Don't Be Fooled by Bush

The chairmen of the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees were given the assignment of modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The House is working hard to pass another FISA bill since Bush vetoed the last one because it did not grant immunity to the phone companies. Their new version still protects our national security, preserves civil liberties, and denies retroactive immunity to phone companies that participated in the Bush-Cheney Administration warrantless surveillance program and I hope they don't back down. Have all of you sent a message to your carrier by changing companies since you learned your own phone company, to whom you pay money every month, was spying on you? Don't reward them for that. Reward the House members who stood up to Bush and protected your rights.

The Senate also passed a bill, but theirs does not protect our civil liberties. What it does protect are the phone companies from being sued by the American people who had their privacy invaded. It more importantly protects the Bush Administration who ordered that invasion. If either party did nothing wrong, they wouldn't need so much protecting. Further, the bill the White House so fervently supports in the interest of national security, accusing Congress of putting the American people in danger, really does nothing to endanger or protect our country from terrorism despite what Bush claims. It protects him by staving off the investigations and wouldn't you try to keep people from learning what you have been up to if you were Bush? To do this, he has been irresponsibly making false claims that we are more vulnerable to terrorism until a new bill is passed.
By pushing back against right-wing pressure, Congress has the Bush-Cheney Administration bolstering their scare tactics and suggesting that congressional Democrats' efforts to get the FISA bill right this time will invite another terrorist attack. I am somehow doubtful that FISA occurs to suicide bombers before they go boom, but I could be wrong. Bush is trying to scare Congress and the American people into accepting a FISA bill that includes retroactive telecom immunity, further eroding our Constitutional privacy rights. People, please be smarter than that. Support those who are protecting your rights. Pay attention to the issues and think about your vote before it is cast and for whom.

The people who do not care about protecting our rights had no problem investing in a controversial television commercial evoking ticking time-bomb imagery straight out of TV's 24 to shock the American people into supporting another flawed FISA law. They have a very low opinion of the American people if they think we can't see through the fear mongering. Congress is pushing for a better FISA bill, but a few loud voices in Washington are more determined than ever to ram through another flawed piece of legislation. The smarter we get, the more nervous they get and the harder they try. Too bad they don't work as hard at running our government as they do at fooling the public.