Robert Fisk wrote in Los Angeles Times I first realized the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from the Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting. I could save my sorrows for someone else, he said. One of the joys of leaving was that he would no longer have to alter the truth to suit his paper's more vociferous readers....
The article goes on to bemoan pressure not to call Benjamin Netanyahu as "right wing", or not being allowed to call Jewish settlements as colonies, or calling "occupied" Palestinian land as "disputed", and other examples of not being able to be as left wing as Robert Fisk apparently wants to be, but it makes me think of the number of times the press distorts what is happening in Iraq and elsewhere, to please a left wing editor.
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Telling it like it isn't
Secret surveillance up sharply since 9/11
Yahoo! News reports Federal applications for a special U.S. court to authorize secret surveillance rose sharply after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the panel required changes to the requests at an even greater rate, government documents show.
And people wonder why he did not use FISA all the time.President George W. Bush acknowledged this month he had secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone conversations and e-mail of Americans suspected of links to terrorists without approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The domestic spying order has set off a furious debate over whether the war on terrorism gives Bush a blank check when it comes to civil liberties and whether the president, in fact, broke the law. The Justice Department's reports to the U.S. Congress on the surveillance court's activities show the Bush administration made 5,645 applications for electronic surveillance and physical searches from 2001 through 2004, the most recent year for which figures are available. In the previous four years, the court received a total of 3,436. The 11-judge panel modified 179 of the Bush administration's requests. By contrast, only one was modified in the preceding four years.
And how many potential terrorist acts might have been aided by those 179 modifications.The court has reportedly handled almost 20,000 applications since it was set up and has rejected only a handful.
Some Conservatives Return To Old Argument
WSJ reported The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, including anthrax and mustard gas, and had "extensive ties" to al Qaeda. The discoveries are being covered up by those "willing to undermine support for the war on terrorism to selfishly advance their shameless political ambitions." The hard-hitting spots are part of a recent public-relations barrage aimed at reversing a decline in public support for President Bush's handling of Iraq. But these advertisements aren't paid for by the Republican National Committee or other established White House allies. Instead, they are sponsored by Move America Forward, a media-savvy outside advocacy group that has become one of the loudest -- and most controversial -- voices in the Iraq debate.
I am happy that someone is standing up for the President, but I am not sure this is the best way. I wish they would have just bought a controlling interest in WaPo or the NYTWhile even Mr. Bush now publicly acknowledges the mistakes his administration made in judging the threat posed by Mr. Hussein, the organization is taking to the airwaves to insist that the White House was right all along.
Defense Lawyers Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts
NYT reported Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
This highlights the problem with attempting to use the US Courts to resolve these cases. We are in the middle of a war against IslamoTerrorists. They are not from a single country, and they are spread over a number of countries, including many of our allies, and even including our own country, but they have one objective, to kill as many westerners as they can, whereever they can. Our court system is not the place to deal with them.The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out. The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Fear destroys what bin Laden could not
Robert Steinback wrote in MiamiHerald One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.
Things certainly changed on 9/11. Bush has said so many times.If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
What you suggest did not happen. Bush did not violate the FISA law; he just did not use it. FISA does not say this is the only way to do something.Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.
That is because you did not want us to go into Iraq at all, and pretend that WMD was the only justification, when several different reasons were stated at the time.If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.
Just as I laugh at the idea of getting IslamoTerrorists to talk by saying "please" and threatening to withhold their desert if they do not talk.If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic,
When the CIA was launching a coup against the American governmentdefy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy
by foolishly calling for us to cut and run.-- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.
That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path. What is there to say now? All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.
Not disguised; overt.I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.
Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us.''
President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.
He never said that; he just said that as commander-in-chief at at time of war, he has the right to gather intelligence on the enemy. Not collect evidence to prosecute them in a court, but information to stop attacks on this country, like the one that destroyed two buildings and 3000 lives.Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack?
It it pretty damn important.Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, "What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''
Are you volunteering to be in the next building that is destroyed?Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.
Does this mean we should not fight the Islamoterrorists.Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?
Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.
Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?
Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War
WaPo reported Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Frustrated by the coverage they were receiving from the news media, the Marines invited Roggio, 35, who writes a popular Web log about the military called "The Fourth Rail", to come cover the war from the front lines. He raised more than $30,000 from his online readers to pay for airfare, technical equipment and body armor. A few weeks later, he was posting dispatches from a remote outpost in western Anbar province, a hotbed of Iraq's insurgency.
It shows what a terrible job the MSM is doing in reporting this war if soldiers have to hire retired soldiers to come over to Iraq to blog about what is really happening."I was disenchanted with the reporting on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terror and felt there was much to the conflict that was missed," Roggio, who is currently stationed with Marines along the Syrian border, wrote in an e-mail response to written questions. "What is often seen as an attempt at balanced reporting results in underreporting of the military's success and strategy and an overemphasis on the strategically minor success of the jihadists or insurgents."
That is because the MSM wants to tear Bush down, and underreporting of the military's success and strategy and an overemphasis on the strategically minor success of the jihadists or insurgents is the only way they can do that.Roggio's arrival in Iraq comes amid what military commanders and analysts say is an increasingly aggressive battle for control over information about the conflict. Scrutiny of what the Pentagon calls information operations heightened late last month, when news reports revealed that the U.S. military was paying Iraqi journalists and news organizations to publish favorable stories written by soldiers, sometimes without disclosing the military's role in producing them. "I am convinced that information operations from both sides are increasing and intensifying. I think both sides are beginning to understand that this struggle will be waged in both the kinetic and informational realms, but that the latter is the decisive area of operations," wrote Daniel Kuehl, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington who specializes in information operations. "The insurgents target several audiences, including the Islamic world and the American populace."
And the MSM is on the insurgent's side.In addition, the military has paid money to try to place favorable coverage on television stations in three Iraqi cities, according to an Army spokesman, Maj. Dan Blanton. The military, said Blanton, has given one of the stations about $35,000 in equipment, is building a new facility for $300,000 and pays $600 a week for a weekly program that focuses positively on U.S. efforts in Iraq. The names of the city and the television station are being withheld because the producer of the show said he and his staff would be seen as collaborators and endangered if identified.
A local U.S. Army National Guard commander acknowledged that his officers "suggest" stories to the station and review the content of the program in a weekly meeting before it is aired. Though the commander, a lieutenant colonel whose name is being withheld because he is based in the same area, denied that payments were made to the station, the Iraqi television producer said his staff got $1,000 a month from the military. It does not disclose any financial relationship to viewers. There was no explanation of the discrepancy between that amount and the figure of $600 per week provided by Blanton. "The coalition forces support us," said the producer, who added that while the U.S. military reviews each program, "they don't change anything." But he also said military commanders suggest stories, often about U.S. reconstruction projects or community efforts by the military. He acknowledged that the program portrays American military projects in a positive light.
And what is wrong with that?The commander said: "We want a free and independent press. We found this small little TV [station] and asked if they are able to work with us. Our only guide to them is to tell our story, good or bad." Military officials say they have stepped up their responses to insurgent groups' attempts to influence news coverage -- including attacks aimed at media organizations, such as a pair of recent bombings at Baghdad hotels where journalists stay, attacks that officers and analysts said were designed to generate large-scale coverage.
Monday, December 26, 2005
Shiites Decline Sunni Bid for More Iraq Parliament Seats
NYT reported Sunni Arab political leaders asked the main Shiite political block today to give them 10 Shiite seats in the new parliament in an early attempt to defuse tensions over the results of last week's election. The Shiites refused the request.
A small committee headed by two independent Sunnis - Noori Arawi, Iraq's outgoing culture minister, and Zuhair Chalabi, the minister of human rights - met with members of the Shiite group, the United Iraqi Alliance, and relayed the request on behalf of the Sunni parties, said Sami al-Askari, an alliance member who was briefed on the meeting. It was not clear that Iraqi election rules would permit such a seat donation. Sunni Arabs have expressed anger over what they say was widespread fraud in the election,
Then they should team up with the other minority parties (Kurds, Secular Shiite, etc) rather than begging for more seats from the largest group to win seats.and the move by the Sunni block, the largest group of Sunni parties, which is known as the Iraqi Consensus Front, was an effort to prevent a looming deadlock that could lead to months of delays over forming a new government and fuel the insurgency.
Bush Presses Editors on Security
Howard Kurtz wrote in WaPo President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security. The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics.
And how much the MSM hates Bush, that they would be willing to endanger national security to try to hurt his administration. I hope that the next terrorist attack is against the NYT or WaPo.
Sunday, December 25, 2005
Officials Want to Expand Review of Domestic Spying
NYT reported Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists.
They are probably going to huff and puff about doing too much, but what they should be doing is authorizing everything that is currently being done, AND ask that more of it be done. For example if a US phone number appears in an AlQaeda cell phone, not only should they listen in on any internatiional calls to or from that number, but they should listen in on domestic calls to and from that number, until they are certain that it is not a terrorist cell."As far as Congressional investigations are concerned," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, "these new revelations can only multiply and intensify the growing list of questions and concerns about the warrantless surveillance of Americans." Members of the Judiciary Committee have already indicated that they intend to conduct oversight hearings into the president's legal authority to order domestic eavesdropping on terrorist suspects without a warrant.
Democratic Blogger Can't Afford Blue State
Steve Bartin blogged Markos Moulitsas Zúniga the man that runs the most successful [left wing] political blog in America can't afford the Blue state of California:So I'm getting a little frustrated with the Bay Area real estate market, and for the first time in years I'm casting about the rest of the nation to see if there's anywhere else where I could possibly live.
How ironic, a guy who supports a party that promotes Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and-use restrictions, zoning, open space laws, and unions is unable to buy a house in the very Blue area of Northern California.
Just because liberals want to impose things like that on others, does not mean they want to suffer under them themselves.All this from a guy who's got a law degree. What is it about Blue America that hates people that aren't rich??? Attention Markos Moulitsas Zúniga: did it ever occur to many in Blue state America that Houston (that doesn't have zoning) is a lot more affordable than let's say Berkeley, California.
Don't send him to Texas, that is supposed to be a secret known only to conservatives.Also, Houston residents don't have a state income tax that they are paying. It appears Kos can't afford the very values he promotes, which is regulation of markets which leads to artificially high real estate prices.
Patriot Act Extension Is Reduced To a Month
WaPo reported The House balked yesterday at a Senate plan to extend the USA Patriot Act by six months to give Congress and President Bush more time to work out their differences, instead forcing the Senate and the administration to accept a one-month extension
That was a big mistake. It would have been much better to have Democrats voting to reduce our protections from terrorism in the middle of the campaign season for the 2006 elections....."The fact is that a six-month extension, in my opinion, would have simply allowed the Senate to duck the issue until the last week in June," said Sensenbrenner, who had largely prevailed in negotiations with the Senate on a new version of the anti-terrorism law, only to see the compromise blocked by a Senate filibuster. "Now they came pretty close to wrecking everybody's Christmas. I didn't want to put the entire Congress in the position of them wrecking everybody's Independence Day."
Environmentalist Complain about Santa's Trip
Scotsman reports Reindeer-drawn sleds have been slammed as environmentally unfriendly, because the carrot-munching animals produce the greenhouse gas methane in their wind.
Who said there is not a War on Christmas. Now the envrionmentalists want to ground SantaNow Santa has been urged to ditch his sleigh team and start travelling on public transport to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. It has been calculated that Santa's team of nine reindeer would emit methane with a global warming impact equivalent to more than 40,600 tonnes of greenhouse gases on the 122 million mile Christmas Eve dash to deliver presents around the world. That would make his marathon sleigh ride almost as environmentally damaging as an aircraft, which would produce approximately 41,500 tonnes of on the Christmas Eve trip.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
The 12 Days of Christmas
On the _____ day of Christmas MY TRUE LOVE gave to ME: (The "true love" was, of course, God and the "me" who receives each of these gifts was the Christian.)
- The "partridge in the pear tree" was Christ who died on the tree as a gift from God.
- The "two turtle doves" were the Old and New Testaments, also gifts.
- The "three French hens" were faith, hope and love, the three abiding gifts of the spirit (1 Corinthians 13).
- The "four calling birds" were the four Gospels which "sing" of salvation.
- The "five gold rings" were the first five books of the Bible.
- The "six geese a-laying" were the six days of creation.
- The "seven swans a-swimming" were the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8-11, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, 1 Peter 4:10-11).
- The "eight maids a-milking" were the eight beatitudes.
- The "nine ladies dancing" were the nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)
- The "10 lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments.
- The "11 pipers piping" were the 11 faithful disciples.
- The "12 drummers drumming" were the points of the Apostles' Creed.
Santa and Google Earth
Official Google Blog reports The Google Earth team has received a pretty interesting business development inquiry that we thought we'd share with you:
To: "Google Support"
From: claus@gmail.com
Subject: Naughty or Nice Layer
I love Google Earth and have been planning a big trip with it. Now I'm wondering if you've ever thought about licensing data layers for "nice" and "naughty." If interested, I've got a really good list -- I've checked it twice. Rooftop accurate data!
Let me know,
S. Claus
They did not take him up on the naughty/nice layers, but if you have Google Earth installed you can track Santa's progress via Santa Radar
Friday, December 23, 2005
One in Five Blogs Is Spam
Ad Week reports While 80,000 blogs may be created every day, about one in five is spam, according to new research. Umbria Communications, a Boulder, Colo.-based consumer-generated media monitor, found that 2.7 million out of 20.3 million blogs are spam, or splogs as they are sometimes known. It estimates between 10 and 20 percent of blogs are spam. Spam blogs are sites created only for marketing purposes, often using stolen content via RSS feeds to trigger keyword-based ads from Google's AdSense and other contextual ad programs.
I certainly don't like Splogs, but I have also found that there are a lot of Spam Websites around (that are not created by blog software), but are just there to respond to key words people search for, and they display a few Google AdSense ads, hoping people will click on them, and then they have additional links to other pages with the same sort of stuff on them.Splogs "could become a detractor to people using, enjoying and finding value in the blogosphere," said Howard Kaushansky, CEO of Umbria. Umbria examined results in October from three blog search engines—Technorati, IceRocket and BlogPulse—and found them rife with spam sites. On average, 44 of the top 100 results on the engines were spam. For instance, an Apple iPod search turned up splogs in 80 of the top 100 results on IceRocket, and 75 and 71 on BlogPulse and Technorati, respectively.
Research found the splog problem is getting worse. Kaushansky said while many splogs are usually created to boost search engine rankings for sites, they are more frequently created to make money from text ads or affiliate programs. The main culprit often fingered is Google, which has fed the splog problem through its Blogger tool, then made it profitable through AdSense.
I believe AdSense is more of a problem than Blogger.Blogger's open API made it easier for computer programs to create splogs, Kaushansky said. "We noticed a very strong correlation between the date Blogger opened [its application program interface] and when we saw spam starting to explode," he said.
Nuclear Monitoring of Muslims Done Without Search Warrants
USNews.com In search of a terrorist nuclear bomb, the federal government since 9/11 has run a far-reaching, top secret program to monitor radiation levels at over a hundred Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities, U.S. News has learned.
Good for them. I hope they expand the program.
In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts. Federal officials familiar with the program maintain that warrants are unneeded for the kind of radiation sampling the operation entails, but some legal scholars disagree.
We need to get a list of those that disagree, and move them all to a nuclear waste dump and let them guard it.
Power We Didn't Grant
Tom Daschle wrote in WaPo In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."
As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11.
It is interesting that you did not care about acts of terrorism against the US unless initiated by Al Qaeda.With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens.
Even though every one of the people on the four planes boarded those planes in the USA.I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of authority.
You just said that it was you that refused to add the words. Was it you, or a strong bipartisian majority that could not agree?
Cheney's iPod Takes Top Priority on Extended Flight
ABC News After a four-day overseas trip that took him to four countries in the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney really wanted to get his iPod charged for that long return flight to Washington. Since it is his plane, the vice president's iPod took priority and was plugged into one of the only working power outlets on Air Force Two, frustrating reporters who were trying to file stories.
Maybe next time the press will charge the batteries in their laptops before they leave home. Imagine the press thinking it was so important for them to file their stories that they begrudged the VP the use of a power outlet on Air Force II.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Who said there was no war on Christmas?
Frank J is on his honeymoon on a Dinsney tour boat, and blogged .... Being the religious Christian types we are, Sarahk and I have been saying merry Christmas when people wish us happy holidays or season's greeting or whatever else. Some smile and nod, others have just sort of stared at us and froze up like we'd cast an 'Immobulus' spell on them. This was especially true of the Disney crew. We thought it was odd. Then, ths morning we find this that someone slid under the door of our stateroom. Disney Cruise Guests
This is the joyous holiday season. We hope you are enjoying the season during your stay aboard. We would like to ensure all our guests are comfortable in every way during their time with us but even more so during the holidays.
We want everyone to enjoy this time in whatever way they observe or don't observe holidays during this time of the year. To this end, we have assembled a list of holiday greetings that are least likely to offend others. We request that you use them exclusively or none at all during your journey with us.
Happy Holidays!
Seasons Greetings!
Happy Hannukah!
Wonderful Winter Solstice!
Happy New Year!
Feliz Navidad! (if you are a native Spanish speaker)
What do these idiots think Feliz Navidad translates into in EnglishHave a Joyous Kwanzaa!
Happy Ramadan!
Thank you for your cooperation. Enjoy your cruise with us.
Your Cruise Director
Jamie Farr
Well, Happy Holicraptacular to you Disney! or Should I say DEM-sney. What kind of leftwing liberal PC muckadoo mindscramble is this? Telling us we can say EVERY possible holiday greeting imaginable EXCEPT for Merry Christmas?
What the freak?
You know what? We've wished everyone we've run into a very merry Christmas ever since we got this piece of trash under the door. See how you like them greetings, Chairman Mouse.
Senate Votes to Extend Patriot Act for 6 Months
WaPo reported A much-debated domestic surveillance law won a reprieve last night when senators agreed to continue it for six months to allow House and Senate negotiators to resume efforts next year to rewrite it for the longer term.
The House and Senate passed different bills, and as is normally the case they had a conference committee to resolve the differences. The House gave the Senate most of what it wanted, and then they approved the compromise the committee came up with. The Senators Filibustering the bill were filibustering what their conference members agreed to; they were spoiled children just wanting everything to be exactly the way they wanted it.Some top Democratic and Republican senators said they were confident the House would agree to the compromise to prevent major provisions of the USA Patriot Act from expiring on Dec. 31. The Senate approved the extension on a voice vote.
Critics say the proposed four-year renewal, which the House approved last week, is too slanted in the government's favor regarding national security letters and special subpoenas that give the FBI significant leeway in obtaining records. The targeted people should have a greater opportunity to challenge such subpoenas and the government should be required to show stronger evidence linking the items being sought to possible terrorism, they say.
In other words the Senate only wants to stop certain terrorists; they are willing to allow some get through and kill Americans. Let us just hope that they ones the let through decide to attack the Senate.Now they have more time to press their case in the bill's rewrite.
