Not that it will come as a surprise to anyone who has been following it these past several months, but yesterday the Senate voted in favor of passing illegal, unconstitutional legislation that does nothing more than destroy the fourth amendment while attempting to complicitly cover up crimes committed by President Bush and Congressional leadership.
On July 3, Judge Vaughn Walker, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in California, made a ruling that many people may not be aware of. In a case regarding warrantless wiretapping, Judge Walker ruled that President George W. Bush is a felon.
It’s not the first time a president has committed a felony. It might be the first time that Congress has bent over backwards attempting to make sure the crimes remain covered up and that there is no accountability though. Of course, Bush is also the first president ever illicitly appointed by the highest court in the land too. There is major corruption in all three branches of the federal government.
Judge Walker ruled that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), meaning that Bush’s decisions to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance was illegal. More on the ruling can be found from Salon News.
The FISA amendment passed by the 110th Congress has resulted in gutting a law the protected Americans from being illegally spied on by their own government for 30 years. FISA was established after President Nixon spied illegally on citizens and political enemies. Illegal spying almost always ends up resulting in blackmail of some sort. With Bush, it would appear that history has repeated itself. Only instead of protecting American citizens, this Congress has tried to legalize illegal eavesdropping.
Fear-Mongering and Disinformation
As noted by The New York Times, instead of supporters of the bill making a substantive case for their position, they offered up the usual thick stew of fear-mongering mixed with big chunks of disinformation.
Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO), vice chairman of the ‘Senate Intelligence Committee,’ said you have nothing to fear unless Al Qaeda is on your speed dial. In reality, the bill has nothing to do with that.
The bill allows the government to intercept telephone calls, cell phone calls, letters, faxes and emails to other countries whenever it wants. Governmental eavesdroppers won’t need a warrant or have to say they’re trying to prevent a terrorist act — all the government has to do is certify that its target is someone overseas. Perfect for President Bush and his modus operandi — we’re all aware of his penchant for performing illegal acts under the guise of the over-hyped global ‘war on terror.’
Bush’s Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence — two of Bush’s corrupt cronies in charge of cheerleading for Bush’s unethical, illegal actions — need to “certify” that no one in this country is the “target” of the investigations and they can listen to every call made regardless of who is making them.
Democratic Congress Failed America
Whether being afraid of being called ‘soft on terror’, or being afraid of being prosecuted for her complicity in Bush’s crimes, or whatever other reason, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave several excuses / reasons for supporting the ‘compromise’ as she called it, that were so weak and pathetic, and in typical Washington tradition, untrue.
Madame Speaker, every time Congress bends over backwards to kiss Bush’s butt, it makes you and your Democratic Party look ‘soft on terror.’ For a year and a half now, it’s been one majorly disgraceful embarrassment after another. You had a chance to stop a lot of what has been allowed to happen, but you didn’t.
Unfortunately for Senator Obama, he decided to use the same easily disproven excuses to vote yes on the bill, making it clear that all the talk about change is just talk and anyone who seriously believes there will be much change is delusional.
Senator Obama flip-flopped and voted for passage of the legislation. Senator Clinton didn’t. Senator McCain didn’t bother to show up for the vote or the debate. A lot of people are angry and some are foolishly threatening to change their vote from Obama to McCain in the election. Voting for McCain because of the flimsy excuses offered by Mr. Obama for capitulating would be both dangerous and stupid, Mr. Obama also received a hefty sum of money from the Telecoms. For a good summary of Senator Obama and his faulty FISA excuses, see this article from Glenn Greenwald.
As noted by Glenn Greenwald, the Democratic-led Congress has covered-up years of deliberate surveillance crimes by the Bush administration and the telecom industry. Democrats failed the American public on this one big time and several of them need to be replaced.
Instead of listening to all the protests, speaking for their constituents and upholding the Constitution, the Democratic-led Congress protected flagrant lawbreaking by Bush, eviscerated the core Fourth Amendment prohibition of surveillance without warrants, gave an extraordinarily corrupt gift to the telecom lobby that bought a lot of them off, cementing the proposition that the rule of law does not apply to the Washington Establishment.
In the near future, when I’m not so thoroughly disgusted with the corruption in all three branches of our federal government and won’t be more inclined to drift off into a major rant, I’ll throw together more details and post them. In the meantime, if you’d like to get involved in holding those in Washington accountable for their actions, click on one of the banners for more information.
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