Wednesday, July 16, 2008

FISA (and torture) CYA

I've been really spun up about Obama's FISA vote, scratching my head trying to find reasoning for his reversal, which felt like a serious kick in the crotch. But while Obama's flip-flop on the issue was heartbreaking, he wasn't really the one to blame for this capitualtion. The real head-scratcher was the number of Democrats that supported this bill. What could they all possibly know that they aren't telling us that would make support of this bill - a bill that is an affront to our Constitutional Fourth Amendment rights - so necessary? Trying not to be too cynical, I was wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, that maybe there was some kind of information of an imminent attack that was being collected. Maybe they were genuinely looking out for our best interests.

As it turned out, giving them the benefit of the doubt was actually the cynical view. What was really going on should have been obvious to me from the start. The support of the FISA bill, much like the support of the Military Commissions Act that got rid of the writ of habeus corpus, was a CYA - Cover Your Ass - move, and nothing more.

While I had seen information about this before, it must have been pushed out of my brain by all of the new and disgusting information about our elected leaders that I absorb on a daily basis. Glenn Greenwald did a great job compiling the information that supports this reasoning behind the Democrat's capitulations.

The bottom line is that way back in the days after 9/11, and many times since, the Democrats totally caved in to demands by the Bush administration, demands that were very likely illegal, and/or un-Constitutional. Cowards all, they were trying to act tough or avoid looking weak, so they bought into the chest-thumping Bush bluster which dictated that in order to be tough we had to throw away all those sissy civil liberties we enjoyed, those pesky little things written into our founding documents, and ignore the Geneva Conventions, and torture prisoners, deny potentially (and actual) innocent detainees the right to challenge their detention (a centuries old right), and spy on American citizens.

It wasn't just Bush's fault. It was the fault of senior Democrats also. Pelosi, Rockefeller, Harman, and many others. They weren't looking out for us then, and they aren't looking out for us now. They are only worried about keeping their jobs. In my mind, they ALL need to go. Pathetic, gutless cowards! They make me sick.

We need to do everything within our legal limits to throw these scumbags out of office. A good first step is to send a message to them that they will listen to and receive loud and clear. What do politicians listen to more than anything? Money.

That's why I've joined Strangebedfellows to send a Money Bomb on August 8th. Anyone who cares about and believes in the principles this country is supposed to stand for should join the cause!

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