Posted on 08/04/2007 10:57:41 PM PDT by yorkie
Not unlike J.P. Morgan locking the nation's key bankers in a room and refusing to let them leave until they fixed the Panic of 1907, President Bush yesterday forbade the Democratic Congress from leaving Washington on August break until it damn well did something about wiretap protocols.
It looks like it did the trick. After a night of acrimonious debate, the Senate voted to give Bush for six months the eavesdropping power he had sought, with permanent fixes to be decided over that time. The House is set to take up the matter today.
It's preposterous that things come to this at all, given the assessment of U.S. intelligence professionals that we should consider ourselves on elevated alert. Given, for that matter, the urgent warning from National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell that all-too-hamstrung government listening posts are "missing a significant portion of what we should be getting."
All day yesterday, though, in a session that otherwise produced some forward movement on the national security front - a shot at more anti-terror money for New York, beefed-up screening at the ports, immunity against lawsuits for citizens who report activities they deem suspicious - Congress struggled to wrap up the crucial business of modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which dates to 1978 and which is today entirely ineffective in keeping real-time tabs on furtive communications between malevolents here and there and everywhere.
In '78, there was no Osama Bin Laden or worldwide Islamist terror threat. There was no e-mail. There was no text messaging. There was not a whole sky full of satellites routing global phone calls through who knows how many jurisdictions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
The War on Terror is all a bumpersticker brought on by Bush and the neocons. Just ask that famous terrorism & foreign policy expert: John Edwards.
Congress is a disgrace. GrannyNanny and that fool Reid don’t have the brains God gave a duck. They’re behaving like brats who have to be told what to do by the only adult in the room. Their “approval rating” ought to be in negative numbers instead of 13 or 14 or whatever the heck it is.
I could’t believe the yelling and screaming in the House yesterday - it actually gave me a sense of fear and forbodeing........and, now, the Republicans say they are not going to vote on anything until the ‘false/fake’ closure on the Agrigriculture bill is brought back up and settled.
This is not good.
to Democrats.
congress is NOT listening...they would have voted for anything last night...even supporting jorge bush....
just to get out of washington as fast as possible!!!
what a way to govern this nation!
They would not vote on the amendments to get rid of all of the earmarks.
Well: The War on Terror is all a bumpersticker brought on by Bush and the neocons.
I bought into it before I realized it's just a sham. Living near the American border war zone exposes the sham very clearly.
No, it's never good to have these kinds of Stalinist tactics and then, apparently, little to nothing being done to eradicate these designs, except, perhaps a dog and pony show. Something's rotten here, that's for sure.
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