"Seriously, if you don't have anything to hide then you don't have anything to worry about do you?"

I recommend ignoring the troll who said that and not give him what he wants. Remember that when president obama is sworn in and the gop criminals are under servaliance. Who thinks the hypocrites will change their tune when they are goign to jail one after the other?

For gods sake, bucks4mccain - and all you righties out there pissing yourself, grow some balls willya'? I thought you hated nanny states where the government takes care of you.

Disgusting!

Thursday night, Keith Olberman had on Jonathan Turley from George Washington University ("law professor and constitutional expert"):

TURLEY: In fact, [Congressional Democracts] repeatedly tried to cave in to the White House, only be stopped by civil libertarians and bloggers.

OLBERMANN: And, also hidden in here behind this headline - if you immunize the telecoms, are you not also immunizing ... to some degree, the Congress that went along with all of these crimes in the last seven years?

TURLEY: Well, there‘s no question in my mind that there is an obvious level of collusion here. We now know that Democratic leadership knew about the illegal surveillance program almost from its inception. Even when they were campaigning about fighting for civil liberties, they were aware of an unlawful surveillance program as well as a torture program. And ever since that came out, the Democrats have been silently trying to kill any effort to hold anyone accountable because that list could very well include some of their own members.

(excerpted from transcript, link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25283004/)

"If you are doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about."

This line is nothing more than dangerous Magical Thinking.

Define "wrong."

Here's the thing. You say you support FISA, but this bill is about eliminating FISA. Under the original regulations, the Government could tap phones, read mail, bug and general surveil anyone once they had proven to a specifically designated court that the person in question was a risk.

FISA required that somebody (theoretically) outside of the administration's inner circle examine the evidence (which should be pretty clear cut) and issue a Warrant. Keep in mind that this was not a public open court. This was about as secretive as things get, even Congress would have difficulty getting a hold of what happened in FISA court.

This bill is saying that the President doesn't need even that nominal bit of persmission. Hence "wrong" is left to the discretion of the administration and the AG (which this administration has clearly shown can be as heavily politicized as any other office).

With the removal of objectivity, this bill will allow this administration and future administrations to simply collect information on whomever for whatever reason. Do you honestly believe that our leaders are above Blackmail for political reasons?

Do you think that Congressmen have never been extorted into complicity with the threat of closet skeletons seeing the light of day?

I (or any rational person) have limited concerns about my calls being listened to. Granted, give us a decade of lunatic ideologues amassing power through extortion and blackmail and they will certainly turn this power towards stomping out dissent.

You walk the line of the party currently in power, but this kind of bill is the first step towards a day when the conversations on these boards can be used to ruin the lives of concerned citizens.

We don't need this law to be kept safe. We need the FISA court in place and in power to stop the Government from listening to your pointless conversations and to keep them focused on those who are threat to the nation rather to those in power.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Socialist...

"Fed Up

For gods sake, bucks4mccain - and all you righties out there pissing yourself, grow some balls willya'? I thought you hated nanny states where the government takes care of you.

Disgusting!

-- TrakkerToo "

they also hated big gov. That was before.

Frickin hypocrite gop. I would just prefer if nobody gave any republcains any credibility, as they do not believe half of what they say. A man who has no cred. and craves none is a propgoandist. The gop are all rush/hannity/bush's personal defence lawyers. Why are dem's giving their arguements cred. Why is the media? Ignore the whining bully children. give them the irrelevance they have earned. All of them. then they will all move to greenland, or siberia. :)

If he's willing to let this pass, he has no credibility on civil liberties. Or as the Who once sang, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." I fear for America...

Communists not Socialists!

From Dave Burstein's DSLPrime newsletter (available on dslprime.com)

Also in Seoul, the Korea Times reports “officials from the U.S. Embassy blocked access to reporters” from the FCC Chair, Kevin Martin. They were particularly outraged because the embassy had made special arrangements for American reporters to interview Kevin. A visitor from France added “`They are Americans. They do that in Paris, too.'' They do that in Las Vegas as well, where USTA boss Walt McCormick cut off the audience when Martin offered to take questions. That was pretty insulting, and McCormick followed up by twisting what Martin had just said. I haven't asked Kevin if he noticed, but shortly thereafter I noticed Walt had been seated at the far head of the “Chairman's Dinner,” as distant from the Chairman as possible. D.C. is like the court of Louis XIV, where everyone watches who draws a smile from the ruler. An FCC official once smiled and said “Hi Dave” to me in public, and the next day a senior executive of spent two hours talking to me because he “wanted to understand my issues.”

All the Pauls are cool. Paul L did his bit and fought for his candidate. I think he's probably right about what he's said. HC is keeping quiet because to do otherwise just isn't done. Perhaps the best thing to do, if it was FISA and not that the party select a nominee, would have been to keep her in the race until the convention. What would you bet the FISA bill may not have come up for a vote? But we'd have this bloody and fractious floor fight. So I don't really think she would have taken a stand on it anyway.

All our leaders should be standing up and raising hell. If they are not, then they need to take responsibility for that. Anyone who claims it is because they have been told to shut up, and that they are obeying, is making excuses for behavior that shouldn't be excused no matter what.

-- Pedinska

I can't say I ever expected any more from any of them. William Timberman wrote one of his longer posts on the tail end of the previous thread. Call us jaded (or totally blase!) but this is it. We don't like it but one step up, two steps back. The fourth amendment was virtually meaningless in federal courts until Weeks v. U.S. gave us The Exclusionary Rule in 1914. State courts ignored it up until 1960! Mapp v. Ohio. We'll get it back. It's not like we've really had it all that long, except on that "piece of paper". Keep dancing!