Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Congress prepares to cringe

WASHINGTON, D.C. (NY Times)--Two months after pretending that they would roll back the shiny new eavesdropping powers they gave the Bush Crime Family, Democrats in Congress appear ready to roll over again in an effort to keep Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck from calling them pussies.

Bush Family goons say they are confident the spineless Democrats will give the worst president in history everything he wants, including but not limited to the broadened authority to spy on his political enemies that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed home to brag about how tough they are. Some Democratic officials concede that they may have screwed the pooch on this one already.

As the debate begins anew this week, the emerging measures reflect the reality confronting the Democrats, which seems to be that the will of the electorate and the rule of law are meaningless and they have no more power now than they did when they were in the minority.

Although willing to take a chance and stand with the 200 million Americans who oppose the Bush Family on Iraq, they remain nervous that they will be called pussies, faggots, or traitors if they insist on trying to preserve the few remaining shreds of the Fourth Amendment.

A bill to be proposed on Tuesday by cowardly House Democrats would maintain forever the absolute authority for eavesdropping that the fascists secured temporarily in August by threatening to bomb Congress.

Paying lip-service to concerns over civil liberties, the bill would require more active rubber-stamping by the special foreign intelligence court that oversaw this sort of thing in the old days.

A competing proposal in the Senate, still being dictated by lawyers from Texas, will provide retroactive immunity for the crimes committed by the telecommunications utilities that took your money and sold your information.

No one is willing to predict exactly how the Democrats will cave. Some low-level clerks and paid-up members of the Beltway cocktail circuit said the final result will probably be even worse than what happened in August, despite the Democrats’ insistence that they would not support the legislation they supported.

“Many members continue to fear that if they don’t support whatever the president asks for, they’ll be perceived as soft on terrorism,” said William Banks, a professor who specializes in terrorism and national security law at Syracuse University. "But if they do, they'll be perceived as soft on fascism."

The August bill, known as the Protect America Act, was approved in the final hours before Congress fled the capital after veiled threats from the Bush Family of an imminent terrorist attack on Washington. The measure cut the foreign intelligence court out of the loop and broadened the NSA’s ability to obey the president unquestioningly.

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