FISA Hearing - Nadler "We Must NOT Trust This Or ANY Administration To Police Itself"

[kpete]

Run time: 02:27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Q7rIhfTSY   Posted on YouTube: September 18, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: September 18, 2007 By DU Member: kpete Views on DU: 751

 
Now this is what I call an opening statement (via the Speaker’s Blog):

“We must not forget the lessons of history. Both the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were responses to abuses by government officials who thought they were above the law. We all agree that we want to protect our national security and that foreign intelligence gathering is fundamentally different from domestic surveillance. However, we should also agree that the power to invade people’s privacy must not be exercised unchecked. As we consider how to fix the Protect America Act, we must restore the fundamental freedoms that have been lost because of our recklessness. We must focus surveillance on terrorist activity and provide meaningful court review to protect the rights of Americans who will be spied on in our country. We must not trust this or any other administration to police itself. We must act now to restore much-needed checks and balances into this damaged law. We must restore respect for our Constitution that this Administration clearly does not care about.” (emphasis mine)

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=766
via:http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/09/18/now-this-is-what-im-talking-about/#comments

[ProfessorPlum]

1. That's great. Still doesn't explain why the f*ck the Democrats

voted for the bill.

[JDPriestly]

3. Why Democrats voted for the Bill?

Because they were told a lie: that surveillance of our communications had helped the Germans catch terrorists and prevent terrorism. It was another lie, to be stacked up against all the other lies of the Bush administration. But it worked because Congress knows that the public has been infected with an irrational fear of terrorism. Fearing terrorism is rational to a certain extent. But the fear that has infected the American people is utterly irrational.

[ProfessorPlum]

6. Those poor naive dears.

Maybe they should leave the decision-making to people who DON'T automatically trust everything this administration tells them.

[PianoBlack]

2. Finally!

They are getting it! Why did they vote for it in the first place? Because they wanted to go on vacation already. At that point they would have voted for anything just to get out of chambers. Like school children the week before summer vacation.

[Sam Ervin jret]

4. If they did not use this time to legally spy on the "Bush Gang" they should all be FIRED

The only reason that could possibly explain that outrageous act (vote in Aug) would have been to allow for the legal collection of data for use against the people who have been doing it illegally for years. We need to prove in a court of law that they have been spying on citizens, collecting and storing data and data mining in an illegal manner, but we need to collect this information discretely. In order to collect this data and to use it in a court of law we would need the ability to gather data on them in away in which they would not be able to block with court orders and subterfuge. This law passed for this short time would give them the tool to do this. It would in effect, give the Democrats enough rope with which to hang the Republicans with their own rope. I only hope the Democrats or Independent thinkers in congress had the minds to do such a thing.

[stlsaxman]

5. This clip leaves out the near standing ovation Nadler received from the crowd.

To which the good Congressman Conyers taps the gavel and says "you all know the rules of these hearings... I'm not going to keep repeating them all day".