That Tennessee whack job who shot up the Unitarian Universalist church did so because he wanted to kill liberals.
He opened fire in the middle of a children’s play.
This is what a decade’s long diet of hate radio gets you.
Category: Communications
Janet Jackson’s Nipple Exonerated
Well, it’s actually the CBS television network that won before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
They ruled that the FCC had, “arbitrarily and capriciously departed from its prior policy”.
Needless to say, the Parent’s Television Council, which gins up 99.8% of all broadcast indecency complaints, was apoplectic.
Ms. Jackson’s nipple was unavailable for comment.
FCC Chair: Comcast Violated Regulations
Their throttling of BitTorrent clients violated FCC regulations.
It appears that a fine is unlikely.
Of course, if I were FCC chair, penalties would involve a cricket bat, a taser, veal gravy, and hungry ferrets to the senior management and IT staff…which is why I am not FCC chair.
The Rude Pundit Picks His Battles
The Rude Pundit notes that he gets a lot of chickensh#@ criticisms of Obama in his email from people who never listed to what Obama said, and so are shocked to find that he is pro gun, pro death penalty, pro “faith based program”, etc. and in his own profane way, says that these people are either clueless, or McCain concern trolls.
That being said, but he does state that there are valid critiques:
Like this one: Barack Obama’s reversal of his position on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was a craven, cowardly bullsh#$ move that ought to haunt him with the left (and libertarian right) for the rest of the campaign. By voting for the bill yesterday (including voting for cloture), Obama made a mistake that is the political equivalent of Hillary Clinton’s Iraq war vote. (They are not morally equivalent, since the dead would probably rather be alive and spied on.) And while there’s no telling how Clinton would have voted had she been the nominee, just as there’s no way to know how Obama would have voted on the war had he been in the Senate in 2002, the New York Senator was unencumbered and able to take the moral high ground and voted against the bill.
I honestly believe that the Rude Pundit cannot believe that he wrote that Hillary Clinton took the high moral ground.
I can’t believe that I’m writing that Hillary Clinton took the high moral ground.
In any case, if Obama loses to the sick old man in November, he did it today, because at its core, much of the power of movement supporting him comes not from the number of supporters, but from the enthusiasm of those supporters, and a whole lot of them are seriously non-enthused.
He just made the same vote that Hillary Clinton did to authorize the war. The only question is whether it will kill his campaign as it did hers.
In any case, go read his post. He’s always insightful and entertaining, if somewhat profane.
Damn!!! Telco Amnesty and Surveillance State Bill Passes
According to FDL it was 69:28.
Of my senators, Cardin voted nay, Mikulski voted aye.
Barbara Mikulski will never get my money or my vote again.
As to the Democrats, to paraphrase a book I read decades ago from memory:
In the old days, there was an operation performed on young boys.
They would either die, keep a lovely singing voice into adulthood, or become a Democrat in Congress.
The FISA Vote is Tomorrow
Contact your Senators, any friends of the Senators, any pets of the Senators, and tell them that a vote for this bill is a betrayal of the basic values of this nation.
Note that in addition to an amendment to strip immunity, there is also an amendment to make immunity contingent on the final Ispector General report as to whether government agencies broke the law, which Mukasey and McConnell say is worth vetoing the whole bill.
Also, please give to the Blue America/FISA fund, which will punish Dems who capitulate on basic American rights and value when no capitulation is necessary.
They are running this full page ad in the WaPo today.
Also help Regina Thomas defeat John Barrow, one the most reactionary Democrat in Congress, and one of the most prominent supporters of the FISA capitulation in the primary a week from today in Georgia’s 12th Congressional district.
The Bush Blue Dogs need to be shown that their votes against America have consequences.
No more Vichy Dems.
New York Times Slams Senate and Obama Over FISA
Mostly it’s the Senate, that they condemn, though the distinguished Senator from Illinois is mentioned. It is a remarkably full throated condemnation of Senate, and Democratic cowardice:
Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold, Christopher Dodd and Jeff Bingaman plan to offer amendments to do that, but there is little chance they will pass. The Senate should reject this bill and start over with modest legislation that makes the small needed changes and preserves Americans’ fundamental protections.
Senator John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, has supported the weakening of FISA. Senator Barack Obama vowed in January (when he was still fighting for the Democratic nomination) that he would filibuster against immunity. Now he says he will vote for an “imperfect” bill and fix it if he wins. Sound familiar?
Proponents of the FISA deal say companies should not be “punished” for cooperating with the government. That’s Washington-speak for a cover-up. The purpose of withholding immunity is not to punish but to preserve the only chance of unearthing the details of Mr. Bush’s outlaw eavesdropping. Only a few senators, by the way, know just what those companies did.
Restoring some of the protections taken away by an earlier law while creating new loopholes in the Constitution is not a compromise. It is a failure of leadership.
We know that the Times is right about this, because Fred Hiatt, the editor of the end worst OP/ED page in the nation™*, finds flip flopping by Obama, specifically on Iraq, to be laudable, , and believes that the FISA bill is just ducky thank you, which proves the NY times correct.
If you go against the WaPo editorial pages, you will be right an embarrassing amount of the time., and the Times is right this time; there is far more to hate about the bill than telco immunity.
*The undisputed champion of wanktacular OP/ED pages, by a knockout, is still the Wall Street Journal.
Crap. John McCain is Telling the Truth
OK, now we have Obama “Puzzled” by blip flop charges, because he has completely reversed himself on FISA, and now he’s saying that in order for “mental distress” to be used to justify a late term abortion, it must be a formal psychiatric disorder out of the DSM IV.*
So, he’s selling the constitution out privacy, he’s reversed himself on free trade agreements, and now he is suggesting a heightened standard for late term abortion (while using the right wing’s language of “Partial Birth Abortion”).
John McCain can call him a flip flopper on the issues because Barack Obama is a flip flopper on the issues.
His only saving grace is the John Sidney McCain is a bigger flip flopper.
I guess that we’ll get the president we deserve.
*The 4th and most recent release of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Kafka Lives
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the lawsuit by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation claiming that the US government has wiretapped conversations with their lawyers, because the document that confirms this is classified:
A federal judge in San Francisco has dismissed a lawsuit that claimed the government illegally wiretapped conversations between lawyers and a client, a now-defunct charity suspected of terrorism.
The lawsuit relied on a classified call log the government turned over by mistake to the client, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation. U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker barred the foundation from using the document and dismissed the suit, according to the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He gave the foundation 30 days to file a new lawsuit using publicly available information.
Catch 22.
Judge: FISA Is Already Exclusive Means of Electronic Surveillance
Well, this ruling shoots a hole in the claim that Dems are getting something from the current FISA clusterf%$#. The Judge says that the original FISA bill is the exclusive means for wiretap.
That being the case, this means that Bush has been violating the law already, and a felony to boot, and that the bill does not change the legal situation.
So the Dems have nothing, except for proof of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Oh, I forgot:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
Thank you Speaker Pelosi for taking impeachment off the table.
Obama Voters Protest On Telco Immunity Now Getting Ink
We’re seeing coverage in both the New York Times and the New York Post.
There is actually a group set up on his own site to lobby him to oppose the bill, and I believe that it is the largest group there with more than 12k members.
One wonders if this will effect his vote.
Keith Olberman Gets Owned by Glenn Greenwald and John Dean
Glenn Greenwald savaged Keith Olbermann because he is endorsing Obama’s sellout as clever politics, when earlier he had one of his vaunted “special comments” denounced telco immunity as textbook Fascism.
Olbermann promptly went on Kos, and called Glenn Greenwald names, and asserted that John Dean said that a President Obama could prosecute the telcos criminally.
There are two problems with this assertion:
- Nothing prevents a Bush pardon on this, and given the language Bush is using on the civil immunity, such a pardon is almost certain.
- John Dean did not say that a President Obama could president the telcos criminally. I saw the interview. What he said was that the had not yet seen anything that would prevent this in the bill.
I said that when I read the bill, and talked to the folks at the ACLU who had been following it, that it was not clear. I raised it when appearing on Countdown with the hope that someone might figure it out. But that is the nature of this badly drafted bill that it is not clear what it does and does not do, and the drafters are not saying.
But even if the bill is unclear there is no question the Bush Administration is not going to do anything to the telecoms, so the question is whether a future DOJ could — and here there is case law protecting the telecoms. But there may be language buried in the bill that protects them as well but it can only be found by reading the bill with a half dozen other laws which I have not yet done.
I made no declarative statements rather I only raised questions that jumped at me when reading the 114 page monster.
(emphasis mine)
For Keith Olbermann to laud Obama’s decision to sell out, and to suggest that Dean supports this action, when on his own show, Dean called telco immunity a, “grave assault on the Constitution”.
It’s not OK when Bush does it, and it’s not OK when Obama goes along with, Mr. Olbermann.
Barack AWOL Obama on FISA
Just so you know, what is likely the real FISA cloture vote passed 80 to 15.
Voting against Cloture
Biden (D-DE)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)
Not Voting:
Byrd (D-WV)
Clinton (D-NY)
Kennedy (D-MA)
McCain (R-AZ)
Obama (D-IL)
He couldn’t even be bothered to show up.
McCain never shows up to vote. Byrd is sick. Kennedy has a brain tumor. Hillary Clinton is…well a Clinton.
What is your excuse, Mr. Obama?
So, Where is Reid on Telco Immunity?
Like many things with Harry Reid, it’s kind of confusing. He is a wheels within wheels kind of guy.
Reid is co-sponsoring cosponsoring the amendment to strip telco immunity, but as this is sure to be filibustered, it not going to happen.
He also says that he’s going to vote against the whole bill.
So at least nominally, Reid is on the side of Dodd, Feingold, Wyden and Boxer.
I think that all this is far less noble than one might imagine. I agree with Emptywheel’s analysis, that his objections are less about the merits of the bill than they are about holding back any approval until the Housing Bill and Iraq Supplemental, which has, “Webb’s GI bill and an extension to unemployment benefits” have passed and have been signed into law.
Because Barack Obama Doesn’t Care About the Rule of Law
And because he thinks that the precedent will benefit him when he is president.
And because he no longer needs the votes of people who oppose this new FISA bill and telco immunity.
At the beginning of the year, they would vote for Clinton, Edwards, or Dodd, but now? Who can they vote for, Bob Barr?
Weasel.
Update on Telco Immunity
It comes as no surprise that Dodd and Feingold are announcing that they will filibuster the bill as it stands.
What is interesting is that Nancy Pelosi is suggesting that more debate on the bill would be “healthy”, which appears to indicate that perhaps she’s seeing the response out there, and is regretting her decision to help Hoyer ram this through.
Bizarro World: I Agree With Ramesh Ponnuru
Writing in The Corner, he notes that while Time Magazine reporter Massimo Calabresi suggests that the FISA update drew attacks from both sides, Mr. Ponnure notes that he hadn’t, “heard much unhappiness being expressed from righties,” and that, “If that’s what they [Democrats] want to tell themselves, fine. It sure looks like they got rolled.”
Ponnuru is completely correct. The right has been unable to contain their glee over this abomination, and Mr. Calabresi is either very stupid, or allowed Steny Hoyer to hypnotize him.*
*Just in case the mouth breathers from The Corner come over, let me be clear, the hypnosis bit is a joke…
An Update on Regina Thomas (GA-12)
I just wanted to note that about a week ago, the Regina Thomas act blue page was under $5,000, and now she is at $35,713.00 $36,039.00. The campaign web page is here.
This is because the incumbent in the district, Bush Blue Dog John Barrow, is one of the major proponents of the FISA capitulation, and he has ardently advocated for telco immunity, and taken lots of telco money to boot.
Georgia’s 12th district has its primary on July 15. John Barrow is white in a district where 70% of the primary voters are black, and State Senator Regina Thomas is black, so knocking him off in the primary is possible, though it won’t be easy.
Barrow currently has $1,311,478 cash on hand, 55% of it from PACS, so the amount that Thomas has may not be enough.
The good news is that Barack Obama’s endorsement of Barrow has increased interest in Thomas:
In an effort to control my enthusiasm, I asked Thomas about the depressing news that Barack Obama endorsed Barrow and recorded a radio ad, which caused outrage this week on many blogs. Thomas would have none of it. “That’s the best thing that happened to me!” she countered. “People are angry about this! Here’s a man who has not served his district, and Obama is messing in our local businesss. I’m getting emails from Illinois, Pennsylvania, even Taiwan! A man in his 80’s with a small retirement was sending a check to Obama each month, and now he’s sending it to me. The response is incredible,” she said.
I asked if there were any polls. “We haven’t had the money for a poll, but Barrow took a poll and he didn’t like the results, because he got Obama to make the ad. He refuses to show up for debates, and is sending surrogates who look like me. But people aren’t fooled, they see right through it. Why is he afraid to debate me?” she asked.
(emphasis mine)
Things seem to be trending her way, and there are still 3 weeks to the primary, so check her out.
Barack Obama Sells Us All Out
And so did Pelosi, Hoyer, Emmanuel, and all the rest of them.It does not matter if you are a Democrat, or a Republican, black, white, or polka dotted. He sold you out, he sole me out, he sold out George Washington, and Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln.
They sold out every last one of us.
Glenn Greenwald nails it when he says that, “Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights — and allow rampant lawbreaking — if we want to save ourselves from “the grave threats we face” sounds awfully familiar. He says he will work to remove amnesty from the bill, but once that fails, will vote for the “compromise.” Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states. The full Obama statement is here.”
What Glenn Greenwald does not note, and I will, is that the behavior of this administration shows that this is about their spying on political opponents, not about security, because that is the only thing that would have them freaking out like this, because it’s the only thing that would send them to jail.
To be completely fair, he does say in his statement that he will, “work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses,”, but as Digby says, this translates to, “maybe show up to vote on some amendment that will surely be struck down and then whimper away.”
Atrios gives him a wanker of the day award.
I have post dated this so that it will show at the top of the blog for the next few days.
House Caves on Bush Wiretap Coverup
Damn.
Give to Regina Thomas and Blue America PAC vs Retroactive Immunity.
This is a betrayal of the whole country.
Beat on the Senate now, and let’s see what Obama does. He says the right things, and it stops.