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Tag Archives: FISA

Legal, but not constitutional: how the government is weasel wording the public about Edward Snowden and the NSA

Posted on 2013.06.11 by winterSmith 18 comments

The Edward Snowden/NSA/PRISM uproar continues, and in the argument over whether or not he’s a Real American Patriot or your basic criminal vigilante the whole fucking point is getting lost. In fact, that argument is precisely the one that the Obama administration and the GOP’s security-state architects want us waging because it distracts us from the actual issue we need

Shootout at the DC Corral

Posted on 2010.03.03 by Bonesparkle 14 comments

The independently minded political animal always wrestles with times of transition, and the changeover from the Bush to Obama regimes has been worse than most. During the Dubya years it was easy to identify the enemy and to hate him with a blinding passion. Sweet Jesus, George II and his sidekick, The Dick Cheney, played their roles with less nuance

Politics/Law/Government

Obama: hope, change and reality

Posted on 2008.08.26 by winterSmith 10 comments

I believe I recall Barack Obama quoting Otto Von Bismarck’s edict that “politics is the art of the possible,” and evidence of that optimism abounds everywhere I look in Denver today. The two words we seem to be hearing more than any others are “hope” and “change,” and we saw a wonderfully eloquent articulation of this enthusiasm last night in

We’ve been compromised

Posted on 2008.07.02 by winterSmith 3 comments

Those of us who sounded off on Mark Udall’s capitulation on the FISA bill apparently all got the same nice form letter in response to our concerns. He’s happy to hear from us. Let me begin with what he wrote. Dear Sam: Thank you for letting me know your views on H.R. 6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments

Mark Udall helps hold the Constitution down while Bush and his corporate buddies drive the bus over it

Posted on 2008.06.21 by winterSmith 10 comments

Yesterday we here in Colorado learned a little more about our Democratic candidate for Senate, Congressman Mark Udall. And what we learned wasn’t pretty. Udall, along with 104 other collaborationist Dems, voted in favor of Bush’s latest Constitution-gutting initiative, a FISA “compromise” that makes all our talk about freedom in the US ring even hollower than it did already. Russ

George Will can’t stop lying!

Posted on 2008.06.04 by winterSmith 83 comments

I now know why Elvis shot that TV set. If you missed it, Stephen Colbert’s special guest last night was conservative pundit George Will. I almost typed “addle-headed pathological liar George Will,” but didn’t because I think a cursory look at what he actually said will make that clear enough. Show, don’t tell, as I always instruct my writing students.

The Reyes Doctrine: speak loudly and cower like a whipped cur

Posted on 2008.03.03 by winterSmith 13 comments

On February 14 Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, crawled up in Dubya’s grille and dropped some righteous nard-stomping pro-democracy rhetoric on his punk ass. We were as happy as we were stunned to see a Democratic leader swinging an actual set of cojones in the face of Mr. President’s fragrantly anti-liberty pro-corporate full-monty assault

“We will not fear George W. Bush”

Posted on 2008.02.15 by winterSmith 11 comments

President Bush yesterday took as harsh a one-two beatdown as he has endured in the entire seven cynical, corrupt years of his doomed presidency. First Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent him a damning letter on his stubborn and hypocritical position on FISA. The letter not only outlines the facts of the law and

Dodd: “Weâ€™ve just sanctioned the single largest invasion of privacy in American history.”

Posted on 2008.02.12 by winterSmith 3 comments

Yup, that’s about the size of it.

Telecom immunity: how stupid do you think we are?

Posted on 2008.02.12 by winterSmith 33 comments

It’s FISA Day in your Senate – amazing how this was scheduled for Potomac Primary Day, huh? – and Matt Browner Hamlin has the agenda up at Holdfast. My big issue is item #4: retroactive immunity for telecoms. Verizon and AT&T have done all they can to pretend that they had no idea that their participation in warrantless wiretapping might

Dodd filibuster teaches a valuable lesson about the American Mess

Posted on 2007.12.17 by winterSmith 11 comments

As Martin noted earlier, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) is filibustering ill-conceived legislation that would give telecommunications companies a pass for engaging in illegal spying activities on behalf of the Bush administration. Those of you who were hopeful in the wake of last year’s sweep of both houses of Congress by the alleged opposition party, and those who are hopeful that

There is no opposition party in Washington

Posted on 2007.11.19 by winterSmith 15 comments

In describing the Democratic response to Bush’s sabre-rattling toward Iran, Power of Narrative’s Arthur Silber summed things up neatly: They don’t object because — they don’t object. The only thing wrong with Silber’s assessment is that it was limited to Iran. In truth, you could just as easily use those seven succinct words to characterize the Democratic Party in general.