While the Senate was ready to vote on the FISA Amendments Act today, Senators Russell Feingold and Christopher Dodd fought to keep them from casting a final vote and jamming the bill through Congress.
In a statement released by Feingold, he says:
"I am pleased we were able to delay the vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through. I hope that over the July 4th Holiday, Senators will take a closer look at the deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American People. It is possibly to protect this country against the terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation."
For those who haven't read up on the new FISA bill, it would basically give the government the right to peek into the private overseas phone conversations, emails, and even text messages of all Americans. Part of the bill would give retroactive immunity to telephone companies that gave the government private information of Americans.
Feingold says the FISA bill would also allow the government to take all international communications and put it in a giant database. The most outrageous part of the bill states that there does not have to be any court review or evidence that anyone is doing anything wrong before the government intrudes on the person's privacy. The government will simply have complete access to the personal overseas communications of every single American.
Feingold continues to say, "It's a vast power that has no limits. There's no regulation of it."
Obviously, the new FISA bill was created to help the government "track down terrorists"....just like the Iraq War was orchestrated to find weapons of mass destruction. It all makes perfect sense.
It's angering that the government has instilled so much fear in the minds of Americans, that many are ready to hand over precious civil liberties in the name of "protection." In fact, it's sickening. All the Republicans who are avid gun owners and want to protect their constitutional right to bear arms have NO RIGHT to say an American's right to privacy is not as important. This proposed FISA bill simply violates the right to privacy. Fear tactics should not trick Americans into giving up their freedoms. The Senate needs to wake up.
The more the Bush Administration remains in power, the more the United States mirrors the image George Orwell illustrated in his book 1984. Big brother really is watching, and members of our own Senate are allowing it to happen.
Feingold admits that many of the Senators have not completely read the bill and do not know the logistics of it. By holding off on the bill until after July 4th, hopefully the Senate will have the opportunity to think things over and not just hand the Bush Administration exactly what they want.
If you want to watch TYT's interview with Senator Feingold, please check out the video below:
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FISA Bill On Hold!
Posted Jun 26th 2008 8:23PM by Ana Kasparian
Filed under: Iraq, Politics, George Bush, Media, Young Turks
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Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 23)
61. So Gere, you are blaming that damn education that people got for opinions that are different than yours? Can I then assume that you have uneducated opinions?
Dennis at 12:12PM on Jun 27th 2008
62. >>>Isn't amazing the WTC 7 collapses off of a fire?>>>
Botts, your brain belongs in a pickle jar beside Dennis's...
The whole world watched the WTC collapse under its' own weight.
The twin towers were comprised of skeletal steel which had a melting point. The intense heat of the thousands of gallons of jet fuel created that melting point. When the skeleton of the building missed a structural link the buildings basically imploded under the weight of 30 or so stories collapsing downward floor by floor. Even if you have no apparent understanding of construction common sense if you were watching that fateful day would bear this out.
A conspiracy theory should have at least some grounded basis to it.
Bobby at 12:17PM on Jun 27th 2008
63. Unfortunately many of the college aged folks out there today, seriously brainwashed by liberal academia, were quick to fall into to line and started absorbing more of the anti American rubish that routinely gets to see the light of day on sites like this on AOL.
xxxx
You would prefer young people not get educations? Shades of Edmund Burke!
Some people welcome the destruction of the bill of rights and rights inherited from the magna carta as has been done by the bush and busher administration.
The same people prefer that corporations merge with government and that the citizen only exists to serve corporate/government interests.
It's pretty simple - just follow the money.
If you believe the nation and her citizens exist to serve the global economy, you are a republican.
If you believe the domestic economy must serve the interests of the nation and her citizens first, you are a democrat.
I put America first, and I don't see those that put America and her citizens and the bill of rights and the magna carta behind the interests of private offshore corporations as being patriotic at all.
Borrowing hundreds of billions from a nuclear armed communist nation to give to billionaires in tax breaks does nothing to further the illusion neoconservatism tries to perpetrate.
I'm a little tired of the charade, and about 75% or more of us are in agreement.
Republican registration is about 28% of the total at this time, and the seventeenth century thinking and refusal to address reality that permeates neoconservatism is a large part of the reason why.
Now you can get back to your rev babymama terrorist fist jab hussein mantra for all the good it's going to do you.
Clif Kuplen at 12:23PM on Jun 27th 2008
64. Hey Botts-
(places plumeria lei around neck)
Aloha!
Robert at 12:28PM on Jun 27th 2008
65. Yo, Bobby!
Do better research. The WTC had a central core of steel columns that could withstand anything short of nuke in the front porch.
The 'intense heat' generated by the burning of kerosene (Jet fuel A) can barely melt aluminum, let alone concrete reinforced steel.
Collapsing under it's own weight? NO, that would be the 'logic' you present here.
Robert at 12:33PM on Jun 27th 2008
66. A conspiracy theory should have at least some grounded basis to it.
Bobby at 12:17PM on Jun 27th 2008
xxx
well, an actual point. Here's an enigma though. I don't honestly know what to make of it. I've heard one explanation here that might hold water, but there was a variable missing in the explanation.
Why was there spectrographic evidence of thermATE (not thermITE) in the wreckage of building seven?
I think everything else I've ever heard regarding 911 conspiracy could be explained, but that is persistent.
The only thing I could say about such a 'conspiracy' is that if it ever were proven that 911 was the result of one, is that it would not shock me at all. Compared to what they did and are doing in Iraq and their plans for the future, a 911 conspiracy is rather pastel.
They're WAY worse than that.
Clif Kuplen at 12:40PM on Jun 27th 2008
67. Klaven:
If I am in the vast minority as you claim in supporting FISA how on earth would it ever pass?
Guess everyone in congress is just as much a nazi facsist as I am. Including Pelosi, Reid and your savior Osama.
Whats the problem? How could this even remotely pass?
Please give me a straight answer and not your drawn out, off point, irrelevant hyperbole. prior to even hearing your answer I will object and move to strike the non responsive portion of your response. If that leaves you with nothing, par for the course, mailman.
(for those who dont know i call him clif klaven, the mailman on cheers. Think about it. There you go)
german guy at 12:40PM on Jun 27th 2008
68. Clif, I call your rev babymama terrorist fist jab hussein mantra and raise you a Marxist Agenda:
Plank 10 of the Communist Manifesto is to devise an indoctrination of Marxism under the guise of Public Education. Barack Obama is a product of such an Indoctrination System.
Barack Obama's own words from "Dreams from My Father" [pg. 100-101] proves that he has long had a propensity for Marxism: {To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.}
Keyword: The Marxist Professors!!!!!!!
Paul Sparcello at 12:52PM on Jun 27th 2008
69. "Botts, your brain belongs in a pickle jar beside Dennis's"
Bobby clearly this isn't the case for me, but for you maybe.
Who's talking about WTC 1 and 2? Not me.
I'm talking about WTC 7
Learn how to read Bobby, then and only then can we have productive dialog.
WTC 7 is the building that has CIA and Secret Service offices in it. That collapsed to, several hours after the others collapsed.
Botts at 12:54PM on Jun 27th 2008
70. Yo Robert:
The Structural System of the WTC
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely, and the relationship between the towers’ design and structure is clear. Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube" of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers appear from afar to have no windows at all.
The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building.
Question Robert, oh brilliant one,
Have you ever watched demolition work? Do you know the concept? Did you see multiple explosions go off that day as the WTC collapsed? Three active brain cells if you were watching would be adequate to explain the collapsing of the building. The information above of the specs of the WTC describes your "hollow tube" with extending floor trusses which are used to hold corrugated steel in order to pour lightweight concrete as the floor system. The second paragraph details a "prefabricated steel lattice" which in simple terms denotes the "steel skeleton" of the building.
Oh brilliant one please pull up a video of the destruction & watch frame by frame. Whatever the theory of the day is please explain it in full detail. Perhaps I missed something?
Where are the indictments??
Bobby at 1:00PM on Jun 27th 2008
71. Paul
Why bother with the facts. You'll only get some off point, dragged out, boilerplate, took 10 years to construct, nonsense.
But finally, he exposed himself. He now staunchly supports and promulgates a conspiracy theory behind 9-11. Just 2 days ago he unabashingly supported killing bin laden without a need for trial because he was convinced of his guilt.
Liberals get caught in their own web of betrayals day after day because they have no consistancy in conviction. Which ever way the wind blows. Whatever looks good in the polls. You see it in the news everyday and you see it in the posts here. Like a slinky.
german guy at 1:04PM on Jun 27th 2008
72. Theory is, WTC 7 was a command post of sorts, for the show that was/is Ground Zero. It was "pulled" to hide any evidence of this fact. That, coupled with the amazingly quick removal of the evidence of the 220 odd stories of WTC 1&2, before any investigation could take place, is similar to the burning and disfigurement of the corpse from a murder scene. A frequent watcher of "CSI" KNOWS THAT MUCH.
Robert at 1:04PM on Jun 27th 2008
73. Here you go Bobby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD06SAf0p9A
and this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k6GMddY-lQ
Botts at 1:07PM on Jun 27th 2008
74. Uh, bobby, remember the lesson about the central cores? The demo of those cores was the key. And yes, after that, the building fell into a nice neat little pile. Oh, sure, Deutche Bank got nicked, hey, shit happens, but notice it also went back up in record time.
Robert at 1:08PM on Jun 27th 2008
75. Botts, apologies.
I did misread your meaning & I agree. The facts are always important. Perhaps if we're wrong on an issue & could all agree we could reach a consensus of how to pull together to resolve the differences we have.
Again, apologies... I was the bonehead on this one
Bobby at 1:19PM on Jun 27th 2008