No matter what you may think of Bush here is a guy with the lowest approval rating for a President in History and a lame Duck at that. Yet he continues to get his way he even has the agent of CHANGE Obama supporting his position like him or not you have to admire Him.

Isn't there anyone left in this congress who will stand up for what is right what ever happened to the party of Jefferson?????

I don't have any secret information, but I do know that warrantless monitoring of domestic communications has been going on for decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. The form and content of the information gathered has varied, but it was all done without judicial warrants. It was done even before the Supreme Court authorized 'tap and trace' of every domestic communication, since it was "foolish to expect" privacy.

That being the case, it wouldn't surprise me if the telecoms threatened to document all unwarranted wiretaps, through the administrations of Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton. So, the political issue was not whether telecoms should be protected, but whether the conduct of Presidents from both parties would be kept a closely-held secret.

From my perspective, that is the only rational reason for the Democrat's capitulation: whose ox would be gored. If they couldn't damn Bush 43 alone for imperial hubris, better to keep the conduct of Democratic Presidents out of the history books.

I doubt that any Congressional leader would ever admit that this fear was what motived their votes and the urgency of granting the telecoms retroactive immunity for violations that had gone on for many decades. Having the respect that I do for Obama, I can't imagine any other kind of threat that would prompt his reversal of position. He certainly doesn't want to see any Clinton's tarred and feathered by such disclosure, which might be the result if the telecoms blabbered the truth.

As I said, I have no evidence. I'm only making a logical extrapolation from the facts I do know. I'd be happy to see some other coherent theory for the overwhelming urgency of voiding the Fourth Amendment. It's certainly not because Democrats want to protect this one errant Republican President.

Have thrown away the freedoms that their forebears fought so hard

to maintain.

Welcome to 1984 ........ a total defeat is now a "significant victory".

Is this Hoyer person a victim of CIA mind control? MK/ULTRA? This cannot be serious. If it is, Hoyer is deranged.

Democrats are sometimes accused of appeasing terrorists, which is bull-oney, but it's hardly a stretch to compare Hoyer's "great victory" with Chamberlain's "peace in our time."

...."drawn from a bag"... RichEmery? maybe

You need to be more specific. ... you meant a diaper bag.

ref: ... Your last page of "comments".... (more trivia?) huh.

Kurt Vonnegut smoked PAll Mall. You Can Light either end.

"Wherever Particular People Congregate" is the "Famous Cigarettes" motto.

`O Whatever. Skip it.

...are then sent as "comments" to the FISA bill debate.

What, pray tell, is the relevance of the verbal diarrhea that's been posted here by several people?

Cinnamon bark, burdock, fennel, stinging nettle, oat straw, and yellow dock root. A squirt of burning silver sulfadiazine for goof luck guarantees yoo can keep the e-coli bacteria out of a Happy House. Yes.

Robert Burns wrote poems about how we are viewed by ourself and how others view us. People must appraise themselves, depend on their own judgement and risk a mis`assessment of their own competence. It is 'fun' to learn together from each other.

Burns: "Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursel's as others see us! Then get afflicted with a J. Alfred Prufrockian stab: ""'Do I dare? 'Do I dare?"'

Then: "not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgement." (no get drunk on a boat. some fools do that and get a DUI in Bar Harbor) No drink away from a flop house, ever. That in the bible somewhere. Read the UT blog etc., too.

Hay! Scrupulosity: `"unfounded fear that there is 'sin' (miss the mark) where there is none."

It can't hurt.

A loudspeaker can holler loud and we/me can remain dazed. I was on the CAT Ferry last week floating in the Bay of Fundy. I thought I knew where I was going. Of course, I ignored the Holler from the Ferry Captain's loudspeaker. He said: "Those with a car, truck, or a bike go to the bottom of the boat to prepare to go via customs checkers. All The Ferry walkers exit via X-door. Baby strollers family walkers or wheelchairs exit at gate-Y!" okay. But of course, I ignored the Holler because I thought I knew what the instructions were.... Wrong.

Well. I line up with the kids and stroller people talking about ducks.

The last pick up truck off the CAT Ferry was mine. Customs knew me.

Nervous customs/immigration authorities treated me as a bank robber?

Shush.

O boy! No be disturbed. Scrupulosity, I learn further, "may lead to obstinacy, despair, or conversely, to self-indulgence. If I was in the line any longer I would have forgotten my pickup-truck and walked off the CAT Ferry into Bar Harbor with a diaper bag. Hay partner, Hay bartender, I'll take a shot of Talcum Powder." sthu. ok. I blame M.E.M.O. Thanks and apologies. Thanks to Boxer.

Ring of truth to Black's terror comment?

Candidate distances himself from terror comment, but does it ring true?

By Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut

The Washington Post

updated 12:18 a.m. ET, Wed., June. 25, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama and his surrogates continued to criticize Charles R. Black Jr., a top adviser to Sen. John McCain, on Tuesday for saying a terrorist attack before the November election would help the presumptive Republican nominee. But behind their protests lay a question that has dogged Democrats since Sept. 11, 2001: Was Black speaking the truth?

"I don't think anyone knows the answer to this question," said Tad Devine, a senior strategist on Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, which confronted the same internal debate. "On the one hand, Republicans say they made America safe. That argument goes by the wayside if there's an attack. On the other hand, an attack would change the entire framework of this election."

Black's comment to Fortune magazine that a terrorist attack "certainly would be a big advantage" roiled the presidential campaign for a second straight day. Obama -- who has made a determined effort to shore up his credentials on national security since clinching the Democratic nomination, arguing that the United States is less safe now than before President Bush took office -- wasted no time in trying to counter Black's statement. Obama dispatched Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, to hold a conference call with reporters in which he called Black's comments "a candid and very disappointing glimpse into the thinking of one of McCain's closest advisers." He did not directly call for Black to step aside.

"I think the remarks were so out of place that they call for some recalibration in the thinking and perhaps a greater adherence to principle here in staying away from the politics of fear," Ben-Veniste said.

McCain has distanced himself from Black's comments, saying, "If he said that -- and I don't know the context -- I strenuously disagree."

An ‘obvious’ claim?

But radio host Rush Limbaugh said aloud what other Republicans have been saying privately for months. Black's comments were "obvious," Limbaugh said yesterday on his program as he criticized McCain for distancing himself from them.

Limbaugh said in no uncertain terms that Obama would be weak in the face of terrorism. "We know damn well it's Obama who would seek to appease our enemies. We know damn well it's McCain who won't put up with another attack," Limbaugh said.

To this day, Kerry (D-Mass.) has blamed an Osama bin Laden videotape released on Oct. 29, 2004, for his defeat in the election the following week. And McCain, while campaigning in Connecticut for Rep. Christopher Shays that week in 2004, described the bin Laden video as a boost for Bush. "I think it's very helpful to President Bush," McCain said at the time. "It focuses America's attention on the war on terrorism. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I think it does have an effect."

Fears of an ‘October surprise’

Devine said Kerry campaign officials always feared an "October surprise" -- the capture of bin Laden, a terrorist attack or some other maneuver that would thrust terrorism into the forefront of voters' minds.

"We certainly were concerned that an administration that had shown itself willing to do almost anything would do almost anything," he said. "We weren't planning around it. There were no meetings around an October surprise, but were there discussions? Certainly."

Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of the 2004 nominee, went so far as to tell a business group in Phoenix late in the campaign that she "wouldn't be surprised if [bin Laden] appeared in the next month."

In his first debate with President Bush that year, Kerry tried to confront the issue head-on, accusing the president of a "colossal error of judgment" in "taking his eye off" bin Laden with the invasion of Iraq.

But the fight against terrorism remained Bush's key strength, even with an electorate that had begun to sour on his stewardship of the economy and his conduct of the Iraq war.

Dems appear to embrace terror debate

Obama advisers insisted yesterday that the Democrats can win the terrorism argument this year, even if there is an attack.

"I think the American people have gotten sensitized to the politicization of the war on terror by the Republican Party," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), an Obama adviser. "Republicans have gone to the well too often, and the American people are seeing through it."

Obama has already begun the process of building a profile on national security issues. Last week's appearance with former military officers came after he had talked tough about al-Qaeda and promised action against the group's sanctuaries in western Pakistan. He has also begun a shift to the political center, saying he would support a compromise bill to authorize warrantless wiretapping of terrorist suspects over the strenuous protests of civil libertarians and party liberals. The Senate will vote to break a Democratic filibuster of the measure today.

"If something like an October surprise would happen, it would remind people about many of the Bush administration failures, that Osama bin Laden is on the loose, that al-Qaeda is stronger, that we've not been successful in pursuing foreign policy objectives," said former congressman Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), another former 9/11 Commission member and an Obama homeland security adviser. "And I think those are strikes in favor of our argument for change."

But the sensitivity is still there. Davis, saying he was speaking personally and not for the campaign, advised Obama to choose a seasoned foreign policy veteran with strong national security credentials as his running mate. He mentioned former senators Sam Nunn of Georgia and Bob Graham of Florida.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25357745/