A rant and the senators who voted to convict Clinton in 1999
A hat tip to Kossack rerutled at the Daily Kos. These senators voted to convict President Bill Clinton on articles of impeachment in 1999, for lying under oath about matters of national security...no sorry - for lying about sex!
Do these same senators feel that Bush's illegal actions with regard to the NSA spying scandal rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor? I mean, come on. FLIP-FLOPPERS! In refusing to get a warrant before surveilling the communications of legal American citizens, Bush broke the law, plain and simple. National security doesn't come into play specifically because the law, when it went into affect in 1978, allowed intelligence authorities to get retroactive warrants up to 24 hours. It was extended to 72 hours - three whole days - as part of the Patriot Act. So if you are so pro-Patriot Act and you want to extend it forever, why is 72 hours still not good enough? So bad that you decide you just don't have to obey the law.
Not just that, in 2004 FISA rejected no applications for warrants. Three were withdrawn and some 1,700 were approved. I saw all this on C-SPAN today - Washington Journal, 1/2/2006. So if Bush and his crew try to argue that they couldn't risk that FISA wouldn't grant them the warrants, that just doesn't fly. Especially if there is a good reason for them to believe they were surveilling al-Qaeda. Today Bush said he was listening to calls involving al-Qaeda suspects inside and outside the United States. Okay, fine, why would you think the FISA court wouldn't grant a warrant for that?
Maybe the FISA court is full of liberals and activist judges. So when something bad happens to one of them it turns into, "hey, I'm not saying it's okay, but I understand." Some people are just so vicious, so blinded with hate and rage because they are inadequate in some way, that they refuse to acknowledge what is before them or they just really cannot see it. I listen to these people on C-SPAN who call in from different parts of the country and yell "how come the Democrats don't do anything about it, how come they don't pass a law?" You dummy, it's kind of hard to get anything done if you can't call any hearings, can't issue any subpoenae, can't chair any committees, can't get a majority vote on any of your bills - it's amazing to me how Republicans finally have all-encompassing power, the type which our system should be able to roll back, and the dittoheads are still looking to the Democratic party for leadership? What does that say about the leadership in the Republican party?
Those people are hopeless, but the rest of America has got to wake up. So what if you really think "you have nothing to hide" (you really do though - nobody wants their entire life on display for invisible eyes) - what if there is a flaw in a data mining program and you're info is hit by the wrong keyword, or if the pattern of your behavior in one particular week matched that of some person or persons authorities are tracking? And then they swoop down on your ass and extraordinarily render you to a secret CIA prison camp where you are starved, shackled and beaten for weeks?
I mean, if that is okay with you, fine - you are hopeless too. If that's not okay with you, you really have to start thinking about the potential implications here. And let's not delude ourselves. They've already spied on PETA, vegans and Quakers. Because that is who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.
And I don't ever want to hear anything about 9/11 from someone who lives in Montana, Alabama, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, or any other state in which terrorists are just completely uninterested. I live in the chemical armpit of the United States - central Jersey. If terrorists attack those chemical plants, refineries and other smelly shit 10 miles north of where I'm sitting now, I'm dying or my health is severely messed up. Not just that, yeah, I love America. That might be hard to believe that a non-pickup truck owning, non-gun owning, anti-military and prison complex, anti-jingoistic, twisted blue state values-having young woman of color actually loves her country, but it's true. I don't want to get attacked again either, you morons.
Alabama, Sen. Jeff Sessions, Sen. Richard Shelby; Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens; Arizona, Sen. Jon Kyl, Sen. John McCain; Colorado, Sen. Wayne Allard; Iowa, Sen. Charles Grassley; Idaho, Sen. Larry Craig, Sen. Mike Crapo; Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar; Kansas, Sen. Sam Brownback, Sen. Pat Roberts; Kentucky, Sen. Jim Bunning, Sen. Mitch McConnell; Mississippi, Sen. Thad Cochran, Sen. Trent Lott; Missouri Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond; Montana, Sen. Conrad Burns; Nebraska, Sen. Chuck Hagel; New Hampshire, Sen. Judd Gregg; New Mexico, Sen. Pete Domenici; Ohio, Sen. Mike DeWine, Sen. George Voinovich; Oklahoma, Sen. James Inhofe; Oregon, Sen. Gordon Smith; Pennsylvania, Sen. Rick Santorum; Tennessee, Sen. Bill Frist; Texas, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison; Utah, Sen. Robert Bennett, Sen. Orrin Hatch; Virginia, Sen. John Warner; Wyoming, Sen. Mike Enzi, Sen. Craig Thomas.
Do these same senators feel that Bush's illegal actions with regard to the NSA spying scandal rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor? I mean, come on. FLIP-FLOPPERS! In refusing to get a warrant before surveilling the communications of legal American citizens, Bush broke the law, plain and simple. National security doesn't come into play specifically because the law, when it went into affect in 1978, allowed intelligence authorities to get retroactive warrants up to 24 hours. It was extended to 72 hours - three whole days - as part of the Patriot Act. So if you are so pro-Patriot Act and you want to extend it forever, why is 72 hours still not good enough? So bad that you decide you just don't have to obey the law.
Not just that, in 2004 FISA rejected no applications for warrants. Three were withdrawn and some 1,700 were approved. I saw all this on C-SPAN today - Washington Journal, 1/2/2006. So if Bush and his crew try to argue that they couldn't risk that FISA wouldn't grant them the warrants, that just doesn't fly. Especially if there is a good reason for them to believe they were surveilling al-Qaeda. Today Bush said he was listening to calls involving al-Qaeda suspects inside and outside the United States. Okay, fine, why would you think the FISA court wouldn't grant a warrant for that?
Maybe the FISA court is full of liberals and activist judges. So when something bad happens to one of them it turns into, "hey, I'm not saying it's okay, but I understand." Some people are just so vicious, so blinded with hate and rage because they are inadequate in some way, that they refuse to acknowledge what is before them or they just really cannot see it. I listen to these people on C-SPAN who call in from different parts of the country and yell "how come the Democrats don't do anything about it, how come they don't pass a law?" You dummy, it's kind of hard to get anything done if you can't call any hearings, can't issue any subpoenae, can't chair any committees, can't get a majority vote on any of your bills - it's amazing to me how Republicans finally have all-encompassing power, the type which our system should be able to roll back, and the dittoheads are still looking to the Democratic party for leadership? What does that say about the leadership in the Republican party?
Those people are hopeless, but the rest of America has got to wake up. So what if you really think "you have nothing to hide" (you really do though - nobody wants their entire life on display for invisible eyes) - what if there is a flaw in a data mining program and you're info is hit by the wrong keyword, or if the pattern of your behavior in one particular week matched that of some person or persons authorities are tracking? And then they swoop down on your ass and extraordinarily render you to a secret CIA prison camp where you are starved, shackled and beaten for weeks?
I mean, if that is okay with you, fine - you are hopeless too. If that's not okay with you, you really have to start thinking about the potential implications here. And let's not delude ourselves. They've already spied on PETA, vegans and Quakers. Because that is who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.
And I don't ever want to hear anything about 9/11 from someone who lives in Montana, Alabama, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, or any other state in which terrorists are just completely uninterested. I live in the chemical armpit of the United States - central Jersey. If terrorists attack those chemical plants, refineries and other smelly shit 10 miles north of where I'm sitting now, I'm dying or my health is severely messed up. Not just that, yeah, I love America. That might be hard to believe that a non-pickup truck owning, non-gun owning, anti-military and prison complex, anti-jingoistic, twisted blue state values-having young woman of color actually loves her country, but it's true. I don't want to get attacked again either, you morons.
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