When the Government tells you to do something, I think you all recognize, uh, that that is something that you need to do.

I too heard this, while driving my car. Almost ran off the road. Man, are we retro or what? Sig Heil!

BTW, I was quite dissatisfied with the NPR story. Standard he-said-she-said, without much explanation of the issues. At least they quoted an ACLU spokesperson.

"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?"

None of the hypocrites are going to jail, Rufus.

There is only one party in this country, and this matter has proved it.

The Beltway Party, ruled by lobbyists, sworn to defend their own interests at the expense of ours.

Remember that when President Obama and his GOP allies start writing legislation that would put us in jail for writing this stuff.

It's going to be interesting when the republicans who feel so great about the passage of this bill start screaming bloody murder about how the Democratic President is infringing upon their rights.

Rest assured, these assholes will turn 180 degrees in a nanosecond come January, '09. They are completely without principle.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml

H R 6304 YEA-AND-NAY 20-Jun-2008 12:48 PM

QUESTION: On Passage

BILL TITLE: FISA Amendments Act of 2008

Italians and Romans, seems quite fitting:

(Democrats in roman; Republicans in italic; Independents underlined)

Time to change your email footers to include:

Democrats, Republicans, Congress, Executive, Supreme Court, Bush, Cheney...firebomb, imminent

I mean, just to see how many "enemies" the goons can track all at once.

roll call link:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml

(Also in my sig)

I'm horrified that my rep, Michael Arcuri, who thus far had impressed me as an intelligent person, voted yes. I registered my displeasure both in a phone call and email. According to this:

http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2008/06/house-passes-fisa-legislation.php

the callers at c-span registered their disapproval almost unanimously...

Our government is no longer listening to us.

It seems that getting the Democratic Congress to change this legislation is/was about as likely as getting them to endorse Kucinich's articles of impeachment.

I suppose the telecom issue is more "newsworthy," if only in that it paves the wave for total corporate/government control of communications, which leaves us to no longer actually be able to know or discern what is or is not true, and therefore what is or is not "newsworthy." Now that the President is further empowered to break the law, there's even less chance future Presidents can be impeached for breaking the law. (Obviously, if it happens, Congress will change the law and make said change retroactive.)

But now that government spying and corporate immunity are clearly becoming law (the House just passed it), and the cause of defeating is rendered pretty much hopeless (Senate leaders guarantee its passage), maybe Glenn will entertain us with a few articles analysing the hopeless cause of impeachment. It may relieve the anger and depression that are bound to set in this weekend, Glenn, if you can imagine Bush and Cheney having to repeatedly invoke the 5th amendment on television! (Come on, buddy - you can still dream can't ya?)

Judging by the Democratic position and response on this issue, it seems like we'll need Glenn's legal reasoning and analyses under the next regime, whether its McCain or Obama. So while impeaching Bush for all this lawlessness may be hopeless and next to impossible, perhaps we can start building a case against the next abuser of power and destroyer of liberty, as it seems inevitable both parties are willing, able and eager play that game.

In spite of my petty desire to dig at him a bit, I for one have never been more proud of a lawyer-turned-journalist in all my life. Glenn Greenwald will go on my wall of heroes, if only for fighting this doomed but valiant fight.

Thanks, GG. You da man!

I didn't say Bush was good or bad. I simply asked for the list of names, which houtum cannot provide because it doesn't exist. My point is simply that Democrats hate Bush and the liberal media loves to portray him as this evil right-wing cowboy. Ok, well we can go back to the 90's when everyone on the Republican side hated Clinton. It comes down to a matter of perspective doesn't it? Republicans consider Clinton the worst President in history and Democrats consider Bush to be the worst. So, the question really is who is right? I do know that Bush and Clinton are not as bad as either side would have you believe.

Bush is a terrible public speaker. No doubt and he sometimes looks like a moron when he speaks. However, give him a written speech and some practice time and he does well. The same can be said for Obama. He's great when reading from a tele-prompter, but ask him a question on the spot and you get a lot of "uh's" and "ah's".

I was a fan of Bush up until about 2004-05 when he failed to fire Rumsfeld for his seriously flawed strategies regarding Iraq. Had he not been so stubborn and loyal then, we could've changed course in Iraq and the war most likely would be over by now. Actually, if Bush would've listened to his senior military leadership in 2002, we would've had a large enough force in place to prevent the insurgency from ever happening, but he sided with Rumseld and all else is history. But for people to keep the hate blinders on and fail to recognize any of his accomplishments in office is just absurd to me. I'm not going to get into the details about going into Iraq and whether it was right or wrong. At this point, you either agreed with it in 2003 or you didn't. People like to forget that the U.N. believed for 12 years since Gulf War I that Iraq had WMD, yet love to blame Bush for lying about it. Pass the blame around to everyone in the U.N., not just one man.

I was not a Clinton fan because he raised taxes and down-sized the military to virtually nothing while deploying us to Haiti, Somalia and Bosnia to fight in civil wars we had no business dealing with. I don't overlook his accomplishments during his tenure though and I don't believe he was the worst President in history. I'll save that designation for Jimmy Carter.