Glen Greenwald...Targeting bad Democrats...FISA

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html

"House Democrats are expected to unveil and possibly vote on their FISA bill this week. While they may (or may not) end up securing some additional, mild safeguards against eavesdropping abuses as compared to the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill, it is almost certain that they will ultimately end up granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms and gutting most of the long-standing, core protections of FISA. The recent, extraordinary revelations of just how sweeping is the administration's spying on domestic calls and emails of Americans seem to have had little effect thus far on what appears to be the inevitable course...

Democrats are never going to change their behavior if there continues to be no price for what they're doing. If even the most pro-Bush Democrats continue to receive reflexive support from other Democrats, regardless of how fundamentally they reject the political values of those Democrats, they will continue on the same course. Why wouldn't they? And if Democrats whose political values are violated by these office holders refrain from ever working against them, solely because they have a (D) after their name, then this process will continue unabated...

There is a poll set up to ask everyone interested to vote on which of the six Congressmen should be targeted. The top one or two vote-getters will be the ones against whom the ads will be run. As soon as they are selected, the fund-raising for these ads will commence and they will be running very quickly, to ensure maximum impact over the upcoming FISA votes. You can vote here...

http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/getevenforfisa


UPDATE II: I've now had the opportunity to read the full text of the House FISA bill which they unveiled today. It is actually surprisingly good, though the real question, of course, is how committed they really are to having it enacted, as opposed to this being merely a base-placating measure with the real intention of enacting something virtually identical to the Rockefeller/Cheney bill once it is returned from the Senate..."