Saturday, September 30, 2006

 

286 Days and Counting

After 284 days of refusing to impeach the President for his illegal behavior, the Congress of the United States on Thursday, September 28, 2006 passed H.R.5825, The Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act in an unconstitutional attempt to make the illegal behavior legal ex post facto. Instead of moving to impeach, they're giving Bush a "Get Out of Jail" free card!

To their credit, 191 Representatives voted against this whitewash and for the rule of law in America; but to their eternal shame, 232 Representatives voted for the coverup and made themselves co-conspirators with the Predsident by aiding and abetting his crimes against the American people.

Just how bad is H.R.5825? You can read a liberal review at
Shredding the Fourth Amendment
by Mark Agrast in Center for American Progress published September 29, 2006, or you can see what conservatives Bob Barr and Bruce Fein had to say about it in Surveillance Bills: Back to the Bad Old Days from NewsMax.com on September 22, 2006:
[H.R.5825] would return to the bad old days before enactment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) when the President enjoyed virtually limitless authority to gather foreign intelligence.

It would be especially irresponsible for Congress to risk renewing the disaster when the Bush administration has presented no cogent evidence that FISA impairs its ability to thwart international terrorism, i.e., that the warrantless surveillance program of the NSA has intercepted revealing communications that could not have been intercepted under FISA.

Remember that on July 31, 2002, the Justice Department informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that FISA did not need amending because the law was nimble, flexible, and capable of foiling terrorist plots in the bud.

In President Bush's Kafkaesque world, the Constitution must be destroyed in order to be saved. But in the rational conservative world of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution is best saved by being followed. That means defeating ... the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act.
I'm going to give the last words to Pete Seeger, the greatest living American and my personal hero. Take it away, Pete.

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