Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold On Preventing the FISA Amendments Act from Being Jammed Through the Senate
June 26, 2008
“I’m pleased we were able to delay a vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through. I hope that over the July 4th holiday, Senators will take a closer look at this deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American people. It is possible to defend this country from terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation.”
if you want to go to his site to leave him a thank you note, please do so here.
Or, you can stick your head further in the sand and hope Obama quits helping McCain prop up Bush’s illegal policies. You decide.
Last night, Keith Olbermann delivered another of his “Special Comments“, this time, to do damage control on a position he took last week justifying Barack Obama’s support of the FISA Bill that promises to not only give immunity from civil prosecution to the telecom companies but it also greatly enhances the powers of the White House allowing them to secretly listen in to ALL communications without real oversight from a FISA court.
To sum up Olbermann’s position, he claims that the timing of the Housing legislation that ran over and forced the actual vote of the FISA Bill to be pushed back till June 8th is a great opportunity for Obama; to vote FOR THE BILL.
That’s right, Olbermann’s position is that Obama should vote FOR THE BILL.
There’s allot of convoluted thinking that takes place in Keith O’s comment, so we will take it one step at a time, shall we?
(Let’s face it; when you are left of center, “moving to the center” is a nice way of saying adapting conservative positions as your own. Also, when you move to the center, in such a climate as this one, where 85% of the American people feel this country is on the WRONG HEADING, what you are really doing is validating the failed policies of the current administration. And of course, Obama waited till after the primaries and he had “drifted” to the progressive left to pick up Edward’s supporters and endorsement. As a side note, this is exactly why Kucinich has yet to give his nod to the Obama campaign. I’m glad there is at least one democrat left in the congress. Maybe they will put him in a museum or something.)
Last Friday afternoon, the guests taking part in Sunday’s roundtable discussion on This Week had a pre-show call with George Stephanopoulos. One of the topics he raised was Obama’s perceived move to the center, and what it means. Thus began my weekend obsession. If you were within shouting distance of me, odds are we talked about it. I talked about it over lunch with HuffPost’s DC team, over dinner with friends, with the doorman at the hotel, and the driver on the way to the airport.
Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily. In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.
In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the “false choice between war and civil liberties.” Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy’s opposition to warrantless eavesdropping:
Rep. Nancy Johnson, a 12-term Republican who ran a tough-on-terror campaign and touted her co-authorship of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, lost her re-election bid Tuesday to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy.
Murphy had 56 percent to Johnson’s 44 percent with 12 percent of the precincts voting. Johnson was the longest serving representative in Congress in state history.
(Olbermann is no Edward R. Murrow; never was, never will be. His self righteous indignant rants about George Bush or Scooter Libby are mearly window dressing; a “brand” if you will to buy him our credibility. But I have always suggested they are the hollow howlings of a “star” working for one of the largest military contractors in America. And now, Keith O has shown his true nature in a way that is impossible for him to deny. His complete reversal on his position on the FISA bill has exposed Keith for what he really is. I wrote earlier that his full hour devotion to the Scott McClellan revisionist history about Bush was remarkably obtuse for a newsman who considers himself in the company of the likes of Murrow. Turns out, it wasn’t obtuse at all; it was design. They have crafted a pundit that the liberal majority can trust, and now they are gently using that trust against us. And Keith O, just like Bill O, goes along for the ride. Keith’s support of Obama’s position on FISA undermines all of his credibility with us, what little he had after the McClellen debacle.)
On January 31 of this year, Keith Olbermann donned his most serious face and most indignant voice tone to rail against George Bush for supporting telecom immunity and revisions to FISA. In a 10-minute “Special Comment,”the MSNBC star condemned Bush for wanting to “retroactively immunize corporate criminals,” and said that telecom immnity is “an ex post facto law, which would clear the phone giants from responsibility for their systematic, aggressive and blatant collaboration with [Bush's] illegal and unjustified spying on Americans under this flimsy guise of looking for any terrorists who are stupid enough to make a collect call or send a mass email.”
Olbermann added that telecom amnesty was a “shameless, breathless, literally textbook example of Fascism– the merged efforts of government and corporations that answer to no government.” Noting the numerous telecom lobbyists connected to the Bush administration, Olbermann said:
On December 12th of 2007, I made a mistake. This evening, for an hour I made the same mistake. I won’t make it again. I promise you that Mr. Wexler.
How long did you think you could get away with this little game of yours? Did Eric Johnson come to you one day after Kucinich put forward HR 333 to impeach Cheney, and say “hey, there’s some good numbers here from this impeachment thing. Now how can we ride on this for awhile?” Is that what he said, Robert? No wonder you pay him $120k a year + (and no wonder people say government is bloated. A Chief of staff for a congressman getting paid that kind of money while you guys up the minimum wage $2 per hour over three years.), or was it your idea to ride the courage and the coat-tails of a real representative back into office?
Today I got a phone call that professed to be a conference call on impeachment with Robert Wexler. So I listened in an took notes on what he said, like an idiot.
Is Barack Obama a social democrat or a capitalist tool?
Is John McCain a Glory Boy or a POW songbird?
If these are the choices we have in the upcoming presidential election, a faked out war hero, pushing the Bush agenda, and a corporate tool talking like a social democrat, you’ve got to know this country is up the creek or down the shaft.
(We will stop being treated like idiots by the ruling class, when we stop acting like idiots. Imagine, Obama standing before 10,000 Americans, and he sites his “Yes we can” catch phrase expecting to start his slogan chant again, and is met with a crushing silence. Then, rising from the back at first and edging forward, “Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit”. You think they would have to work harder to explain their positions? You think they would pay more attention to their voting record if they knew we would hold them accountable when it matters? Fuck Tim Russert, that apologist spokesman for the corporate shell game that our government has been reduced to. He chose $5 million a year over his journalistic principles.)
Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.
(Well, well,well. More fuzzy history in the military career of one John McCain. Now it seems this “remarkable”"American Patriot” was going to go from Captain to Admiral in one fell swoop over the course of about 15 months. Uhhh, I don’t think so. But he could shut us all up by signing the 180 waiver like John Kerry did in his run for the White House. That would authorise the full release of all of his military records to the press. What do you think the odds of that are?)
“At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral…. Mr. McCain declined the prospect of his first admiral’s star to make a run for Congress, saying that he could ‘do more good there,’ Mr. Lehman recalled.” So claimed the New York Times in a front-page article on May 29 this year.
This story is highly improbable for several reasons, not least of all because John McCain himself has always told a very different story about his stalled naval career. For example, on page 9 of his memoir Worth The Fighting For, McCain writes:
“Several months before my father died, I informed him that I was leaving the navy. I am sure he had gotten word of my decision from friends in the Pentagon. I had been summoned to see the CNO, Admiral Heyward, who told me I was making a mistake…. His attempt to dissuade me encouraged me to believe that I might have made admiral had I remained in the navy, a prospect that remained an open question in my mind…. Some of my navy friends believed I could earn my star; others doubted it…. When I told my father of my intention, he did not remonstrate me…. But I knew him well enough to know that he was disappointed. For when I left him that day, alone in his study, I took with me his hope that I might someday become the first son and grandson of four-star admirals to achieve the same distinction. That aspiration was well beyond my reach by the time I made my decision….”
