else have that problem? My two senators are repug Sen. Allard and DINO Sen. Salazar. I'm sure both of them will vote to give immunity to the telcos. Allard is retiring this year and hopefully we can get a real dem into his seat. Not another DINO like Salazar, who might as well be a repug.