If You Think FISA Doesn't Matter

Tomorrow the U.S. Senate will vote to take away the last shred of your protection against the government spying on your every move, without a warrant.

If you can't be bothered to follow Glenn Greenwald's impeccable arguments, if you still hold Judith Miller against the New York Times, then please take a few seconds to read a four-line poem from an Obama supporter opposed to his FISA cave:

When politicians continue to play fast and loose with the Bill of Rights, it's more than a core issue. It's a violation of their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. If you don't value those rights, that's fine. But there will come a time when you may have a need of those rights. Don't think that the government will just give those rights back once they take them. Martin Niemöller's poem comes to mind. If you will allow me a slight variation (Original Poem):

First they came for my right of protection against illegal searches and seizures,- but I had nothing to hide, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for my right to due process,- but I was not accused, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for my right of habeas corpus,- but I was not locked up, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for my freedom of speech, there was no way left for me to speak out.

Slippery slope, people. Slippery slope.-Alexis N. Mueller

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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Who's Afraid of the Fourth Amendment?

The determination of Democrats in Congress to hand dictatorial powers to Smirky-Darth and amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms who spied on innocent Americans is far more complicated that it appears, as Glenn Greenwald makes clear.

But in addition to cowardice, corruption, political calculation, plain stupidity and old-fashioned bribery and blackmail, the FISA debate was for a moment or two distinguished by the rarest kind of passionate rhetoric in defense of American Democracy and the Constitution.

Chris Dodd went to the Senate floor last night to speak against the FISA bill and delivered one of the most compelling and inspired speeches by a prominent politician that I've heard in quite some time. He tied the core corruption of the FISA bill's telecom amnesty and warranltess eavesdropping provisions into the whole litany of the Bush administration's lawless and destructive behavior over the last seven years -- from torture and rendition to the abuse of secrecy instruments and Guantanamo mock trials -- with a focus on the way in which telecom amnesty further demolishes the rule of law among our political class.

That speech signals that the small minority in the Senate devoted to stopping this bill have made this a priority. Small, vocal, passionate minorities in the Senate -- backed up by vocal, passionate and engaged citizens -- can do much to prevent a bill's quick and painless passage. Dodd's speech can be seen and/or read here.

As salon commenter Wabanatta put it:

"Damn, a speech like that reminds me of when actual patriots roamed the halls of congress."

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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At the End of the Day - February 6, 2008

Hey there y'all. Blue Girl again, doing a pale imitation of Apollo's nightly recap that puts the day in perspective. Fortunately I have a couple of fellow bloggers willing to chip in and help me out. Anyway, without further ado, lets do this thing...

Emptywheel discusses at length the twelve page letter from Attorney General Mukasey and NSA Director McConnell to Congress and it's petulant conveyance of the Bush Administration's threat to veto any version of a FISA reform bill that does not give them everything they want in powers to spy on American citizens at will and legal cover for their past actions.

NATO defense ministers, set to meet today, are expected to rebuff requests for an additional 7,500 troops for Afghanistan. Leaking this information pre-empts Condi and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Gotta love protocol...Brown and Rice won't be asking for more troops, because the meeting in Vilnius is not formal - but they were still hoping someone would at least offer. Of course, with Gates still yammering on about how the allies have been punks, who can blame them for telling him to get bent?

If they gave awards for post titles...This one by Kate Shepard over at TAPPED would be a shoo-in for the gold: Lets Call the Coal Thing Off. Here is the gist of the post and the source WSJ article: Three of Wall Street's major investment banks, Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley say they have concluded that the U.S. government will cap greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants sometime in the next few years. The banks will require utilities seeking financing for plants before then to prove the plants will be economically viable even under potentially stringent federal caps on carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon is drawing down that country's armed forces in drug interdiction efforts. This strikes me as a big deal when you consider that in the 15 months since he took office, he has deployed 25,000 troops to fight drug cartels.

So let it expire! Mitch McConnell is leading an obstructionist effort in the Senate - here's the nickel version...They are holding up FISA until an unrelated economic stimulus package is passed. McConnell wants to stall FISA until the last minute so he can bestow upon the current occupant and his organized crime syndicate the remaining shreds of the Fourth Amendment. The current extension is set to expire in ten days. If Harry Reid had any lead in his pencil whatsoever, he would just get all Zen about it, shrug his shoulders, say "whatever" and let the damned thing expire. Shouldn't someone from Nevada just innately know when to call someones bluff?

Oh, this is encouraging. Aggrieved Shia are pleading with the Muqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al Mahdi to take up arms again to defend their interests. The six month cease fire ordered by the cleric is about to expire. Make no mistake, the Mahdi Army has not suffered greatly, they still control vast areas of Baghdad, and no one wants them as an enemy - nor believes the stand-down is permanent. And doesn't this dovetail nicely?

If you don't read Marc Lynch regularly, well, all I can say is "some people's kids!" He is a professor of Middle Eastern studies, and knows how to read the damned tea leaves. He is telling us that the so-called Anbar Awakenings are on the verge of falling apart, factions are threatening to go to war with one another, and they have told the Iraqi central government to bugger off. And you know what my very favorite thing about the internet is? When I say "I told you so!" I can prove it. Easily.

More from the "our Army is broke and George Bush is the vandal that broke it" evidence folder: Even as 20,000 troops are necessarily withdrawn from Iraq, it will not provide relief for a strained-to-breaking Army. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the military is exhausted by repeated deployments with no end in sight.

Yes, but diet and exercise are hard! After decades of developing treatments for Type II diabetes, on the premise that high blood sugar leads to heart disease, someone did a study, and it turns out that just the opposite is the case. Now - blood sugar isn't meaningless - it needs to be controlled - amputations, blindness and kidney failure are pretty serious side effects - but it looks like the medical establishment has been going about it the wrong way. But fitness centers and vegetable markets don't bribe physicians with perks like big pharma does, so it will be interesting to see if anything actually changes in treatment protocols.

And finally, an appeal - my blogging buddy Monkeyfister was right in the middle of the tornadoes that ripped through the southeast last night, and even live-blogged the storms. Click here and find out where you can send a couple of bucks to help out the good people in that area who are waiting patiently for the results of those prayers aWol promised to set about fixing everything. Skippy has (wonderfully worded) details, too. Let's get a blogswarm started on this. (H/T Cernig for spreading the word.)

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Countdown's Take On Today's FISA Developments

Thank God for MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's Countdown. Here is tonight's story about the principled position taken by Chris Dodd.

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