Is it hot out or is it just me?

I can't play favorites here so it's all the lovely and vivacious ladies out there. And it is hot out there today. It's the first day of summer. If I was a younger man the urge to flirt would have struck me a few months ago before spring time was over.

The lovely and vivacious Barbara Lee.

Alone on the Hill

Barbara Lee

News: Self-described 'Army brat' Barbara Lee explains why she cast Congress' only vote against giving the president a free hand to attack suspected terrorists.

By Bill Hogan

September 20, 2001

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2001/09/lee.html

You ask yourself over and over again--what are the Democrats afraid of?

What this vote, and the huge, unconditional (and borrowed against the incomes of our kids and grandkids) funding of the war proves, once again, is that the people have completely lost control of their government.

The Dems fear Fox News, Limbaugh, and the big money funders--they'll sell out their voters in a heartbeat. The public in general, and Democrats in particular, in poll after poll, want us out or Iraq. In a January poll, 57% of likely voters opposed immunity--so what do we get???

WE GET UNLIMITED, UNCONDITIONAL WAR FUNDING, AND WE GET WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING AND TELECOM IMMUNITY.

I don't know how long I can stay in a party, or vote for it, or donate to it, with gutless idiots like Pelosi in charge--have you listened to her lately? She seems as addled as Bush himself.

Its enough to make you dispair for the future of our country.

They're called objective sources. Factcheck.org is a good start.

I think factcheck is a good at what they do. This is what they do...

From factcheck.org:

We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases.

From Merriam-Webster:

source (1): a point of origin or procurement : beginning (2): one that initiates : author;

monitor (1) a student appointed to assist a teacher b: one that warns or instructs c: one that monitors or is used in monitoring:

I am ashamed to admit I voted for Ellen Tauscher, one of 293 representatives unclear on the purpose of her job. I'm sorry! I promise never to make that mistake again. If I could only sell my home for what it's worth, I'd move a few miles West into Barabara Lee's district.

Thanks for the nice comments. It's people like you and Jim Webb (I come from a military background too) who'll pull us out of this. As you say, there are thousands of activists and millions of people all over the country who are working passionately to put things right, and every defeat just makes the big victory more important. Hundreds in Congress today have voted against these bills. We need to give them some help, and not by supporting unelectable candidates.

If you who are reading this haven't seen them (if not first or last, letters get buried in the hard to access middle) please check my previous postings today for links to Progressive Democratic (not Democratic Party) organizations who are working to change Congress. They'll put you in touch with people in your area who think as you do. Together we can still do it. We have no other choice.

I'll add one more group that may seem pretty light, but has turned out to be a great social organizing tool: Drinking Liberally. There are 260 Drinking Liberally chapters in all 50 states and around the world, and they now have several spinoff organizations under the umbrella name livingliberally. They provide a great chance to meet, talk, relax and socialize with like-minded people and a catalyst for putting the ideas you've discussed into action. The more fun you have, the smarter you work, the more gets done. Drinking Liberally is at

http://livingliberally.org/drinking/

I doubt there's another paid writer in the u.S. who has written about it as much as I have right here at Salon.

-- GlennGreenwald

I don't doubt that. But it's not about the quality, which is obvious and for which we all should be thankful, it's about the play.

I get that you need to keep things fresh in the news business, but there's no story that's bigger than this, today, tomorrow, next week, and this should be the lede story every day until this POS legislation goes down to its final ignominious (25-cent word!) defeat.

Keep up the good work, Glenn.

I COMPLETELY AGREE THAT DEMOCRATIC COMPLICITY, IN ADDITION TO GUTLESSES, EXPLAINS THIS VOTE.

TOP DEMS WERE CONSULTED ON THE WARRATLESS WIRETAPPING, THE TORTURE, AND OTHER BUSH CRIMES. THEY DIDN'T UTTER A PEEP.

PELOSI HERSELF WAS BRIEFED ON THE GITMO/CIA "ENHANCED" INTERROGATIONS, AND SAID NOTHING. TO HER CREDIT, AT LEAST JANE HARMON NOTED HER CONCERNS.

PELOSI TOOK IMPEACHMENT "OFF THE TABLE" AT LEAST IN PART TO PROTECT HERSELF AND HER DEMO COHORTS FROM BEING EXPOSED AS COMPLICIT IN THE WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY PERPETRATED BY THE ADMINISTRATION

"Pedinska

Yes, actually there are. They're called objective sources. Factcheck.org is a good start.

-- bucks4mccain"

From Factcheck.org:

"Fear and False Claims

February 28, 2008

Updated: February 29, 2008

Playing the terrorism card, a GOP-linked group twists facts about a controversial electronic surveillance bill.

Summary

A widely-seen ad pushes a White House-backed bill that would make it easier for the government to wiretap Americans. It also would give retroactive legal immunity to telecom companies that cooperated with Bush's secret, post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program.

Sponsored by Defense of Democracies, a group with GOP connections, the ad takes the House to task for not passing the bill, as the Senate has. The ad appeals to fear, with its image of Osama bin Laden and similar ploys. But we find that it also makes several misleading claims.

Specifically, the ad says that:

"The law" allowing government eavesdroppers to intercept al Qaeda communications has expired. But the main, 30-year-old law that lets them listen in, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is still on the books. It's a law amending FISA, making it easier for intelligence-gatherers to eavesdrop on communications that might include Americans, that has expired.

"[T]he House refuses to vote" to replace the lapsed law. Actually, the House passed its own version of the legislation months ago. The House and Senate are now in conference to resolve the differences in their bills, which is the normal legislative process.

"[N]ew surveillance against terrorists is crippled." The administration has admitted that surveillance authorized under the expired bill will extend at least into August. It has also admitted that when a new member of a known terrorist organization is discovered, that person can be surveilled via authorizations granted under the expired law. And at any rate, FISA itself hasn't expired, and any time the government has strong evidence that someone is a member of a terrorist organization, it can still get a court order to eavesdrop on that person."

Not completely on point, but states the truth about FISA: as configured prior to this "compromise," FISA is all you need to conduct TARGETTED surveillance against individuals and groups. But that isn't what this "compromise" is really about. The main result is extending to the government the ability to conduct UNTARGETTED surviellance against extremely large groups, if not the public.

The stinking pile behind all of this is that absent verification through judicial review, the telecoms appeared to have granted an open tap to everyone's communications, which were siphoned into data storage for later sifting. If they didn't, or had mitigating evidence, they could have provided it to the court. But for some reason they didn't want to do that.

To the morons asking for evidence: that's what these telecom cases were all about and why the telecoms, the Bush Administration and now both parties and houses of congress have been working so hard to block the only path of inquiry to the TRUTH.