Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

The thing I really love about having a serious bout of Santorum Hatred™ is that Rick seems to go out of his way to make hating him easy and fun for the whole family. Thanks babe. Just today he even earned himself a new nickname. I’ll keep calling him “everybody’s favorite dog loving drama queen and total cream puff” but I think “Lying Freak” is a good addition. It’s short and concise and unlike “Lying Sack of Shit” you can use it at formal affairs and job interviews. The following paragraph from the Morning Call Online is just about all you need.

Santorum also said he had not seen Norquist ”in years.” But Norquist, who is also president of Americans for Tax Reform, spoke at a Santorum news conference in June in the Capitol in support of legislation to repeal a telephone excise tax.

It gets worse. It always does, doesn’t it? Just have a look at what Kevin Drum and Dayvoe and Brian have had to say today. While you’re reading, keep in mind that the powers that be within the Democratic party picked one of the very few human beings in the entire Commonweath of Pennslvania who probably can’t beat the lying freak this November. Feel better yet? Me either. Have a look at this little guy.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up little guy. Thanks.

Kos:

And no, his two primary challengers aren’t viable alternatives. PA Dems will have to do better than them if they want a serious challenger to Casey who can also win in November. Like it or not, Casey has the clearest path to victory of any Dem Senate challenger this cycle. And we need this seat to have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and subpoena power.

The thing I love best about this is that Markos, a guy with a huge readership and at least a little pull, is taking a shit on the only two Democrats in Pennsylvania who have the spine to run against Casey in the Democratic primary. This is after Rendell and the DSCC wiped the table clean and anointed Bob Casey as the next Democrat to have his ass handed to him by Santorum. The thing I love second best is when writes “Like it or not, Casey has the clearest path to victory of any Dem Senate challenger this cycle.” I can only assume this is Kos’ way of telling us that Democrats don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of picking up a single seat held by a Republican not planning on retirement this cycle. I have to say I was a little more optimistic, but then again, who the hell am I? Nothing like the hiss of the air out of a balloon.

Casey may be a wonderful guy, I have no clue and I really do feel a little bad for being so negative. That said, I do know that Casey is a shit candidate with even shitier positions. He may well win the Democratic primary, but that’s probably the last thing he’ll ever win as a candidate for public office. He’s dead to rights after that and I can’t say that I really care. That right there is the problem. I’m about as partisan a guy you will ever find, but I will not lift a finger for Casey. If you can’t get me, and Democrats like me, to tow the party line in a general election against Rick Santorum, it’s all over. Game. Set. Match. Not that it wouldn’t have been over anyway. Casey is self destructive on the stump. Clearly.

You know what I would love even more than watching Kos take a crap on the only two people with the spine to run in spite of the DSCC and Rendell suicide pact? I’d love it if Kos and John Aravosis and anyone else from far away with a national profile, would stay the fuck away from Pennsylvania politics. The Pennsylvania Democratic party is self destructive enough without you taking a shit on our candidates. The establishment is more than able to lose races it ought to win without the help of prominent national liberal bloggers. More than that, there are more than a few of us here who really do care and who really are trying to back good candidates with good positions who we think have a chance - even if that chance is small. We are trying to build a relevant Democratic party in Pennsylvania, and more importantly, a better commonwealth. Please stop fucking us over. Even if just for a few weeks or a few cycles, please stop. Thanks.

Booman goes to town on Casey.

Rick Santorum is one of the most loathsome politicians in America. He is also the least popular Senator in America in his home state. He is vile terrible person. Defeating Santorum should not only be one of our greatest priorities this year, but working toward that goal should be a joy…it should be fun and exciting.

Bob Casey as an opponent ruins that chance. Pennacchio and Sandals are all that is standing in the way of a showdown between Casey and Santorum. Casey won’t even debate them.

Casey should drop out of the fucking race. All he is accomplishing with his anti-gay rights, anti-science, anti-choice candidacy is to piss off Democrats and Democratic activists.

We need to send a message to Chuck Schumer that we don’t want to ever see a candidate like Bob Casey recruited again. Schumer clears the field for Casey and then has the unmitigated gall to get indignant about abortion rights in the Alito hearings. Watching that display of gross hypocrisy literally turned my stomach. I had to eat a saltine cracker to absorb some of the bile that aroused in me. If I could of slapped Schumer through the television set, I would have.

Hyperlinks added by me.

That just about sums it up. Casey is an awful candidate and the idea that Casey is the guy to beat Santorum needs to die and die now. I can’t think of a Democrat who is less likely to beat Santorum. Just the other day I mentioned that the moment Casey opens his mouth that his rosy poll numbers will drop like a brick. He has proven track record of blowing huge leads. Guess what just happened. Yesterday was a perfect example of what an inept politician Casey is. Believe me it’s going to get worse before it ends in crushing defeat.

A little more Booman.

Bob Casey Jr. is a lousy candidate. He sucks. His personality has been described as “warm ziploc bag full of vasoline”.

I have to quibble with this a little because I think he was actually described as “a sandwich bag filled with lukewarm Vaseline and crushed Valium.” Either way is good though. I’m just happy to contribute a little to the discourse.

I was trying to get at this last night, but I don’t know that I articulated it very clearly. By announcing his support for Alito, Casey lost whatever little support he had left with the base. I’ve been looking through the comment sections of some blogs who have written on this and actually get comments. Not even a bit of support and people are really coming around to the idea that this guy is a sure loser. If Casey is the nominee, this mess is going to keep more than a few people home in November. Casey needed every single one of the people who were planning to hold their noses and vote for him. There are a lot fewer of those people today than there were last week. To be more blunt - he’s toast. Casey can’t win. Time to move on.

Have a look at Booman and Susie to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Why Bob Casey would decide to break his moratorium on relevancy by supporting Alito’s confirmation is likely beyond the grasp what a reasonable human being can grapple with without the aid of strong hallucinogens. This is, I suppose, his best effort thus far to lose his campaign to become Pennsylvania’s junior senator. He’ll do worse. Trust me. Two days before the general election in November, I fully expect to see huge front page pictures of Casey bear hugging Dick Cheney atop a pile of human skulls. Casey is dying to lose.

WASHINGTON - Sen. Rick Santorum’s leading Democratic challenger, Pennsylvania Treasurer Bob Casey, announced Tuesday that he endorses Judge Samuel Alito’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

For weeks, Republicans have called Casey “Silent Bob” and pressed him to say whether he supports Alito’s confirmation. Casey and Alito have a family connection because Alito, who serves on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in Philadelphia, sided with Casey’s father, the late Gov. Bob Casey, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The case challenged a state law requiring women seeking abortions to notify their spouses.

“I do not agree with everything that Judge Samuel Alito has done or said - particularly many of his rulings which too often result in corporate power prevailing over the interests of consumers and workers,” Casey said in a statement. “However, I agree with The Philadelphia Inquirer and Washington Post editorial boards that the arguments against Judge Alito do not rise to the level that would require a vote denying him a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Santorum’s campaign manager responded with a statement accusing Casey of ducking the issue and then following the lead of Santorum, the No. 3 Senate Republican. Both candidates are generally against abortion. Santorum came out strong in support of Alito at a conservative rally Jan. 8.

I can only assume that the Casey Campaign’s strategy for losing to Santorum is to mirror Santorum’s positions, but present a candidate without Santorum’s charisma (that’s not a joke - he has it). Is Casey really this desperate to ruin his political career? How many Pennsylvanians who might have been willing to hold their nose and pull the lever for Casey in November in order to bring down Santorum, just gave up? Not just a few. He’ll do more of the same over the coming months and more and more of us will give up. If Pennsylvania is going to have a Republican senator, why not have a freak show like Santorum who at least provides a giggle from time to time, rather than a giant hunk of Valium like Casey? Whatever.

Let me get a little more serious for a second. I haven’t made a stink about Alito personally because I haven’t had the time, due to personal circumstance, to really look into all of the relevant issues. When I post about an issue, a candidate or a nominee I do so when I feel I have a decent grasp of the issues involved. I have not come out either way on Alito because what I have to say doesn’t matter a bit and I’m not in an intellectual position to make an argument one way or the other. I have been disturbed by what I have read so far. The nominee appears willing to apply more leniency to the executive than I’m comfortable with.

There is no particular reason for Casey to come out one way or another on Alito’s nomination. It accomplishes nothing positive. It makes his campaign just a little more unpalatable than it already was to the active Democratic base he will very much need if he is to beat Santorum in November. Furthermore, it’s a stab in the back to the majority of Senate Democrats who seem nearly set (they still need some milk) to raise just a little hell over this nominee. Now they face the potential of having to answer hostile and unneeded questions about their potential colleague’s stance on this matter. Thanks Bob.

Whatever. This is why I support real Democrats who aren’t begging to lose.

(Via Albert)

Just in case you missed this on the 400,000 other blogs posting on it last evening and this morning, I’d like you to have a look at this.

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the –

GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable –

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says –

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard –

GEN. HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, “We reasonably believe.” And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say “we reasonably believe”; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, “we have probable cause.”

And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.

Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.

General Hayden is the former head of the National Security Agency. That was an exerpt from an appearence he made in front of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C in defense of President Bush’s domestic spying program. Just in case you don’t recall the text of the fourth ammendment to the consitution, here it is.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

As a side note, something that really disturbed me when I was searching Google News for context on this post, is that the very first link Google offered was to an extraordinarily misguided post by John Hinderaker on Powerline. He describes Hayden’s presentation as “brilliant and heartfelt.” In reality I’m being overly kind when I describe his post as misguided. Given the history of that site and its blind adoration for the powers that be, I assume the very worst. The cult of Bush must surely be one of the most corrosive forces our nation has seen in some time. To staunchly defend what appear to be the highly illegal actions of the executive branch, using the feeble arguments of a spokesperson who is clearly uncomfortable with a text he should have learned in middle school, is unforgivable and repugnant. Especially for a lawyer. Unabashedly and proudly ignorant from start to finish. Not that I expected any better. Whatever.

It was stupid of me to even bother with that last paragraph. I should know better than to care about what shows up as the top story on a search engine’s news site. I should know better than to care what is written by fools. I’m burning up inside though. I want my country back and these fools are holding onto the keys.

Football Hall of Fame member and former Pittsburgh Steelers’ great, Lynn Swann leads Ed Rendell in a theoretical November match up for Pennsylvania’s governor by 45% to 43% (via PoliticsPA). Swann, who just recently declared, would will still need to win the Republican nomination for the privilege of facing Governor Rendell in a general election where Southeast Pennsylvania has not yet seceded from the Commonwealth and joined the great state of New Jersey.

Swann would be a savvy choice for Pennsylvania’s Republican party. As Terry Bradshaw’s most skilled receiver, he is a legend in Western Pennsylvania and the owner of four Super Bowl rings. Diminish the importance professional sports all you want, but playing a huge role in one of the greatest teams in all of football history does mean something more than maybe it ought to in the minds of a lot of voters. When that player and that team come from a city and a region that are often perceived as footnotes in the American story, those four rings start to mean a little more than just a little bit. We’re talking about a guy who spent 12 years in the spotlight, where every drop was a tragedy and every catch in the end zone was greeted with elation. He may wind up being an awful candidate, but his heroics with the great Steelers teams of the 1970’s allow Swan one minute of attention to articulate his positions. That’s the sort of thing most politicians can only dream of. Sixty seconds - that’s huge.

I won’t even bother to mention that polls conducted this far out are mostly meaningless and are produced to provide the polling companies who conduct them with a little extra exposure and an opportunity to press their brand name a little further into the minds of those few consumers who are paying attention. Oops. That was a mention wasn’t it? Do you forgive me?

Even with a 2 percentile deficit in opinion polling to a potential rival, I’m really not all that concerned about Governor Rendell chances in November. I have sneaking suspicion that he has some political skill.

Does anybody else remember that just about four years ago Rendell was running a solid 120% behind Bob Casey for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Armed with those impressive numbers Bob Casey made the ultimate mistake of opening his mouth. The man is human valium on the stump. The second he opens his mouth he loses 40 percentage points on the spot, losing an additional two percentage points for each additional minute his mouth stays open. Armed with that strange deficiency, he faced off against a gifted politician who is overwhelmingly popular in the commonwealth’s most populous region. Casey, of course, was toast.

There is something of interesting parallel happening this year. Casey is consistently running about 250% points ahead of little Rick Santorum. Say want you want about Rick Santorum, he is stupid and ugly and nobody likes him, but he is a talented politician who has inexplicably managed to have a political career in a moderate state while holding positions better suited to the feudal era. If Casey loses by less than 15% to Santorum, I’ll be shocked. You probably think me a loon.

Do you remember me saying that I would never unleash a torrent of bad analogies involving football and facial hair? Me either. Putting Casey up against Santorum is like entering a group of choir boys into a mustache growing competition against Jake Plummer. It’s like entering your grandmother into a neck beard contest with Koy Detmer. It’s like letting either one of the Manning brothers play a contact sport. It’s sheer madness and it’s just asking to lose. Why would we want to do that?

Gore’s speech is live on C-Span right now. Go have a look if you can. Here’s the prepared text:

Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America’s Constitution is in grave danger.

In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.

As we begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.

It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.

Read the rest of this entry »

It wasn’t a mention of the poll discussed below, but I was a little shocked to hear Arlen Specter say that impeachment and then criminal prosecution would be the remedy if Bush broke the law by authorizing illegal wire taps. This was in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week. Here’s the transcript.

STEPHANOPOULOS: There was a lot of talk about that at the Alito hearings, and listening closely to you I certainly seem to take away that you believe the president does not have the right, does not have the inherent power under the Constitution to circumvent a constitutional law, and as far as you are concerned, the FISA law is constitutional, isn’t it?

SPECTER: Well, I started off by saying that he didn’t have the authority under the resolution authorizing the use of force. The president has to follow the Constitution. Where you have a law which is constitutional, like Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there still may be collateral different powers in the president under wartime circumstances.

That’s a very knotty question that I’m not prepared to answer on a Sunday soundbite. But I do believe that it ought to be thoroughly examined. And when we were on the Patriot Act and found the disclosure of the surveillance, I immediately said the Judiciary Committee would hold hearings, and I talked to the attorney general, and we’re going to explore it in depth, George. You can count on that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You know, if the president did break the law or circumvent the law, what’s the remedy?

SPECTER: Well, the remedy could be a variety of things. A president — and I’m not suggesting remotely that there’s any basis, but you’re asking, really, theory, what’s the remedy? Impeachment is a remedy. After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution, but the principal remedy, George, under our society is to pay a political price.

From Democrats.com:

By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge’s approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12.

The poll found that 52% agreed with the statement:

“If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.”

43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn’t know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 2.9% margin of error.

From the same article:

In August and September of 1998, 16 major polls asked about impeaching President Clinton (http://democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls). Only 36% supported hearings to consider impeachment, and only 26% supported actual impeachment and removal. Even so, the impeachment debate dominated the news for months, and the Republican Congress impeached Clinton despite overwhelming public opposition.

So when I wake up at an unreasonably early hour tomorrow morning to watch my Sunday morning political chat shows, what are the chances that I’ll hear even a single word about the fact that a slim majority of the American people favor Bush’s impeachment over the NSA scandal? If you answered “not a chance in hell” I’ll gladly give you a jelly bean in the flavor and brand of my choosing. Just to make things fair, I’ll eat a jelly bean myself if I’m wrong about this. No small punishment, mind you, as I don’t care for sweets and I really hate jelly beans. Ah, Punditry. The last refuge of the naive, the moronic, the evil and the highly paid, though stangely respected whore.

(Via some guy you never heard of)

I just wanted to highlight a little more of yesterday’s Boston Globe article dealing with the “signing statement” produced by President Bush on the occasion of his signing a bill outlawing the torture of detainees into law. Considering the provisions of various treaties signed by previous presidents and ratified by the United States Senate, a clear cut ban on torture was already the law of the land, but legal clarity in the face of ongoing illegal abuses is always welcome.

What we see in the text of the President’s signing statement is blunt premeditation. The administration intends to direct various agencies of the government to violate laws both new and old. Quite clearly, the administration is not at all uncomfortable declaring its intent to violate the law under some strange patriotic pretense coupled with disjointed legal reasoning unworthy of a hack. It has done so for years with no repercussions. Indeed, it expects applause and adoration for its efforts. Sadly, it will find some. Should this particular event ever find its way into political hack consciousness, much love will be directed towards the effort to break the law on the editorial pages of countless newspapers, as well as in the posts of innumerable bloggers who define morality and patriotism as the paid product of the Republican party’s professional spin apparatus.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.

”The signing statement is saying ‘I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it’s important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,’ ” he said. ”They don’t want to come out and say it directly because it doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s unmistakable to anyone who has been following what’s going on.”

To sign a bill into law that you plan to violate is not only dishonest in the extreme, it violates the President’s oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States which directs, in no uncertain terms, that the President and the executive branch operate within the law. Unchecked power was not a popular concept with the revolutionaries of the late 18^th century. I wish it were so unpopular today. That the President feels justified in defiling the Constitution in order to perform vile acts of torture makes this almost unbearable. It serves to overflow a bucket of bile with the excrement of the diseased.

I often argue that when a democratically elected government acts, that the citizens who provide that government with the power to govern bear a significant portion of the moral responsibility for that act. This is without regard to whether they agree, disagree or don’t care. That is often a hard reality to deal with; taking personal moral responsibility for a policy or an action which you disagree with in every fiber your being simply because you choose to live in a nation whose government’s power is derived from the people and from nowhere else. We provide the legitimacy and only we can take it away.

When a government knowingly violates the law, repeatedly and with vigor, we the people are likely absolved of all moral responsibility for the illegal actions of an illegal government. We do indeed have a deal in place. By acting outside the boundaries of the constitution, the administration proves itself illegitimate. We are obligated, in my mind, to declare any government who dares overstep the boundaries the Constitution prescribed both illegal and unfit to govern a great people. Now what the hell do we do about it?

I’m not going to attempt to make a grand point here, but I’m curious about what sort of degenerative psychological disorder leaves a moral person comfortable seeing their efforts described as “Pro-War Activism.”

I picked up this image from an article entitled “Some Conservatives Return to Old Argument” in the Wall Street Journal which describes the sort of disconnect amongst professional conservatives (in the professional wrestling way) that one wouldn’t wish on the cruel or the beastly. Alas, they are well paid for their delusions, but that knowledge doesn’t change the fact that there are many among us who believe and believe well. The men and women in spandex who are willing to go to the mat for insanity and for war, if the price is right, are not as troubling to me tonight as those who believe that their wrestling heroes are not frauds. What do we do about that?

(Via some guy you have never heard of)

I just had the not so unique pleasure of watching Colorado’s Republican Governor, Bill Owens, defend, in very broad strokes, the most intrusive aspects of the Patriot Act as well as the President’s ability to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on United States citizens. The program was Hardball, where Owens was debating an all too accommodating, thought not entirely inept, Bill Richardson.

Now I’m the first to admit that I’m not well traveled, but I’ve always presumed that any politician who has a prayer of a chance in a square, western state like Colorado needs to proclaim the virtues of rugged individualism, while simultaneously denouncing the nanny state and the liberal eastern elite. Holy shit, was I ever wrong. Here was Owens, on national television no less, throwing the United States Constitution under the bus because he’s a scared, sniveling little wimp. Watching his appearance, one might almost have expected him to throw himself into the arms of a waiting NSA agent as soon as he was off camera.

How is it that an East Coast art school graduate (that would be me), watches a televised appearance by a big tough western governor from a big tough square state and thinks to himself, “wimp?” Actually, the words that crossed my mind were a good deal more crass than “wimp”, but I’ll restrain myself. Some Daddy Party that one.

No links, no transcript, no nothing - pure hyperbole. Enjoy.

Wow, the FISA process really is pretty stringent. It demands a reason to spy on somebody. Shit, it even demands the name of the person who is going to be spied on. WP:

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

Now that just fills me with holiday cheer.

As usual, somebody says it better than I can. Go have a look.

I just wanted to expand a little on yesterday’s post. It’s not entirely unlikely that at some point in the future, some asshole is going to strap explosives around his waist and blow up a bus in some city somewhere in America. It’s doubtful that it’s all that hard to pull off if the individual in question is hell bent on doing it. It’s even more doubtful that there is a damn thing we can do about it. Shit happens. Curtailing our civil liberties in the extreme, allowing full governmental oversight over every aspect of our lives might make the hypothetical bombing just a little harder, but certainly not impossible.

We hear lots of talk about surrender and cowardice coming out of certain circles, generally aimed in the direction of liberals. But who is really scared here? Who is running away from the founding principals of this nation in order to gain just a little comfort? Senator Cornyn provided a perfect example of what I’m talking about. He wondered out loud what good civil liberties are when you are dead. None of course, but I’d rather die with them than without. One or the other is bound to happen. By advocating the abandonment of our civil liberties, aren’t the defenders of unchecked domestic spying surrendering America? It strikes me that they advocate giving up on the idea of America and trying something less free and less enlightened because they are scared - Scared of some asshole, somewhere, who wants to blow up a bus and probably will, no matter what rights we give up.

I wonder about the condition of the laundry that Judge James Roberson is walking out the door of the FISA court with and if we’ll ever be privy to any of it. I bet it smells something awful.

A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush’s secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work

This resignation in protest will likely be easily dismissed as the politically motivated, spiteful actions of a Clinton appointee who is just out to get Junior. In a not so strange way, I have to admit that I wish that were true. I mean, if secret judges, serving on secret courts, approving secret warrants can’t stomach the NSA scandal, you can put good money on the odds that something truly awful has transpired. Every time we allow our nation to drift away from its founding documents and core principals, we lose ourselves. This is, in a word, unacceptable.

If you ever wanted to know a little something about cutting and running, you might want to have a chat with Senator John Cornyn who is apparently the chief spokesperson for the Senate’s wuss contingent.

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,� said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.�

He called Cornyn’s comments “a retreat from who we are and who we should be.�

What a wimp. I don’t know if any of you recall the video game SimCity 2000, but it had a newspaper feature where you could read little stories about the city you were building. Anyway, one of the frequent headlines was “You’re Gonna Die!” which is, of course, quite true. Indeed, while it may be an uncomfortable reality, most of us can handle that basic fact of life without soiling ourselves. Apparently Cornyn can’t handle it without soiling the Constitution, or at least advocating the same.

I don’t expect great acts of heroism from elected representatives, but I do expect them to have enough intestinal fortitude to uphold their oaths and protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. If they are too scared of the terrorist hiding in the closet to perform that very basic duty, they should find a new line of work.

You can’t do a post on this subject without the requisite Ben Franklin quote (I beleive it’s mandated in the blogger code of conduct), so here it is:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

So it looks as though everybody’s favorite dog loving, cream puff, drama queen senator has come out against the constitution. I wish he had used the “really just guidelines” meme, because that would just make my day, but I’ll take what I can get. Considering the fact that he seems incapable of getting anything right, it’s probably too much to expect Santorum to do the Anti-Constitution thing properly. From the Inky:

“The senator recognizes that in times of war, the President has the constitutional oversight or the constitutional ability to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people,” Santorum spokesman Robert L. Traynham said. “He fully supports the President’s ability to protect American lives by going this step in terms of listening in on conversations.”

So now I get to add something about him being against the constitution in my ever growing string of nicknames for him.

Santorum Hatred™. Always a smart choice!

(Via AmericaBlog)

Just to be clear, as I’m sure the last post was not, the sham GOP proposal mocking Jack Murtha’s proposal was a complete and utter backfire. As you know, I’m totally partisan so take what I say with a handful of salt, but tonight was a total disaster for the Republican party. They are quite lucky in that this happened on a Friday and it’s unlikely that nobody but the political junkies will even know.

Today’s sham was meant to divide Democrats and I’m pretty sure it fell flat on its face. That it was a shameless bit of hackery aimed straight at the deadly serious issues of war, troop deployment, the safety of the armed forces and national security makes the sight of that fall less than not satisfying. Quite a lot less.

More later.