BB As much as I would love to see any ad targeting Carney for his alliances, I fear it may be too late. Carney ran in the PA Democratic primary unopposed. The two Republicans running in their primary were remarkable only for their vying as to who was the most conservative, a word featured prominently in all of their advertisements.

Clearly, Carney's opponent would be no better. But at least he'd be a Republican, and so his support for such things would be less significant than Carney's.

What Democrats like Hoyer and Carney count on is that you will never challenge them or fight against them because you'll be afraid that, by doing so, you'll weaken them and help flip the district to the Republicans. They need to know that this fear won't protect them or else they have no reason to do anything but take you for granted and ignore you.

The Democrats have a large margin in the House. It's going to get larger this year. The benefit of a campaign of this sort and the message it sends (and the potential to change behavior) vastly outweighs the risk that it will end up defeating a single bad Democratic House member and replacing him with one bad Republican.

I've wondered that myself concerning the Michigan governor elections.

I was told to my face by Jennifer Granholm herself that she was very sensitive about the environment and she ran on a n environmental platform and also the fear of what RNC tool Dick DeVos would do.

Well, after the elections it looks like we know what DeVos would have done. Same as Jennifer...

She is pushing 7 new coal power plants. She is pushing a reduction in the Department of Environmental Quality power to enforce environmental laws in Michigan and has just ok'ed a cesspool of toxic waste in my neighborhood. (I will never vote for a 'moderate democrat' again)

We know what the repubicans will get us. We can't be afraid of a republican getting the office when the gutless coward democrats can't be trusted to do the right thing.

I sat for a while before the election wondering who to vote for as Jennifer had started her turn to the dark side already. I almost voted for DeVos. Now I see little difference.

If these people want in office, they have to be held accountable! No excuses!

It might be hard but if Carney and other democrats want the job, they'd better act like the party that they claim to represent. (And I sure hope that November turns a whole bunch if the republicans and the DINO's out on their asses)!!!

... until moral improves!

:-)

They've been working the seamy side of Congress since the democrats 'won' the last time and now some cleverly worded bill will come out and be voted on in the dark of night and then the conversion to the dark side will be complete.

We won't have ANY rights to be private from our government but they and those that run it are ensconced in privacy that would make anyone jealous. Especially when you take into account that the vast majority of the media and coddled 'journalists' are in on it up to their necks.

Being a dictator, a 'god among swine' is a damn good job. It's great to be the king...

Now watch this drive...

...we're compelled to force people into voluntary cooperation w/ each other.

Yes, it is damn depressing. I sometimes feel like there is no hope.

Our path seems so obvious to me; "live and let live". What part of voluntary cooperation among humans is so scary to everyone?

(same with "drug war" or "war on crime")

Missed that, didn't get to my counterpunch email yet today.

F*cking depressing, and irritating as hell innit? A rhetorical question, of course.

By retarded Republican partisan hack bumblers like you.

The Banality of Truth

The government finally admits pre-9/11 bumbling

Jeff Taylor | September 21, 2007

On Tuesday Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee things that, had a government official said them in the days, weeks, or months following 9/11, would have sparked public outrage—and may have significantly blunted the push for greater police and surveillance powers like the PATRIOT Act.

McConnell told lawmakers that "9/11 should have and could have been prevented."

[...]

"For whatever reason, we didn't connect the dots," McConnell said, not quite coming clean on the reasons.

Nevertheless, this position moved McConnell beyond previous remarks in June in which he held that "in his view" the terror attack was preventable, but that law adopted for a Cold War world prevented swift action to stop terrorists.

What happened to change the shading? For one, a widely overlooked story first published on September 10 by McClatchy Newspapers Washington reporter Greg Gordon happened.

In his dispatch, obviously timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the attacks, Gordon returns to the Moussaoui case. As the case unfolded in the spring of 2006 it became increasingly clear that top FBI officials likely missed an opportunity to stop the attack in late August 2001.

While the dogged investigation of Moussaoui by Minneapolis FBI agent Harry Samit and Samit's repeated attempts to get a warrant from FBI HQ in Washington to search Moussaoui's laptop and belongings has been well documented, Gordon's reporting uncovers new information that the FBI absolutely had information in its hands to roll up a large chunk of al Qaida's financing network in the days before 9/11 and stop the hijackings.

Moussaoui had long been regarding by his fellow jihadis as something of a loose cannon and security risk. Turns out they were right. Moussaoui's notebooks included Western Union routing numbers, routing numbers used by al Qaida operative Ramzi Binalshibh to send $14,000 to Moussaoui in August 2001.

But authorities never looked at those notebooks. Instead, FBI brass repeatedly blunted Agent Samit's attempts to search them, citing lack of information that Moussaoui was a known terrorist or foreign agent.

Gordon writes:

Instead, Moussaoui's tattered, blue spiral notebook sat in a sealed bag at an immigration office—unopened until after four hijacked jets slammed into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside, killing 2,972 people...

http://www.reason.com/news/show/122604.html

Blaming FISA is just incompetent bunglers trying to shift the blame from themselves. It happened on your watch and you incompetents let it happen.