Civil Liberties Sacrifice

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

So here's my response:

"Dear DNC,
Please pass this on to Howard Dean. Mr Dean, are you reading this? As Chairman of the DNC, I want you to know that I've always voted for the Democrat in every election over the past 18 years. But this is the very last straw. You can stop sending me emails for $25, $50, or $100 contributions, because the DNC won't be getting another red cent from me, ever. Goodbye."

Apparently not wanting to be tarred as "pro-terrorist", conservative Democrats worried about Republicans' charges that the Democratic bill extended too many rights to suspected terrorists.

Newsflash: most of the suspected terrorists, the vast majority indeed, live outside the U.S. and can be spied on with impunity. So why then are we directing those high-tech spying techniques inward, against U.S. citizens and legal residents?

And if internal surveillance is necessary, that's the purview of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  FISC, if you didn't know, is a secret court created in response to CIA and FBI domestic spying abuses unmasked in the mid-1970s. They have the power to approve domestic spying in grave cases, and up until the Cowboy President took over, they'd done the job quite well. But apparently that wasn't good enough.

So, history, apparently is repeating itself: Americans are again the subject of government eyes and ears, against the very laws these agencies are supposed to uphold.

And for all this extra-constitutional spying, we've convicted less people than you'll find on a high school football team roster. An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people -- not 200, as officials have implied -- were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security until 2005.  Included in the totals are two Michigan cases that were ultimately overturned on appeal.

I am so pissed off at this cowardly group of bastards calling themselves Democrats that I don't know what to do with myself! I always knew that the GOP would go weak-kneed at any point of contention with this president, but the jag-off Dems have shown they have NO spine whatsoever.

None.

And that includes Hillary, Barack, and the whole lot of them.

Grow some balls or ovaries, or something please!

At this point, I hope EVERY ONE of the Democrat incumbents who voted for this bill get voted out of office next term. Every single one.

Are the Dems that scared of a president with a 24% approval rating that they can't man (or woman) up and say "this far and no further" to the erosion of civil liberty in this country?

Basically, today the U.S. Senate said to big business "your responsibility to act according to laws of this nation and your respective home states is hereby absolved."

First, they punked out with anti-war legislation. Now they surrender more of our so-called "rights" in the supposed interest of national security. And for what? So that taxpayers and honest citizens have no right to even know about illegal surveillance activities against them, let alone contesting the activities.

Thanks, Democrat defenders of the liberal faith. But don't worry. The government wouldn't dare spy on you, each of you being an upstanding representative or senators.  No, never that...

Would they?