GOP Leaders Back Bush on Wiretapping, Tribunals

[RedEarth]

GOP Leaders Back Bush on Wiretapping, Tribunals

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 14, 2006; A13




Congress's Republican leadership yesterday threw its weight behind two of President Bush's most controversial national security programs, warrantless wiretapping and extrajudicial military tribunals.

But the party leaders are having trouble getting all their members on board, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And by backing the president's legislative demands, the leadership risks being labeled by Democrats as a rubber stamp for an unpopular president.

With prodding from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10 to 8 along party lines to approve a bill negotiated with the White House to allow -- but not require -- Bush to submit the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program to a secret court for constitutional review.

That bill, which could come before the Senate next week, is considered by many to be a ratification of the administration's current surveillance program, which monitors the overseas phone calls and e-mails of some Americans when one party is suspected of links to terrorism. The program has been attacked by Democrats and civil liberties advocates as an excessive encroachment on Americans' privacy.

"The committee took the important step of acknowledging the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), an ardent Bush ally.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/12/AR2006091201252_pf.html

[indepat]

1. Are they all corporatists who hate liberty and freedom, our Constitution,

this Republic?

[WinkyDink]

2. Do you always ask rhetorical questions?

Heh.

[indepat]

4. I do wonder out loud a lot

[peacetalksforall]

3. Good judgement - non-existent. Representing citizens -

non-existent. Patriots to the Constitution and Blill of Rights and all the progress of our ancestors - non-existent. I denounce these fool-traitors.

It is obvious that the Federalist Society has written a secret Constitution and Bill of RIghts and the Republicans are replacing theirs with ours. It's time to have their Constitution revealed to us.

Let us do battle over our Constitution. Theirs is being imposed on us. And we learn about it declaration by declaration with the support of Republicans.

The same abandonment is happening to our world and regional treaties, especially as they apply to the planet, space, its humans, and earth resources.

Just as their lies about the environment are flapping in their faces, their lies about what they're doing to our legal system will flap them in the face. It's up to us.

[Amonester]

5. DU'ers in DC: Please post copies of that poster everywhere near...

Congress offices. Yeah: Up on each traffic-lights post, each fence, each door, and/or each wall you happen to walk by? Thank you in advance.

Everywhere across the land will do 2.

[kentuck]

7. I like it.

It is thought-provoking.

[Amonester]

8. It is!! I saw that pic here on DU this week and...

I just wish everyone (who can read...)(and who's not a bu$hbot... even then, even 'them') would read it, and think it's way past time to restore democracy in America.

I wish I had the skills (and the tools...) required to make hundred of thousands copies to distribute to everyone who'd want to post them everywhere, and especially on every "Representative's" (cough...cough) office door (or fence, or wall, et cetera).

Last chance to restore true democracy? (Not too late already?)

[TankLV]

6. What they did was still ILLEGAL and IMPEACHABLE.

It was ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL at the time THEY did it.

You cannot change the law AFTER THE FACT.

I want to see PROSECUTIONS and PUNISHMENTS when the Dems take over!

I will to my last breath...