Letters to the Editor
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"Protection"?
I don't need this kind of "protection", it reeks of the brand that I seen on Sopranos.
Speaking of 9-11, over 40,000 people died last year in car accidents in the US.
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Is Nancy P. (heaven forbid) our Last Hope?
She said the right things in her presser today. No telecom immunity, and FISA exclusivity were her two "must haves". Or so she said.
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Where's the Anger?
Given how voiciferously you've objected to telecomm immunity, why the silence on Hillary Clinton's not even showing up to take sides? Back when both Obama and Clinton were slow to join Dodd you attacked them both, but now that its just Clinton you're seeming to give her a pass. If this is such an important issue, one that you said should be raised as a matter of Dodd's integrity last fall, why is it that now you barely mention Clinton's inability to take a stand - either way - on a defining issue of American government. Its not like its a surprise, this is just confirmation that Clinton will say and do anything as long as she thinks its the right political move.
B.T.W.: If you're in contact with any other Salon contributors could you ask them to start writing again? Ever since Obama has taken the momentum in the primary races, yours, Koppelman's, Walsh's, Madden's and Shapiro's writings seem to have dried up considerably. There isn't even a Conason article this week so far. Maybe I'm reading too much into the fact that this coincides with Obama's momentum, but it sure looks like it.
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Are the Republicans still on walk-out?
Of the House, that is. How soon before we get another vote on the PAA extension?
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Are the House Dems finally calling the bully's bluff?
I would like Glenn's and other's opinion if they sense, like I do, that the House Dems are going to stand firm. Has the bully finally gone too far, and backbones are now being found?
Once a bully's bluff has been called, the bully usually ends up slinking away. I fervently hope the Dems have realized this and we are witnessing the start of a historical moment.
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Ted Kennedy 12/17/2007
"The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retro-active immunity. No immunity, no FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he's willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies."
- - Ted Kennedy
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Can't have it both ways
Ironic how the Republicans are now using the fact that some Dems crossed over and voted against the 14 day extension as a tool to portray immunity as "bipartisan" and thus saddle Nancy Pelosi as the obstructionist villain.
I just want to thank those guys from the bottom of my heart.
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I Fear the US' Death as a Democracy Was Long Ago...
I mark its demise the day of the 2000 election, when a bloodless coup d'état took place. And that's how it will be named in future history books.
But this ongoing debacle just reinforces how low the US has sunk. Our democracy is long-dead and rotting.
It is crystal-clean that corporations have MORE rights than ordinary citizens.
Why aren't we marching in the streets shouting to take our country back?!?
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Support Pelosi
How do we email Pelosi our support for standing up against the insanity?
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Customer Service
GG:
giving license to AT&T and Verizon to break the law without being sued by their customers in court?
This is the aspect I keep harping on to all my friends, coworkers and neighbors as I urge them to get educated ("Read Glenn Greenwald") and to express some outrage on this issue: You paid them to break the law and spy on you! What part of this is not infuriating?! It seems to get their attention. Whether they follow up with cards and letters, I don't know.
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If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...
Don't you get the feeling that Bush et al are really just trying to see how far Congress will let them go? And that the answer is "we don't know yet"?
Bush's latest speech about the urgent need for Congress to adopt the Senate's FISA bill was a caricature, an outright joke -- Americans will die by the thousands, right now, if telecom amnesty isn't implemented, and it was phrased in such mocking hyperbole that rational person could possibly believe what this guy is saying. But heck, let's throw it all at the wall and see what sticks. If nobody calls them on it, it's doctrine.
The thing nobody is asking is whether Obama or Clinton would seek to reverse any of these attacks upon the Constitution. Another thing nobody is asking is why President Bush and his cronies would seek to implement doctrines of presidential power that they would never tolerate if the Democrats proposed them -- and what does this suggest about whether Bush/Cheney has already decided that we're one explosion away from martial law and the suspension of elections.
Impeachment has to be put back on the table. Now.
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From Dunning Practices to Naked Extorsion
Let me get this straight, the telephone companies pull the plug on the domestic spying circuits when the the bills don't get paid, then turn them back on after the bills get paid.
The telephone companies now say they aren't going to let the government pay for domestic spying circuits any more unless they get amnesty for all indiscretions past, present and future?
Sounds to me like someone other than the telephone companies has something to lose here...
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What really blows my mind here...
...is that even if you accept all the assumptions behind the GOP positions, swallow all the benefit of the doubt the press gives them (as this item so amply demonstrates), the position still doesn't make sense.
Let's pretend we really do face a dire existential threat, and we really do need this surveillance to protect us from it, and we really can't do it without the cooperation of telecom companies.
Okay, fine. So follow the law. Get warrants.
What's so hard about that? It's always been pretty much a rubber stamp anyway, a threadbare minimum of accountability. What is there about any of the right-wing rationales for this that make it necessary to avoid even that and go for completely warrantless surveillance?
No one in the media asks that question. It's as if "warrantless" has become an automatic modifier -- we either have that kind of surveillance, or none at all.