Dave Lindorff: A Sad Day? How About a Sad Six-and-a-Half Years

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/25414


A Sad Day? How About a Sad Six-and-a-Half Years
Submitted by dlindorff on Sat, 2007-08-04 14:21. Impeachment

By Dave Lindorff

What was Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) thinking when he told Senate colleagues it was a "sad day" when that body started taking its marching orders from an outsider (the president and the director of national security), in passing a new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gives the president a free hand to spy on communications of Americans without a judicial review?

Is he implying that this is the first time the Senate has done this?

Isn't that exactly what the Senate (and the House) did when they passed the so-called USA PATRIOT Act in October 2001? Isn't that what they did in overturning the Posse Comitatus Act and in altering the Insurrection Act last fall? Isn't it what they did in approving the Military Commissions Act last year, which retroactively okayed the use of torture on captives?

The truth is that the Senate and House have both become little more than rubber stamps for Administration power grabs ever since 9-11. Indeed, since that date, the members of Congress have been willing sell-outs of their own institution, which today bears no resemblance to what the Founders described in Article I of the Constitution--a document which the members have effectively destroyed.

For the past six-and-a-half years we have watched as a group of political midgets have destroyed what hundreds of thousands of our ancestors put their lives on the line to create and defend--a government system that was founded on the concept of individual rights and liberties, and that was structured to limit the power of the executive.

snip//

Instead of empty rhetoric, Sen. Feingold needs to take action and mount a filibuster against this shameful and dangerous bill, so that when it comes back for a final vote after being reconciled with whatever comes out of the House, it is killed.
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Me: I didn't know that was an option; the bill can still be killed???

[KoKo]

1. I thought it was opposite..House Legislates /Senate Votes then back to House for Reconciliation...

and it was because of the Tom DeLay House that we ended up with so many Bush Bot Bills for the 61/2 years.

But...maybe the rules have changed and so it can go back to the Senate and be voted down without any reconciliation.

One would hope....but I'm getting really tired of these "false hopes" that don't seem to go anywhere and just get us all smacked down once again.