No One in the Wheelhouse

Apparently, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House thought that the extension of certain intrusive portions the USA Patriot Act would be an easy slam-dunk. After all, the president wanted it, and you know how John Boehner strains to please the president!

So they brought the bill up under expedited procedures which require a 2/3rds vote of the body. Only somebody forgot to tell all those newbie tea party Republicans that they were supposed to vote approvingly for the federal government's ability to spy, unrestrained, on its own citizens. The vote last night failed to reach the necessary 2/3rds, because some 26 Republican members (including eight freshmen) voted no (along with 122 Democrats).

Oh, they'll bring the bill back under regular order, and of course it'll pass. One wonders if those dissident eight freshmen will continue to stick to their guns and oppose the continued over-reaching of government power first instituted under George W. Bush. Or will they just go along?

Another freshman, Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), gave Politico a pretty good Constitutional argument against the bill:

“In a free society you have to be very careful as to taking away the civil liberties of the American people. Even if the bill is well intentioned and the law is well intentioned it can be used against innocent people. So that was my concern.”

Yet Rokita voted for it! Why? So much for logical consistency among tea party Republicans.

Ironic, Ain't It?

Hattip: C.D.

What the Hell's Wrong with Obama? (Part Two)

We're against this. We were against domestic spying when George W. Bush was president. We haven't changed our position.

The over-stepping of executive powers, especially those that threaten to unleash even more "investigative freedom" for the executive branch, should concern every American. Unfortunately, certain Republicans only find their outrage when a Democrat is in office. They applauded all the Patriot Act nonsense when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were seizing unconstitutional power to spy domestically. Now those same Republican voices, joined by tea baggers, are going ape-shit over this new proposed internet snoop-ability. Just check out some of the comments posted to the Times article linked above.

I told you so well before Barack Obama was elected: "...Republicans who claim to love the Constitution and who profess themselves giddy that they've gotten the congressional Democrats to cave on FISA [in June 2008] might want to consider these extraordinary spying powers in the hands of a president of the other party. We don't want them in the hands of a president of EITHER party."

The lust of the government for more ways to spy on us, once the Bush administration had thrown open that door, is pretty understandable and pretty awful. But the situational ethics of Republicans just pisses me off.

Who Is Russell Tice?

Tice is a whistle-blower who has worked as an intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). He took an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and since December 2005 he has been saying that the Bush administration subverted the Constitution and broke the law in spying wholesale and without warrant on American citizens. As a whistle-blower, he has suffered reprisals for speaking up and was ultimately fired from the NSA in May 2005.

He was one source of information for the NYTimes investigative report in Dec. 2005 which first revealed that the NSA was engaged in a clandestine eavesdropping program that bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

In January a year ago, another whistle-blower named Dave Larson made significant disclosures to the Inspector General of the Dept. of Defense substantiating Tice's allegations and detailing unlawful criminal acts committed under NSA supervision. This matter remains pending and current with the Dept. of Defense Inspector General as case #103586. (Much more on Tice and his struggle as a government whistle-blower at Wikipedia.)

Last night on "Countdown with Keith Obermann," Tice said that journalists and reporters were one group that the Bush administration particularly targeted for illegal data mining. He will be back on Obermann's show tonight on MSNBC.

This is only the beginning, as Americans finally discover what the Bush administration criminal conspiracy has been up to in the name of keeping us safe.