Wouldn't it be nice, but I don't want to give my hopes up. I've been hurt too many times before. I'm fragile you know.

It's a bad time of year to complain about paperwork. Many of us are filing taxes, filling out financial aid paperwork, etc.

And consider the spin of "our troops are getting shot at and blown up, and our president is complaining about a little paperwork".

About damm time someone pushed back. Hope it feels good enough to do it more.

"The humanity!"

I think you meant "inhumanity."

Congrats to Rep. Reyes. I wasn't sure he had it in him.

The GOP is falling down on the job this time around. LOL - Remember last August when they put Trent Lott up to handwringing about an increased security threat at the Capitol Building?

The best thing that could happen is that there is no compromise and they all have to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and the issue dies until we have a Democratic in office. If the Congress does nothing but obstruct Bush for the rest of this year, it will serve them well.

Way to go, House Dems! Thanks for showing the backbone that many of your colleagues in the Senate apparently lack. You are truly the "People's House."

Maybe when the President holds his next fearmongering press conference, you can then drag Bolten and Miers in front of the HJC and show him what a real spectacle is. Go ahead, use inherent contempt and have the Sargent at Arms enforce it, Mukasey sure won't!

Here's what I think is happening. Yes, hope is trickling down.... but it's from the netroots.

The reps now know that people are literally watching C-Span. They are listening to the speeches, critiquing the arguments in real time, mobilizing citizens to phone their senators and representatives. Every parliamentary motion. Every amendment. When they give a speech some of them have the "look" of people who are being "looked at." And an election is coming. bush's sun is setting. The voters are getting organized, becoming activists, and finding that they have "power" to influence events which affect their lives.

The Constitution is a contract between our govt and We the People. And we intend to enforce it! Yes, Obama is counting on this to effect change. And yes, people are energized already and why wait for Obama? Let's get this show on the road already! Let's make sure the legislators know that they either follow the will of the people or the people will evict them from office.

Yes. We. Can! ♪♪♪ ♫ ♬ ♪

Not that you can really expect coherence from him (or his audience); "Painkiller" Rush blames the trial lawyers for all of this FISA stuff because they support the Dems over the Rethugs. That's interesting since the Trial Lawyers give a fraction of the money that the Telcoms give the exact same people.

Wingnuts: you gotta love 'em.

Bipartisan Blues

Woke up dis mornin'
All de R's was gone
Walk out te chamber while I was sleepin'
All time cryin' fo a bone

A bone, dey cry, a bone
Gib us a great big bone
Gib us spyin' n' lyin' 'n denyin'
We ain't stop tryin'
Gib us dat great big bone

No, say da Dems
No way today
Jes go way
No mo playin' yo way
Jes go way

An so dey did, all ob em
Still cryin' fo dat bone

When are you (and the Dems) going to catch on to the simple fact that the ONLY concern with the issue of warrantless wiretapping is the fact that this would allow any administration (even one headed by therir arch0nemesis Billary) to wire-tap and surveil their political opponents with impunity? They would simply claim "National Security" whenever caught or questioned.

Without oversight, the gang that brought us Watergate would be able to completely intimidate their opponents and simply destroy the Democtratic political process in America (and frankly in the rest of the world when communications route through the U.S.). It's a question of preserving democracy - nothing else.

Why the Dems can't figure out that expressing their concerns in those terms would shut these guys down is beyond me.

Dick

And by oversight I mean simply someone in the Judiciary or in Congress being able to REVIEW all this effort. This would NOT in any way restrict their ability to chase terrorist communications!! No one has a problem with that and to suggest we do is insulting and bogus and dangerously inflammatory.

I have admired and respected and been impressed by John Conyers for decades, but I do not understand why he is even going through the motions of trying to find a "compromise" on this affront to the Constitution. They should simply tell Bush to go fuck himself to use the Vice President's phrase and address the issue next year with a new President and administration. What's hard about that?

Any further "negotiation" makes me smell a rat and the continuing possibility of telecom immunity amongst other nefarious aspects of this legislation.

Okay, here's why this story is so deeply unsettling for me. On Wednesday we had an appointment to have a plumber come look at our leaky shower between 8 and 9am. I duly send off an email to my boss that I'd certainly be in late that day, if at all. No sooner had I clicked "send" than the phone rings from the front entry. Guy's here at 8:15.

Now if either of these events had happened in isolation I'd have been concerned. Fundamental violations of the laws of physics--can't be a good thing, ultimately. Maybe just one of those quantum statistical freaks or something, however, so not to worry. But two in a row like this is just not right. Rapture, armageddon, I don't know what. But I don't like it.

J. Rockerfeller is a shill for the Republican party. The entire time he has been on the Senate Committee to investigate how Bush used intelligence to mislead us into Iraq, he's been saying one thing in public and caving in to the Republican members of that committee on another.

He also gets big contributions from the telecom industry - thus he supports retro-active immunity for the telecom industry for illegal spying on Americans.

You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.

"What is wrong with you all, if you do not tap into the phone calls of suspected terrorists, how you plan to disrupt their plans? where do you get the intelligence, information, evidence and so on? Come one give a solution instead of killing the existing solution. You all are out of your mind."

Although I suspect some trolling, here, I still take the opportunity to respond by asinkg this question: A solution to what, exactly? Several days before 9/11, the Bushstone Kops had all the info they needed in a memo titled "Osama Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US" [paraphrasing], not to mention months of warnings from folks like Richard WhatsHisFace [sorry, senility setting in) who actually knew what they were talking about. Bush and that tough-guy genius, Cheney, chose to ignore all of that. They had all of that information and didn't need some Arm-Twisting Dictatorship law to get it. If they already could get this info, why do they need this power? Do they need this law to make them pay attention to information they already have [Oh, God, help me before I ignore again]? Have any of them actually read the whole Constitution? More basic question: can any of them actually read?

BTW - every sitcom worth it's salt has an episode about someone bullying someone and the regular sitcom character standing up to the bully. I recommend you send Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid DVD copies of The Andy Griffith Show, The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, The Donna Reid Show, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Cosby Show, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Apparently the Dem Leadership never watched any TV when they were growing up...

For the moral of the story, check into the story of John Hottinger of Minnesota - Dem Speaker of the Minnesota house. He was just like Reid/Pelosi and should suffer the same fate. Also look up Neville Chamberlain...

Does anyone recognize the name Rockefeller? The man's hardly going to be bought by anyone.