Communists not Socialists!

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...

"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 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...

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/)

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!

"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?

Thanks, too, NSA, for listening to us kvetch about your unlimited authority to spy with impunity. I'm sure my cable company, Comcast, has supplied you with all of my latest and greatest impotent rants and paltry donation lists to protect that silly document called the constitution. I'll have you know that's money I could have put into my kid's college fund, but whatever. No one cares about the cogs in our great economic wheel. We should just keep shopping and mind our own beeswax.

Even though the Terror President has a 25% approval rating, the Congress is trending blue, and the vast majority of Americans think we're on the wrong track, the Repubs are still dominating Democrats who fear looking weak on foreign policy. Even professional d-bag Scott McClellan is surprised that the press and Democrats didn't put up a fight after 9/11--even that revelation hasn't made an impact on our press or Democrats today.

Oh how you must laugh at the press. They all seem to think the FISA issue is too complicated, that only the bloggers and "wild-eyed liberals" care. Nevermind that folks intuitively understand that if a police officer asks you to supply her with cocaine, you're still guilty of drug trafficking if you pass on some blow. Pretty simple analogy, but still, our journalist experts on "the regular people" agree with you that it's over our heads and not that important anyway.

So thanks for checking in with the extremists here. I know, we're good for a laugh. Keep up the good work!

So congratulations again on pissing off the frige 75%+ citizens who think you are shredding the very foundation of our nation--the constitution.