Virginians Can Ask McCain Questions In Tele-Townhall Tonight At 7:00 PM

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002424.html

1) Some economists claim that the government under the Republicans has destroyed the value of the Dollar and the opportunity for the working class to get jobs or make ends meet. Why should I vote for you?

2) Experts say that your promise to destroy innocent lives in Iran will push a barrel of oil to over 400 dollars the day the attack starts. Why should I vote for your plan to destroy Iran?

3) Many people who know you well have said in the past that you are unable to control your anger and would make a very dangerous man to put in charge of America's military arsenal. Why should I vote for an adult given to adolescent fits?

Does the new FISA legislation do anything to the pending Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush lawsuit, since this does not involve the telecoms? What are the chances of this lawsuit still providing some of the accountability that might be wiped out with the telecom suits?

Regarding the new ACLU constitutional challenges, wouldn't the courts' Catch-22 of not allowing standing unless you can prove that you were a subject of wiretapping make those cases go away essentially without deciding them?

We can eneact laws until the cows come home but if the President is determined to violate the law, what the hell good are they? Especially when Congress refuses to use its powers of impeachment.

I was thinking the same thing. Greenwald has repeatedly suggested that Democrats in Congress are naive to think that will Bush obey the new FISA law, because he knowingly violated the old one. In making this claim, however, he sets up unsolvable legislative problem. Once you assume that the law you are writing is going to be ignored, no possible language in the bill is going to get you of the dilemma.

The way to deal with lawbreaking is to prosecute violators.

Let's look at the 'scope' of the crimes.

Bush wasn't just a small time hood that, to use a more common analogy, that knocked over a few banks. No. George Walker Bush did what every 2-bit hood would LOVE to pull off for Bush pulled of the ‘trifecta’. It’s as if he hit all of the federal reserve banks and Fort Knox AT THE SAME TIME.

Want to know the best part? He used TAX PAYER DOLLARS to install inside men in EACH BANK to allow him to steal the money AT WILL. Bush was no 2-bit criminal. No, he was industrious and very effective. (Like father like son?)

I'm sure that the true scope of the crimes committed frightened the democrat politicians and they knew that if the GREAT SECRET was revealed and if the true cost of all the high priced equipment that was installed in EVERY AT&T OFFICE and all of the others too, then, well, the tide would have turned against Bush's crime spree and against the democrat politicians too...

Some secrets are so large that they have to be kept so secret that if anyone found out how deep the hole went, their head would explode. Well, except for Bernbart and people like him who have nothing to hide from the government.

I move that a secret that huge SHOULD NOT be kept from the citizens on which these crimes were committed. The very idea that a sitting president would, and could, order such a large scale crime against the laws of this nation is breathtaking. Hell, it's very nearly heart stopping. It would be like standing at the edge of the world and looking down at the empty void that would stretch far beyond the end of where the eye could see.

That the opposition party would actually aid in the keeping of the secret and in the end make it perfectly legal AND excuse all those that took part in it is something that you'd expect in a d-grade movie. A Golon-Globus hit parade of ridiculous scripts and unheard of actors stumbling through a horribly shot nightmare of a movie. But that is our reality.

And the cavalry in the form of Barack H. Obama. Widely viewed as the single most principled man that has attracted a near religious devotion in many democrats rides over the horizon and in a (hopefully miscalculated) master stroke let's the criminals go and not even with a warning. Hell, he leads many in his party to give the criminals a platinum plated 'Get out of jail FREE' card (with oak leaf cluster) GIVING total immunity like the good fairies of children's stories. *ZING* with his magic wand. (those tights must make all the blood rush to his head because me thinks he thinks he's got the world by the balls and can use his wand to smite all that stand in the way of the keeping of the GREAT SECRET)

It would take someone with MASSIVE balls, GALACTIC sized balls to tell the populous the GREAT SECRET. Sadly, the search continues for such a person.

I really hate those thoughts that come in the pre-dawn morning. They usually are the most frightening...

I was thinking the same thing. Greenwald has repeatedly suggested that Democrats in Congress are naive to think that will Bush obey the new FISA law, because he knowingly violated the old one. In making this claim, however, he sets up unsolvable legislative problem. Once you assume that the law you are writing is going to be ignored, no possible language in the bill is going to get you of the dilemma.

The way to deal with lawbreaking is to prosecute violators.

Yes. This is the whole point. If you react to lawbreaking by government officials by protecting them from consequences and then simply writing a new law that says the same thing the old law says, then you're obviously doing nothing meaningful to deter future lawbreaking. That's what makes the claim (coming mostly from Democratic supporters) that this new FISA bill "ensures future compliance with the law" so insultingly absurd.

Laws with no consequences are meaningless. They're just suggestions. And nothing ensures future lawbreaking more then announcing that the response to government lawbreaking will be to protect the lawbreakers and then legalize what they did. That's why this new law does the opposite of what its apologists claim -- it incentivizes future lawbreaking by making clear that nothing will happen to political officials who break the law.