Dear Senator Obama: Regarding FISA, What About the Rule of Law?

sar michael
"but the liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand."
isaiah 32:8

i too am gravely disappointed in barack obama for voting for the fisa amendments. i too am taking another look at nader.

my dictionary defines "ex post facto" as retroactive. article 1, section 9, paragraph 3 of the u.s. constitution says congress shall make no ex post facto laws. the fisa amendments bill is unconstitutional on its face.

if this fact was not understood by the lawmakers who voted "yes" then they are incompetent to uphold their oath of office. if it was known (and i noticed in the debate i listened to that no one mentioned that it was an ex post facto law) then those same lawmakers have violated their oath of office willfully. either way they do not deserve to serve the people as their representatives.

congress is derelict in its duty to preserve and protect the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. certainly, the present administration has proven itself over and over to be a domestic enemy of the constitution. now, the majority of congress has shown itself to fall into that category.

with a solid four votes on the us supreme court for the "unitary executive" and plenary powers for the executive in time of war we may even lose there.
of course, congress never really declared war so we are officially not at war and the plenary powers of the unitary executive violate the tenth amendment to the constitution, which states: "the powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

there is a good constitutional argument to be made against this fisa amendments law and we might get a 5-4 decision in the scotus.

It seems like it may not be too late for the Democrats to nominate Clinton for president. Neither candidate has enough delegates to win on the first ballot. And the super delegates don't actually cast their ballots until there is a deadlock at the convention in Denver. Several hundred super delegates have pledged to vote for Obama (hence making him the "presumptive" nominee), but they -- as well as any or all of the other "pledged" delegates are free to change their vote up until the very moment it is cast.

Nationalism is not terrorism. And an adversary is not an enemy.

Those two sentences have been my signature for years and sincerely have meaning to me, especially as a Democrat, whose had to watch for over a decade as the Right, with the help of pro-business and pro-war panderers installed as new Congressmen through Emanuel and Schumer's respective selective campaign committees - which happen to be funded by those same big business and pro-war donors, twisted the rest of the Democratic party into a bunch of self centered cowardly poodles.
Bush has been enabled fully in all that he has wrought, with their help.
Spit out the truth - Obama damn well knew we of the online community were willing to put our money where our mouth was, and support someone who represented the core principles of what's great about a Democracy.
He knew the key to a great Democracy was to harness the power of the people.

Howard Dean understood that too. Without Dean -who rallied us- to save their asses, Schumer and Emanuel's Congress would have lost their 7th election.

After that '06 win, Hoyer and Reid -both centrists -took the peoples' hard work and winning votes -told Dean and the 'activists' to go f*** themselves -and handed them over to the Right - crying and whining all the way about how their failures weren't their fault.
They let Bush and Cheney get away with murder, and couldn't say a damn word about it- because they were accomplices to it.

Now comes Obama, about to do the exact same ***damn thing:

The word 'centrist' is a joke. Look at Bayh and Harold Ford Jr.and ask yourself "Are these decisive leaders, with a firm vision -of anything??" Hell no.

I'm a Quest customer. Had anyone told me that (a)Obama would give it up to ATT - I never would have supported him and (b) had anyone told me Obama was, at heart, another DLC Democrat like Ford or Bayh - Iowa never would have happened.

The immunity is only for civil suits, not for criminal charges. The purpose of civil suits was to challenge the affront to civil liberties in court since the administration was certainly not going to charge itself with a crime. But we know all too well that corporations are very adept at delaying tactics, and nothing would have been resolved in less than 10 years.

On the other hand, Sen. Obama has stated clearly that his administration will survey the actions of the current one for criminal activity and will prosecute. Obama attempted to get the telecom civil immunity stripped from the FISA bill, but that failed. Voting for the bill after that prevents a new version being floated that might include criminal immunity as well.

A civil suit is an attack on the stockholders (including many people's retirement accounts,) who had no idea of the executives' collaboration with the administration. Criminal charges go after the people truly responsible.

Randi Rhodes, who is still light-years ahead of most librul/Democrat blogs (not to mention, a _million_ light years ahead of "major media"), has reported that the Telecom lobby has spent $13 million lobbying Congress this past year, and no issue is more important to the Telecoms than immunity for retroactively submitting to the Bush White House NSA's demands for unlimited telecom surveillance, huge "data dumping" of _every_ transmission that crosses telecom servers, that is, every electronic communications in America.

IF the Democrats got half of the $13 million in lobbying donations, that means that Pelosi's 110th Congress Democrats got about $7 million in telecom donations. This number actually seems small, given the importance of the telecom bill to the multi-billion dollar telecom corporations, and that (for example) the auto industry thinks nothing of spending close to 10% of its earnings on advertisements to stoke good PR and stimulate sales.

So anyways, for somewhere between $7 and $20 million, Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat "leadership" SOLD OUT tens of millions of Democratic voters. Every two years Democratic and independent donors donate some $200 MILLION to the DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and other national level Dem party organizations, in hopes that Democrats will provide SOME OPPOSITION to the radical right-wing agenda of the Bush-Republican Party.

In doing the bidding of the Telecoms for a lousy $10 or $20 million, Speaker Pelosi has not only scuffed the "Democratic brand" but she has THROWN TAR all over the Democratic presumptive presidential nominee!

Since Senator Obama has not bucked the House & Senate "leadership's" Horrendous Telecom immunity bill, I have not once reached into my wallet to make another $25 campaign donation. I had been thinking about flying out to Colorado for the convention, but that no longer seems like the glorious opportunity it once did.

In plain English, Speaker Pelosi, Whip Hoyer, and Majority Leader Reid have ROBBED the Dem (presumptive) nominee of AT LEAST $10 million in good will and "brand value."

Their CAPITULATION to the Bush White House is disgraceful, and they have smeared the Dem. (presumptive) nominee with that disgrace.

My college senior level Political Science course "Parties and Interest Groups" explained that one of the primary functions of a political party or interest group is to INFORM VOTERS about the issue important to that party/group.

Pelosi and Reid have ABROGATED that RESPONSIBILITY to INFORM American voters about the abuses of law of Bush-Cheney co. They ALLOW the American media - the corporate DC press corps - to DEFINE the political parameters in gray, war-on-terror terms, instead of hauling administration officials before Congress to explain abuses and evasions - the way that Republicans did ALL THROUGH the 8 years of the Clinton administration.

To be a Democratic voter under the tender mercies of Pelosi and Reid is to be a SECOND CLASS CITIZEN, Pelosi & Reid putting the desires of REPUBLICAN LOBBYISTTS _ahead_ of the desires of Democratic voters.

WILL Senator Obama be able to overcome the GREAT BIG NEGATIVE, not "Reformer" but usiness-as-usual, deflation of brand-name that Pelosi and Reid have just dealt him?

Will Pelosi & Reid have SNATCHED DEFEAT from the Jaws of Victory, as Gore, Daschle, Kerry (and Lieberman) did before them?

Heck, why don't Pelosi and Hoyer and Reid just start running around with Senator McCain, as Senator Leiberman now does. At least they would be more honest about who they truly represent.

Wingnuts won't vote for a mere neocon wannabee. Liberals won't vote for a neocon wannabee. Centrists won't vote for a flip-flopper. Everyone would rather have a strong Democrat leader rather than a DLC-ocrat who preemptively surrenders to fascism at every opportunity.

FISA was never an intelligent political move. It was a paid political move. The senator from Verizon was simply following orders.