Mom,

My last post didn't look right.

the words "is so much horseshit" were not meant to reflect on you personally, but rather were taken from your previous post. I quoted them because it turns me on when you use dirty words. ;-)

Your Jebbie

Jebbie, this is among the reasons Mom wuvs u. But to answer your question, Congress can act before the sunset provision kicks in -- if it wants to. Congress can virtually always amend/repeal previous legislation, but for complicated legal reasons they may not be able to rescind telecom immunity, once enacted. (The courts will have had to dismiss the pending civil cases by then, no doubt "with prejudice.")

And that body cannot do squat about a presidential pardon.

I'd rather seem them pass a clean bill with only immunity and stop the assault on the 4th Amendment dead in its tracks than do the opposite. Of course, I'd rather have neither but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

I think that's exactly right. I think the fight against the Telecoms was the only way some people felt they could stop the Bush Admin. Telco lawsuits -> Bush lawlessness -> stop the assault.

Of course, if no one is going to be held to the existing laws, whether FISA or the Constitution, what good are they?

The reason I asked the sunset question is because I had a brain fart.

If the polls are accurate, it would appear that the Democrats might have a 60/40 seat majority in the Senate next year even without Douchebag Joe. Coupled with a Democrat in the WH, it's possible that some folks are looking ahead to when they might be able to ram through a repeal bill next year and there's not a hell of a lot the GOP will be able to do about it. The GOP might not be so lockstep next year with a Dem administration doling out the money and favors so it might even be possible to ram one through with a simple majority even if the Dems don't get to 60.

I'm not confident that this is the case, but it is worth thinking about. Hell, if we voters here in Louisiana got El Wonko Jindal to veto the legislative pay raise he said he wouldn't veto, maybe other miracles may happen.

Senators must be hit HARD and in the face with this while they're in their districts over the holiday if there is a chance of getting this thing stopped.

And yes, I'm aware that the immunity genies will be out of the bottle and there's no way to put them back..but once again, that's retribution and there's more than one way to skin that mule.

Nite, Mom.

Of course, if no one is going to be held to the existing laws, whether FISA or the Constitution, what good are they?

They serve as a wonderful standard to which we should aspire to return to.....and improve on.

When someone is drowning, they don't normally refuse a life ring because it's dirty, do they? It would be nice to have a nice clean life ring but until one comes along, a dirty one will do.

This country is drowning.

McCain will throw us an anvil. Obama might through a dirty life ring.

through = throw

It's not the center.

It's the Abyss.

There's a difference.

Why is Glenn Greenwald going after Keith Olbermann in a personal attack, when his real argument seems to be with Senator Barack Obama? Has Mr. Greenwald caught the "blame Keith" mindset that Ms Walsh has taken on, oh so recently?

To attack one journalist/commentator when the obvious problem lies with the nominee, seems ridiculous on its face. Mr. Greenwald is a constitutional attorney as well as a journalist/commentator. Mr. Olbermann is a journalist/comentator who has enlisted the aid of a constitutional attorney, Mr. John Dean, as well as, the ACLU in attempting to first find a reason for Senator Obama's apparent about face on the Telecom Immunity portion of the FISA bill, and secondly, in a Special Comment, that many of you who pretend to have listented to, seemed to not even heard what was said, called out the Senator to decide just what it is he wants to project as the nominee, and then to act upon it. Mr. Olbermann was not very complimentary to Senator Obama last night and did not hesitate to point out that the Senator has to decide a future course of action both as a Senator voting on a bill and as a future President, who may be faced with attempting to prosecute the criminals in the current administration.

Why, Mr. Greenwald, are you trying to shoot the messenger, when at the present you are also a messenger? Also, why is Salon currently attacking a former writer for this online magazine and otherwise a damned fine commentator when it suits them? These personal attacks are unseemly and far beneath what was once a great online magazine.

I truly cannot understand what is going on around here anymore. Are you all on a witchhunt, now that your favorite candidate did not win the nomination? It has become sickening to even open the Salon homepage anymore.

For anyone over the age of ten this is just heinous. It is precisely the kind of attention seeking verbiage that overwhelms whatever one wishes to convey, by the sheer adolescent ego required to strike out in the most noxious way possible.
— shooter242

Shooter knows whereof he speaks in this particular instance since his noxious mockery of Max Cleland's war injuries back on the old UT forever overwhelmed anything he might have wished to convey. Those who were present at the time have never forgiven his adolescent verbiage on that occasion and have never given any credence to anything he has said since. Of course, not much credence was given to anything he said before that either, but that is irrelevant.

Whether this plea by shooter is an acknowledgment that he has outgrown the adolescent attention seeking that prompted his comments about Cleland or whether it is a tacit admission of the heinous nature of his comments, for which he has never apologized, is difficult to gauge. More likely, however, it is simply a restatement of shooter's oft repeated theme that there are different judgmental criteria to be applied to Democrats and Republicans, to wit that it is all right to mock Democrats' military service and war injuries but not that of Republicans.

In any case, it is a valid point, regardless of how sincere shooter may be about the universality of its application: Those who have sacrificed in the service of their country (in Cleland's case his limbs, in McCain's case his mind) should not be mocked.