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Just make it stop. Via Glenn:
The signs are unmistakably clear that what was always inevitable -- full compliance by the House Democratic leadership with Bush's demands on warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty -- is now imminent. House leaders spent the week floating their specific proposals for how they intend to comply in full, and yesterday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, refused to criticize the President or the Senate FISA bill, and repeatedly and meekly expressed his willingness "this week" to give what he called full "blanket immunity" to telecoms (C&L has the video of Reyes' astoundingly weak and incoherent answers in response to Blitzer's Bush-mimicking questions)....
But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.
When you get right down to it, what does all of this kabuki mean? As always, Digby brings the core of this whole idiocy home in three sentences:
The usurpation of democracy and the constitution doesn't rate very high on their list of priorities, especially when they see the prospect of a Democratic president who they trust not to follow in Bush's footsteps.
But this was a principle worth fighting for no matter what. No president, Democrat or Republican, should be trusted with this kind of power.
So, what to do? There's always a few calls and FAXes, to keep slowing things down in the short term -- because a number of our Blue America candidates and other Democrats who are freshman are being pummelled by right-wing nutball ads (and Joe Lieberman) for standing up for the rule of law and they need us to have their backs. McJoan has the phone and FAX numbers.
If for no other reason than any delay is guaranteed to piss off JoeLie and his odious neocon pals...and Dick Cheney. That's definitely worth something. How about we get to work?
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Hey christy
Yes, Make it Stop! Now!!!
Blackmail.
Madness, madness, madness!
Good post. The litmus test for the unitary president theory is to ask the critter how they’re going to feel about it if the president is from the other party. That is, if they have an imagination and can really accept that that might happen, duh.
You know, that phone ad could very well be the phone ringing in my house and I don’t answer it because it’s tapped FGS.
And christy, your public poo fling was genius.
Redd, Reyes and Co. are merely miming one another… I received this letter yesterday from Sen. Inouye explaining his cave-in…
What’s to be done?
So compliant.
So obedient.
So willing to give Dear Leader anything he wants, really.
Our Democratic Congressional Leadership.
for Raven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QF3Q23bAcg
Thanks for sharing. If I read it right, Sen. Inouye is contradicting himself all in one stop shopping. IIRC he wasn’t exactly strong on this issue before the saber rattling a couple of weeks ago? IOW are we surprised he caved on this one? am i reading it right?
There are smart, serious adults running this country and they don’t need any
input from FDL DFHs who are bent on destroying America by
making a pro-terrorist fuss every time the Constitution is gutted.
Now just STFU and get back to the mall.
[Mod Note; closed snark tag.]
digg for immunity too!
IMO, the dem leadership needs to go just as bad as lil boots. There is no distance between them. Lil boots breaks the law, the dems co sign their bullshit. The way it stands now they are one in the same.
BTW, it was sent from his DC office beautifully embossed and printed on vellum, I question the authenticity of the signature, tho… ;-)
The blame lies with the leadership. Pelosi and Reid must be removed as leaders what positive has come from their leadership? Feingold and Dodd for Dem Leadership!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s the comment I made at Glenn’s blog in response to the quoted bit above:
I think that in the calls to Reyes, we need to read his own words back to him over and over about not backing down.
Killer!
yup
GFYS
Ironic, all that flowery talk of protecting our civil liberties… and then…! Yep, that was my take, too…! 8-(
I refuse to be disaffected of hope. There will be a change.
Why don’t we just email the NSA transcripts of our phone calls to him?
Fixing our voting process should be first and foremost in our efforts IMHO. I don’t understand why vote tampering and suppression seem to yield a collective yawn around much of the Liberal blogs, yet something like Telecom Immunity can start whole movements. This is one of the central issues of our times.
There’s already been all kinds of zaniness in OH, so how many election cycles are we going to be saying, “I don’t understand what happened. It seemed like we were going to do really well here. What happened?!?”
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-b.....71906.html
Nov is fast approaching and little has changed on this front from 2004. Are you with me?!?
Democratic leadership. What leadership? Pelosi and Reid must go.
I guess we need to start faxing and using the old U.S. mail service to insure no one will see our communications. Wait … It is still illegal for the Gov’t to open you mail without a warrant isn’t it?
Yes, that probably would be faster. But my first question remains. Who wrote that letter for Reyes? Obviously, from his interview on CNN, he fully intends to cave in.
letter writer =Darth
imo
Ha! You are serious huh?
Joe Lieberman. Now there’s a ’statesman’ for you. How in the world did we get ourselves into this mess?
No.
And FAXes aren’t in the clear either.
OK these two lines jump up and down at me:
Mu bold. Uh, Senator, with all due respect, it’s my right and responsibility to protect myself. it’s your job to honor my freedom and liberties. BTW, this eavesdropping started BEFORE our lives were in danger and what did it get us?
And this:
WTF??? We must give up our freedom and liberty so we don’t concede our freedom and liberty? And we accomplish that by allowing the actions of this Administration a free pass?
Brilliant! Thank you! Thank you Senator. Thank you for this poo.
Ugh!
hard to imagine, but the reid/pelosi congress is about to become a more bush-compliant congress than the frist/hastert congress was.
aren’t there some “republican rubber stamp” stamps we could send them?
Maybe his kids wrote it? They might actually give a rip.
They’ve caved every time. They never intended to fight, which begs the question. Why pretend in the first place. It’s not like we won’t find out they caved. Reyes makes it pretty clear they stipulated to immunity so long as they got inforamation they were after.
the MSM reminds me of a bad Broadway show that is overfunded and wont close down,after many horrible,unwatchable performances
Yes! the stamps!!!!
Why would illegality matter? They’d just get the rubber stampers to give them retroactive immunity.
it’s all in speaker pelosi’s hands now - the 4th amendment of the constitution of the united states.
if any bill is brought to the floor, it means the dem leadership has caved.
the mal administration must have written this,for they have the MOST to lose
I called them all. The aides seemed really happy to get the call!
My response to my Congressman (spit, yuck, ptooie) on his “explanation” of how FISA works
Reyes is an old company hand, loyal to the Bush family, gutted the
democratic opposition for some later corporate reward. It will take
more than one election cycle for the house cleaning needed.
It just blows me out. McCain is the GOP frontrunner. Civil liberties and John McCain are contradictory elements. The Republicans are supposed to be strict constructionists.
AP - Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton contested primaries in Ohio, Texas and two other states on Tuesday, the front-runner and his pursuer in a riveting race for the Democratic presidential nomination. John McCain reached out for the Republican delegates needed to secure his nomination after a decade’s struggle.
i was so very happy when she was ushered in as speaker,it is a bitter dissapointment,like Kerry,Reid,and Steny
Fact of the matter is… I no longer want to leave anything in Pelosi’s hands.
I hope Huckster kicks his butt in Texas.
Reid and Pelosi are a cancers on the Democratic Party.
Don’t forget Stenny kiddo.
I feel the same way. ‘Tis a puzzlement.
they assume far too much, a democrat is neither a lock, nore likely NOT to follow in bush’s footsteps, power corrupts
What is so difficult to understand, Pelosi, Reed, et al are Fascists, they protect a fascist administration installed by a fascist supreme court. As part of the fascist cabal, their part is to eviscerate any Constitutional process intended to rectify executive or judicial abuse. They talk like fascists, they lie like fascists, they walk with fascists, they are in bed with fascists. The public has made a mistake as to their character, why is it so hard to face facts, the government is in the hands of fascists and that is not going to change without accepting - these people are fascists.
The signs are unmistakably clear that what was always inevitable — full compliance by the House Democratic leadership with Bush’s demands on warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty — is now imminent. House leaders spent the week floating their specific proposals for how they intend to comply in full, and yesterday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, refused to criticize the President or the Senate FISA bill, and repeatedly and meekly expressed his willingness “this week” to give what he called full “blanket immunity” to telecoms (C&L has the video of Reyes’ astoundingly weak and incoherent answers in response to Blitzer’s Bush-mimicking questions)….
and now you know how i got my name….same sad story weekly/weakly
That would be fun.
So what’s your take on Bill Durston?
(Fellow CA-3rd District resident.)
For me in an ideal world you’d have attorneys with strong constitutional law awareness in their backgrounds as chairmen of these committees–not someone like Reyes who got their by the age old method of seniority. I don’t even know who is on this committee that plays with FISA now, and I guess that’s a secret and if it’s not a formal Conference Committee it’s a quasi-formal Conference Committee.
For sure.
I have been very disappointed in Pelosi and Reid. And one other Democrat.
i think digby’s only half right… i see NO reason to think that they care if the next president continues to spy on americans. in fact, i’m pretty sure that some of them (jello jay for example) want the next administration (R or D) to continue with the current policies.
can we please stop making excuses for the dem leadership now?
the house leadership fucked us over in august, they tried to do it again in the fall with the restore act - but holt and the progressive caucus fought back (without our support or thanks) and forced the house leadership to back away from some of the worst of their bill.
dodd promised to filibuster and did not.
and the the senate UC on jan 31 was a complete cave - which reid et all told us was a win.
i’m sick of all the lies we’ve been told by our congressional leadership - and i am most frustrated that anyone would think for a picosecond of giving them the benefit of the doubt ever again.
from glenn:
Do you suppose they were finally shown the documentation that the government signed on to indemnify the telecoms and that it is the government that is on the hook for many billions when the lawsuits play out? bmaz has made a strong case for indemnification over at Emptywheel and the top diary over at DailyKos is quoting him on it.
When the admirable Tiberius upon becoming emperor, received a message from the Senate in which the conscript fathers assured him that whatever legislation he wanted would be automatically passed by them, he sent back word that this was outrageous. “Suppose the emperor is ill or mad or incompetent?” He returned their message. They sent it again. His response: “How eager you are to be slaves.”
— Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Sarcasm; At least with mail you can tell if someone has opened it.(if you make sure the tint of your sealing wax is a unique color and make sure your signet ring is the only one of it’s kind that is. M’Lord). I guess we can start using carrier pigeons or maybe use some code the NSA can’t break. (right!)
Lahoma is edgy over Ohio and Texas. When she’s edgy, I am too.
Me too Anxious too
please,do you know the Joan Didion quote,about Americas lost its taste for democracy?
That about sums up what I’d sent in response to his letter, I did thank him for responding… While telling him I’ll not be voting for him in ‘10 if he’s planning on running again, after all he’s been in congress since 1963…!
be right back with my answer …
i think i shall have a rolling rock,im nervuuuuuuuuuus too
Do you think they want to beat the repugs at their game? Blackmail them into oblivion? Or just screw the public, once again?
on the house’s floor schedule for tomorrow:
We’re biting our nails here too.
I’ve been following bmaz next door. His theory makes a ton of sense except that the dems have caved on every issue. It’s quite possibly the case considering FISA. But how do you explain the wholesale cave in’s with habeus and all the other stuff?
another opening of another show…da,da,da,da,da,da…da
ding!
Happy Corporate Soveriegnty Day!
sadly, no *g* - but I’d love to see it.
a REALLY big shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhoe
i think we make a big mistake when we think of the congressional dem leadership as either on our side or opposing the republican leadership. i think they’ve shown us where their loyalities lie - when push comes to shove they side with the republicans and against us.
all we get is elaborate kabuki and lies.
Maybe they don’t cave in the beginning because they reap more financial or other rewards if they hold out.
Blackmail. Unspecified. That’s the only reason I can think of.
i saw it this morning here,and so wanted to steal it
I think they’ve evaluated this as a no win situation — where they’ll get branded as soft on terror (which they’ll get branded as no matter what they do by the GOP, even though tough on the rule of law sounds better to me than being a patsy…) and because Bush is going to veto any bill that isn’t exactly what he wants.
Which is why I think they ought to just go with no bill at all. And why I’ve argued myself hoarse for weeks with people on the Hill about this…and why I’m just plain disgusted with the whole thing. Delaying this at all has been a minor miracle, but I was really hoping we’d somehow pull off the whole shebang…hope springs eternal, I suppose, but she’s riding in a leaky boat at the moment. SIGH
Well put. Thanks for your answer.
link?
i’m pretty sure that’s wishful thinking.
how about they don’t agree with us? how about they agree with mcconnell and bush? or how about they don’t give a fuck?
seriously. why make excuses for them?
I don’t know the quote, but over the last two years the one that keeps popping into my head is that “we get the democracy we deserve.”
I kind-of had a similar discussion with someone on here a few days ago. IMO, the dems never intend to do the right thing. It can’t be as simple as blackmale. Even a few of those loyal to bushie have gotten fed up and started talking. I surely don’t know the answer but it makes me angry as hell.
I just can’t understand it any other way.
i don’t mind loosing so much as i mind getting played. and i mind getting lied to by people who claim to be on my side.
Don’t give up just yet Christy … tell us what to do to take the fight to Congress …
grabbed it from another fab PUP
merkwurdiglieber March 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am 99
In response to whitebeard @ 94
I am becoming convinced you are right, sorry to say… Joan Didion wrote
in 2004 that she wondered if the americans had the instincts for democracy anymore. She is rarely wrong.
Doesn’t all the hoopla on the teevee sound exactly like the hoopla on the teevee the day of Super Tuesday? We all know how that went down. Personally, I want them both to stick it out until just before the convention so that there is not too much pressure on one candidate. Two targets are harder to hit than one (metaphorically speaking, of course). Again, I hope the Huckster really messes up McCain’s numbers tonight — McCain needs a little humblement.
sadly everything makes a ton of sense if you give up the assumption that they care about the things that you care about.
Well I for one am shocked at the congresscritters behavior but not surprised.
Everything is on schedule, please move along.
HELL NO!
The economy is going to crush the Pukes in November.
Let him, doesn’t that truly work in our favor…?! 8-)
it goes further
it demoralizes the rest of us who REALLY do care
The best thing we can do is to get more people who stand on principles and who understand why this fight needs to be made in office. Folks like Feingold and Hodes and everyone else who have been working their asses off on this for months. If you think you are pissed, you can only imagine how this must feel to them, eh?
Give them more people to fight with…who will actually do the necessary work. It’s a long-term thing, not something we can win in the short-term. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions…
I often wonder how you all stay so positive in face of such an iceberg.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....mpaign_rdp
We need to be like horses…buck Bush off.
If bmaz’s theory is correct, wouldn’t at least some members of Congress know? The law says they should, right -or is my non-a-lawyer status led me astray? It is a simple question. The administration has no excuse for answering it with a suffocating document dump. All the papers should be in one place, neatly arranged in a nice tidy binder. Probably with some color coded tabs and stuff.
So, have members of Congress asked? Shouldn’t the bmaz theory be a public issue?
It has a nice ring to it, for a spy thriller novel: The Bmaz Conjecture.
BTW, I see no reason why this kind of information has to be classified.
IMO the old hands and “leaders” really believe that they know better. We the lowly people don’t know what is best for us and they are not going to let the crude masses dictate the laws and governing of this country. Dem or GOP the leaders are the same. The New rabid Republicans are just do what they are told the New Dems are slapped down quickly b/c they are the minority.
Let the Blogosphere unite and show if BushCo undermined the Constitution … Congress obviously doesn’t have the gumption to nail him …
that stupid song wont go out of my head….another opening of another show
argh!@#$%^&*()_T^Y&@#$%^&
I guess I am just guilty of thinking that the tide was finally turning. Obama actually made some nice comments about the Constitution last week.
The FISA revision was at least delayed. The new Intelligence Authorization Bill makes the military field manual the basis for interrogation techniques for the entire government, including CIA. I thought Congress was finally catching on to some of the damage they had done and finally decided to fight back, especially with the language in Reyes’ letter.
I think I am left with selise’s interpretation that it is all, always has been, and always will be kabuki.
This is another reason why Blue America is so important. We have to support those who will care about what we care about so they can get elected.
yup….DISLODGE the cabal,stuck in our throat and choking us all
I just want to put in a plug for a great web site:
http://www.care2.com/
Check out their Action Alerts, if nothing else. That’s how I learned about the latest petition to stop this nonsense.
peace out
This is what I had highlighted initially, toobz screwy…
I think it’s inaccurate to lump every member of Congress into the same basket on this. Some of them have truly been working their asses off — including staffers in a lot of the offices of leadership folks. It’s just that the political calculation — which is think is WRONG — is winning as an argument with a lot of folks who aren’t firmly on the stand up for the rule of law bandwagon.
I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating this is for me, let alone for you guys. Imagine having been one of the Senators or House members who worked their ass off on this only to potentially get sold out…for an election year political calculation…
Thanks, I’m e- mailing Feingold a note of support and a copy of the Fourth Amendment to as many Congresscritters as I can …
About the only recourse remaining is to send the message - NO