Republicans can't be bothered to attend FISA meetings when there is political hay to be made...

I really resent the hell out of having crap like this waved in my face:

The Bush administration informed Congress on Friday that the government has “lost intelligence” because of the expiration of surveillance legislation caught in a political tug of war.

“We have lost intelligence information this past week as a direct result of the uncertainty created by Congress’ failure to act,” says an underlined passage of a six-page letter signed by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell.

Of course, the fear-mongering screed does not provide any, you know, details or anything, just banal assertions of impending doom.

I especially hate it when this sort of thing just flies right under the CNN/M$M line...

“The House and Senate met again today to produce a strong new FISA bill and once again, Republicans and the White House refused to come to the negotiating table. Despite the Republicans’ apparent insistence on turning this into a partisan issue, Congressional Democrats will continue to reach out in a bipartisan way to finalize a strong FISA law that protects our national security and our civil liberties.

“Meanwhile, in a letter to the Congress today, the Bush Administration repeated its claim that the expiration of the Protect America Act (PAA) has resulted in intelligence gaps. If the expiration of the PAA has lessened the willingness of telecommunications companies to comply with surveillance requests to protect our national security, the President and Congressional Republicans have only themselves to blame for refusing to support the PAA’s extension.

“The existing FISA statute provides a remedy: convert the surveillance requests to compulsory court orders. The Director of National Intelligence has admitted that the backlog at the FISA court that prompted the passage of the PAA last summer no longer exists. FISA court orders can therefore be issued even more quickly than they were in the past.”

So let's get this straight - administration minions can pen a letter in which they make broad assertions about how we are all, every last one of us, in peril, because the Democrats won't roll over for retroactive telecom immunity, but your Publican legislators can't be bothered to come to the table? And the mythical "lost intel" is the story for the media outlets that bother to report it? And the churlish fucks who refuse to negotiate get a pass?

Yeah, there's your so-called liberal media, folks. Holy Chocolate Covered Christ. I don't know which is more infuriating - the idiots who keep spouting the liberal media myth, or the banality of the corporate GOP shills among the M$M. Call it a toss-up. I hate them both with equal vigor and venom.

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More Ashcroft Mythbusting

"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to . . . enemies and pause to . . . friends." appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dec. 6, 2001.

Seriously…Let’s hold the phone for a sec. Gonzales is a dangerous Constitutional criminal and needs to be held accountable – and those who touted him for the Supreme Court should be chained in the public square and pelted with overripe produce – but let’s not forget who blazed the trail.

I have not forgotten that in the wake of that horrible day five years ago that stripping away those pesky civil liberties Americans have traditionally held was the default position for the Ashcroft-led Department of Justice. Trampling the Constitution was the first thing they thought to do in their quest to combat terrorism, not the last.

Ashcroft was the chief merchant of fear and he sold that bill of goods to a frightened, weak-minded populace that had actually bought into the myth of American Exceptionalism. His insidious efforts furthered the powers of the FBI to infiltrate every aspect of your life and mine. And he was the first to equate patriotism with marching in lockstep with the authoritarian agenda. Dissenters were unpatriotic and un-American. He planted those poisonous seeds of division, and pitted American against American for political gain. Don't forget his perfidy as you rush to lionize.

It was under Ashcroft that groups like the Quaker's were "infiltrated" - shades of COINTELPRO - by law enforcement agents for the purpose of collecting information on Americans who exercised their Constitutional prerogative to dissent - which pretty much obviates the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

He was the sleazy bastard who first cast aspersions on your patriotism because you had the temerity to value our Constitution and raise questions about the unlawful methods they were so eager to apply.

Let’s take a stroll down Memory Lane before we commission a bust of Ashcroft for the lobby of the ACLU local, whaddya say?

Everyone knows about the Patriot Act, and the abuses that have flowed from that assault on civil liberties, but doesn't anyone else remember TIA?

TIA stands for Total Information Awareness. It was a data-mining operation designed to allow the federal government to track all credit card purchases, listen in on telephone conversations, read your emails, check your medical records and track your movements.

No warrant required. Hell, they didn’t even really need to have a suspicion. They could do it just for giggles. TIA basically set the Fourth Amendment alight. In case you don’t have your copy of the Constitution handy (and why the hell don’t you?) or you can’t recite the Ten Commandments, er, the Bill of Rights from memory (and why the hell can’t you?) let me refresh your memory on just exactly what the Fourth Amendment guarantees:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And remember TIPS? The spy-on-the-neighbors-and-report-those-Thought-Criminals!!! program that he tried to get attached to the legislation authorizing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security? (That effort failed)

TIPS stood for Terrorism Information and Prevention System (it morphed into the John Doe protection act while you weren’t paying attention to the mendacious authoritarian bastards on the right).

TIPS was designed to encourage citizens to snoop for the government. Mail carriers, UPS drivers, teachers, utility installers – people whose jobs involve interacting with the public, would have received training on *how to spot and report suspicious behavior.* (Like receiving mail from the ACLU or the SPLC, or having an anti-war bumper sticker, presumably.)

Military tribunals, and immigrant detentions in the absence of crime, indefinite detention without due process; these were more than the products of his right-wing authoritarian MO, they were where he went automatically. The Attorney General of the United States default setting was to ignore the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Let’s remember the assaults on liberty that were perpetrated at this mans hand before we enshrine him as a Guardian of Liberty.

Put in perspective just who it is that is looking so good by comparison, and get properly pissed already!

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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Calm down everyone...Ashcroft is not a moderate!!!

If anyone had told me five years ago that people on the left would be not merely defending John Ashcroft, but pining for the days when he was the Attorney General, I would quite possibly done myself an injury, so raucous would the laughter have been. And as soon as it subsided, I would have initiated the steps to start your involuntary commitment to a secure mental health facility.

So what did he do that is so rare and unique, that has his former political opponents fawning all over him like he was the second coming? He upheld the rule of law and the Constitution when he was the Attorney General.

That we are all gaga at the very notion is a sad commentary indeed on the tenure of the hapless, inept Gonzo.

Pardon me, but I’m supposed to get all atwitter about this? About the fact that the cabinet level appointment constitutionally charged with overseeing the Constitution actually drew the line somewhere short of total Constitutional abrogation?

Is the bar really that low after two years of the feckless and faithless Alberto Gonzales? I am afraid the answer to that query is a resounding “yes.”

Before we enshrine the portrait of John Ashcroft with a square halo on the stationery of the ACLU, let’s remember that Ashcroft oversaw the widest expansion of government power over the lives of ordinary Americans than this country has ever witnessed.

He was a primary force behind the USA Patriot Act, which was used to snoop into the lives and reading habits of ordinary Americans. In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 he pushed the INS to use their power to deport foreigners, and he cast the die for the “harsh treatment” of detainees – who had no rights to due process, thanks to Ashcroft.

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, John Ashcroft was willing to err on the side of public safety at the expense of the Constitution and diminish our Civil Liberties to a footnote.

Begging John Ashcroft’s forgiveness for all the mean things you said about him is not the appropriate reaction here. The appropriate response is outrage at the perfidy of the Gonzales department of injustice. Outrage that the department has been so sullied by his banality and fecklessness that his predecessor – John Ashcroft!!! – looks like a card-carrying member of the ACLU by contrast…

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

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