Obama Continues Bush's Illegal Drone Surveillance

[MadMarchHare]

As Cerevant pointed out, fear makes stupid people do as they're told.
Hitler found an enemy by blowing up his own Congress building, and blaming it on Serbian terrorists.

Islamofascists are so much better a choice.  Serbia could be beaten.  You think they'll ever admit the Muslim threat is over?  Could you ever prove it?
Brilliant.

[rjs246]

Is anyone else following this?

I love the spiteful nature of the whole thing. 'If we can't reach a compromise we're going to block you from doing anything on your own. Dick.'

Awesome.

[MadMarchHare]

Is anyone else following this?

I love the spiteful nature of the whole thing. 'If we can't reach a compromise we're going to block you from doing anything on your own. Dick.'

Awesome.

Jesus.  We are destined to be a third world country within 10 years.  The good news is, we're going to be so irrelevant soon Al Qaeda won't care about us anymore.

[Diomedes]

If congress had any real balls they'd kill funding for Iraq..this pro forma session crap to keep Bush from appointing another pro-torture nazi is nice and all, but it's a weak ass substitute for doing their job.

[MadMarchHare]

Reid and Pelosi are farging ass-clowns.

There is a way to fix this, but it requires the average moron that makes up the majority of our populace to participate.

Vote out ever incumbent, regardless of party.  Just replace all of them.  Then make a global statement - You got 2 years, or we'll vote all you fargheads out too.

Yeah, you can't clear out the Senate that fast, but you farg up Congress that bad, the party's will pay attention.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Threats on Bush's life

[rjs246]

Dammit. The worst thing that could happen to this country is for Bush to be assassinated sending everyone into a tizzy and giving all of the people who live in fear of an imaginary threat legitimacy. Awful.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Dammit. The worst thing that could happen to this country is for Bush to be assassinated sending everyone into a tizzy and giving all of the people who live in fear of an imaginary threat legitimacy. Awful.

That's only the tip of the iceberg.

1. It would almost certainly improve Bush's legacy.
2. We'd get President Cheney for a year.
3. The Republican nominee in 2008 suddenly is anything but an "also ran".

That said, I'm pretty sure terrorist groups know all of the above.

[rjs246]

Being killed did wonders for Kennedy's reputation. How about if they assassinate Cheney instead. Everyone wins.

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Being killed did wonders for Kennedy's reputation.

LBJ was doing him a favor there.

[PhillyGirl]

Bush lobbies for surveillance law

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago

President Bush on Monday lobbied again for an intelligence law allowing government eavesdropping on phone calls and e-mails, as the tone of the dispute between the White House and Congress over terrorist surveillance grew increasingly sharp.

"To put it bluntly, if the enemy is calling into America, we really need to know what they're saying, and we need to know what they're thinking, and we need to know who they're talking to," Bush said at the start of his annual meeting with the nation's governors at the White House.

"This is a different kind of struggle than we've ever faced before. It's essential that we understand the mentality of these killers," Bush said.

The law in question targets foreign terrorist threats and allows eavesdropping on communications involving people in the U.S., so long as those people are not the intended focus or target of the surveillance. The latest version of the legislation expired on Feb. 16, and the rules reverted to those outlined in the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Bush and Congress are at odds over whether to give legal immunity to companies that in the past helped the government spy on customers without court warrants.

Bush wants the House to act on legislation the Senate has passed. That bill provides retroactive protection for telecommunications companies that wiretapped U.S. phone and computer lines at the government's request after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, without court permission.

The House version does not provide such immunity.

"Our government told them that their participation was necessary," Bush said. "And it was, and it still is, and that what we had asked them to do was legal. And now they're getting sued for billions of dollars. And it's not fair."

The president's pitch was the latest installment in a long and increasingly sharply-worded debate between Bush and congressional Democrats.

Democrats, in an op-ed piece Monday in The Washington Post, accused Bush of resorting to "scare tactics and political games."

"It is clear that he and his Republican allies, desperate to distract attention from the economy and other policy failures, are trying to use this issue to scare the American people into believing that congressional Democrats have left America vulnerable to terrorist attack," said the article.

The piece was signed by Democratic Sens. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee; Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Democratic Reps. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; and John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

White House press secretary Dana Perino responded to their op-ed with her own statement. Perino said that Bush is not using scare tactics, but rather repeating the concerns of the intelligence community about the risks to the nation. "Unless this threat is taken more seriously in Congress, the ability to obtain the intelligence we need will be at risk, and with it our national security," Perino said.

Later, speaking to reporters, Perino said the Democrats' use of the phrase "scare tactics" must "be like one of their favorite words — it must poll very well, because they use it almost every time. What we have done is state facts."

The Justice Department and Office of National Intelligence said Saturday that telecommunication companies are now complying with existing surveillance warrants. The agencies also said that new surveillance activities under existing warrants will resume "for now," but that the delay "impaired our ability to cover foreign intelligence targets, which resulted in missed intelligence information."

Bush says flatly that telecommunications won't help the government if they don't have protection from lawsuits, and that he will not compromise with Democrats on that point.

[Cerevant]

"I was just following orders" is not a legal defense.

[Diomedes]

It worked just fine for Iran Contra scumbags

[PhillyGirl]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/28/bush/index.html

[cmleary0919]