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

[demobabe]

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 sellouts 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 founded on the concept of individual rights and liberties, and structured to limit the power of the executive.

Full article here: http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/lindorff/006

[demobabe]

1. kick

:kick:

[demobabe]

2. kick

:kick:

[leftchick]

3. shhhh.....

must not rock boat.