I also believe that Sessions’, Kyle’s and Hatch’s speech were cut from the same cloth. These people, Rove, and Gillespie really believe that the vast majority of Americans are so stupid they’ll swallow this crap.

I know they’re banking on it with the agenda:

“Keep it simple, because our fellow Americans are stupid.”

I sure hope not come November 2008.

His rubberstamping of Bush is probably just one more audition for the bench.

I’m not sure which position he would favor to use his same condescending and frankly stupid fearmongering speech that he gives in every setting whether talking to the media, on the floor of the Senate, or in SJC.

Silly me I guess.

Helloooo EPU’d world.

false choice, indeed. dare I say that I feel LESS safe when my security is in the care of neo-cons?

I hope Dodd’s momentum for civil liberties carries through the holidays. What a nice present that would be.

Starting on Page S15723 of the Congressional Record:

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague, Senator Feingold, and his passionate argument, but I am going to tell my colleagues that this Congress and this Government of the United States are capable of overreacting. We are capable of getting excited about an issue and taking theoretical positions that end up, as a practical matter, leaving our country at greater risk. This is not just an item of discussion; it is very real.

I would point out to my colleagues that we have made two dramatic errors some years ago in a situation just like this, on emotion driven by our civil libertarian friends, such that a wall was put up between the FBI and the CIA which barred the sharing of information between those two critical agencies.

We also mandated that the Central Intelligence Agency officers could not obtain information from people deemed to be dangerous. Bad people. How do you get information in the world and protect America and our legitimate national interests without sources? Those became laws.

And what happened after we were attacked on 9/11? Both those rules that we imposed on our military intelligence agencies were deemed to be bogus, wrong, and mistaken, colossally so. Many Members of this body were warned when they were made the law of the United States, they were warned then that if we did these things it was not wise. But, oh no, the others loved the Constitution more, they loved liberty more, so these unwise laws were passed. And what happened afterwards, after 9/11? Well, we properly removed both of those silly rules. We have taken them off the books, in a bipartisan, unanimous way. They were never required by the Constitution. They were never sensible from the beginning. But we passed them on emotion not reason. Some ideas being promoted now are not sensible either and can leave our country in dangerous straits. So this is an important matter. These things are life and death issues.

Last year, a Federal court ruled, based on changes in technology, that those laws we passed effectively limited the collection of critical communications of foreign intelligence. It was not the intention of Congress when we passed it, I am sure, that the law would, in effect, end up gutting perhaps the most important surveillance program we have against international terrorists, but that was the effect of it.

Admiral McConnell was flabbergasted. He came to us and pleaded with us to give him relief. So what happened? Well, he said this to us. Listen to these words. Basically this is what he said: The United States was unable to conduct critical surveillance of ….. foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside our country.

That is basically–that is what he said to us.

That is a dramatic thing.

So what happened? Congress went through an intense study, and we passed the Protect America Act this past summer. Some people said: This is a rush, though we spent weeks on it. Congress spent a lot of time working on it. But we said: OK, it will come back up for reauthorization in February. As of this date, there has been no example of abuse of that act.

Senator Feingold says these intelligence procedures were illegal wiretapping. I think that is really not a fair thing to say. A court ruled that these procedures we had been using for some time, must, according to statutes we passed, go through a certain number of procedural hoops that, as a practical matter, would have eliminated the possibility of us continuing these surveillance techniques. That is what they ruled. I don’t think we ever intended this to be the effect, but the court probably ruled fairly on the law. I am not sure. We are stuck with the ruling regardless.

I don’t think it is fair to say the program was illegal. But certainly the procedures were not unconstitutional because this summer, when we passed the Protect America Act, we effectively concluded the program was good and constitutional. We affirmed the program.

I want to say, if we have any humor left on this subject, perhaps we ought to write President Bush a letter and tell him: Thank you. We are sorry we accused you of violating our Constitution and basic civil liberties. After the Congress spent weeks studying this, we passed a law that basically allowed the program to continue as it was.

I urge that we do the right thing on this legislation and move forward to the Intelligence bill, not the Judiciary bill.

Someone give Bernanke and Paulson a call and let them know that the horses had already left the barn.

The horses are not only gone. They died of old age.