It's not worth it. You will break a fingernail or hurt the UT's scroll window.

Just poke them blokes in the eye with the left thumb. 'Um do need to eat elsewhere.

'Um might think UT is a Salon hair wig-sop-shop? Ask them stop picking their nose.

'Um carry a pink umbrella on a sunny day. Someone forgot to cut the umbilical cord.

Is now that our system of checks and balances seems to have failed, we're left in the position of working to elect benevolent dictators in the hope that they'll let us keep our liberties.

It's sort of like replacing our car airbags with steel projectile spikes. We'll probably drive more carefully, but now there's a very slim and unforgiving margin for error. (And to extend the simile, in this age of spin and corporatist mass media, we'd be driving these cars on shoulder-less, jersey-barriered roads covered with oil slicks.)

Executive power has steadily expanded over the last 200+ years with each President taking a little more upon himself than the last. How do we roll this back? Legislatively? Not with the kind of legislators we currently - and are likely to continue - to have. Constitutional amendments? Again, the legislators...

A Constitutional convention? What's the procedure for that? Anyone know?

And if We the People directly or through the state legislatures hold a Constitutional convention, come away with a new Constitution, and get it ratified, we would then have to get the Federal government - in particular, the President-King whoever he or she may be - to respect and accept to new Constitution.

Are we up to the task?

It wouldn't be like Paul to blow his own horn so to speak, but I can.

http://www.glcq.com/me.htm

He's earned his street cred. We can all agree to disagree about the Hillary v. Obama issue but I can't say that I disagree with most of what he said vis a vis politics, party unity, etc.

We can debate until the cows come home whether or not Hillary would have spoken up about FISA and immunity or not. I do not know and we may never know.

This calculation would have been the same months ago, when the Democrats did repel this. What changed? Without that this explanation is incomplete.

It's a good question -- why, if they were going to do this not, wouldn't it juts be smarter to do it back in February and just avoid the controversy and the attack ads and the like?

If you go back and look at what they were saying back in Feb. and March, what they were really angry about was NOT warrantless eavesdropping or telecom amnesty. It was that the Senate -- after dropping the Protect America Act in their lap in August with one day to pass it before recessing -- tried to do the same thing by giving them the Rockefeller bill with 1 or 2 days before the Protect America Act was set to expire.

They were angry that the Senate had "disrespected" them by trying to force them to vote on a Senate capitulation bill quickly and with no changes, rather than being able to pass their own capitulation bill. The message they were sending was: "We'll capitulate fully, but only on our own timetable, not the Senate's."

So they took their time and then capitulated. That's really what it was about -- not standing up to the President re: eavesdropping and amnesty, but standing up to the Senate over the right to pass their own bill.

---Part of me wants to cling to a glimmer of hope...And, part of me just wants to get it over with. Slow motion train wrecks just aren't my forté.---

Yes, I feel the same way. If this was a novel, I wouldn't be able to put it down. Unfortunately I can't turn the pages of my life any faster.

Please provide your "unbiased source" for your claims that the Bush family has strong ties to the Saudi's and the Bin Ladens?

Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud relates how Salem bin Laden invested through James R. Bath, the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, some money in Arbusto Energy, a company run by George W. Bush [1].

Several members of the Bush family are investors in the Carlyle Group, a defense contractor and investment fund with numerous interests in the Mideast, run by former Bush administration Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci.[2] The media noted that former President George H. W. Bush attended an investment meeting at the Washington, D.C. Ritz-Carlton hotel on September 10, 2001 and in particular a meeting with Shafiq bin Laden, representing joint interests of the Saudi Binladin Group and Carlyle.[3] (Bush did not attend the morning of September 11, although it has been alleged that the meeting took place during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Former Secretary of State James Baker was present, along with Carlucci.[3]) The Carlyle and Binladin groups mutually severed their business relationship on October 26, 2001.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden_family#Alleged_business_connections_of_the_Bush_and_bin_Laden_families

I am assuming you are astute enough to understand how business ties such as these work. Perhaps I assume too much.

If you need an 'unbiased' image:

http://www.greatdreams.com/political/bush_saudi.jpg

;-)

A few more Real Democratic groups:

Perhaps the most outspoken Democratic organization opposing the FISA bill is Democrats.com. This group is unafilliated with the Democratic Party but supports the principles of the DNC and Howard Dean. In the last few weeks they have opposed the FISA bill and the bill to continue funding for the Iraq war, and supported the bills calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. If you agree with most of the posters on this site, they're very much worth a look.

http://www.democrats.com/

Howard and Jim Dean's Democracy For America is http://democracyforamerica.com/

and, among other things, provides professional quality training in political organizing for state and congressional races.

The ACLU, leading the fight against the FISA bill, is http://www.aclu.org/

Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund, which supports progressive candidates, often running against the so-called Democrats who've enabled this tragedy, is at

http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/

TrueMajority, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's, is a conceptually revolutionary organization aimed at redirecting American policy toward peace through substantial reforms in the federal budget. Two of their offshoot groups are Americans for Sensible Priorities and Businesspeople For Sensible Priorities. They're at http://www.truemajority.org/

These are just a few well-organzied and grassroots-financed groups who have made a difference already and aren't giving up.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont came out forcefully today against the FISA bill. He joins Feingold, Chris Dodd and Tom Harkin of Iowa as the real Democratic leaders. And don't forget Al Gore and John Edwards, who, while no longer in Congress, still have great influence and can be expected to be active in the future.

It's not over. You always hit greater opposition when you're making progress.