Richard WarnickBush Cries Wolf and Congress Doesn’t Panic
Alright, I wasn’t prepared for this. President Bush pumped up the fear all week, he cried wolf again and again. He repeatedly made the claim that “the lives of countless Americans depend” on whether Congress gives him and his partners in crime an immediate get-out-of-jail-free card for breaking the FISA law to do warrantless domestic surveillance.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Bush’s bluff yesterday:
Fortunately, your decision to allow the Protect America Act to expire does not, in reality, threaten the safety of Americans. As you are well aware, existing surveillance orders under that law remain in effect for an additional year, and the 1978 FISA law itself remains available for new surveillance orders. Your suggestion that the law’s expiration would prevent intelligence agents from listening to the conversations of terrorists is utterly false.
The Protect America Act (PAA), the unconstitutional warrantless surveillance bill the administration pushed through Congress last August using scare tactics, will expire at midnight. You may recall that we were told that terrorists were literally on their way to blow up the U.S. Capitol and the only way to stop them was to pass the PAA.
This time, fear and irrational arguments didn’t work. Serious terrorists don’t use phones or e-mail. There is no vital flow of terrorist-related intelligence that depends on warrantless domestic surveillance. Bush is just trying to keep himself out of jail.
More info:
Slate’s Timothy Lee explains how the Senate’s telecom immunity provision ignored the rule of law. Fortunately, so far the House is refusing to go along.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Democrats have been telling us they were keeping their powder dry for the right moment. That moment wasn’t stopping Alito or Roberts from getting on the supreme court.
This had better be the one!
I called Pelosi’s office to give my support and Mathesons office to let him know I wanted him to finally stand up for the rule of law and the constitution.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
[...] For Illegal Wiretaps (March 17, 2008) Total Information Awareness Never Went Away (March 10, 2008) Bush Cries Wolf and Congress Doesn’t Panic (February 15, 2008) Dems Threaten to RESTORE Warrantless Surveillance (October 9, 2007) Congress [...]
July 3rd, 2008 at 8:05 am
[...] the Bushies cried “wolf” again last February, but Congress didn’t fall for it. They let the PAA expire, and the country reverted to the original Foreign Intelligence [...]