Feingold stands up for the Constitution

Feingold is one of the Dems with a spine and one of the Dems that isn’t trying to pull a CYA like Pelosi and Jane Harmon (among others) who probably knew what was going on with the telecom companies and were in this post-911 hysteria that consumed Congress for long enough to let Bush shred the Constitution and lie us into a stupid war that is destroying our military capacity and our economic future. I have no problem with FISA as it stood pre-Bush - this new bill not only makes it way too easy for a President to use any excuse he or she wants to invade the privacy of American citizens and to give blanket immunity to all the telecom corporations who caved in and let the Bush Admin rifle though anyone’s phone calls that they wanted.

Government power should never be trusted, this mistrust was wisely built into the Constitution by a far wiser group than are operating this country today. No branch of government should be allowed to do anything without oversight of some sort and this bill moves way to close to allowing an executive to act with impunity. Even if you trust George Bush (why anyone would trust this guy is beyond my comprehension) do you trust every president that is going to come after him to have this same authority?

This issue gets to the crux of this whole debate on how to deal with terrorism. Bush’s way has been to do anything he sees fit in the name of fighting terrorism whether it be wiretapping people without a warrant or probably cause, torturing people, waging war without provocation, faking incidents to whip up fear, and the list goes on. OR do you take a rational approach to the issue and let us work within the Constitution to handle anything that our enemies can throw at us. Ben Franklin’s words have been overquoted but very applicable that you can’t sacrifice liberty for safety ever, not even a little bit because when you do you lose everything that this country was built upon and you let people like Osama Bin Laden win.

The GOP tries to use the lame and wrong argument that if you believe that the Constitution shouldn’t be ignored so we can get the terrorists and that we are a nation built on laws and having our government adhere to these laws then you are weak.

I would argue the opposite, by caving in to fear, giving up your liberties, and committing all sorts of criminal acts like torture is weak and cowardly. A hundred 9/11s aren’t going to kill this country not even a thousand. These people who attacked us do not have the capability to destroy this nation not even if they got a nuclear weapon and detonated it in Washington D.C. It would be horrible and tragic if it happened but it wound not be the end of this country. What will kill this country is to disregard the Constitution, to torture people, to wage destructive wars that are unnecessary, and to act above the law. George Bush is a much bigger danger to this country than Osama Bin Laden could ever dream of.

This FISA bill is just a symptom of the problem and it isn’t just the Bush Administration that is at fault - the Dems that cowered to this man and let him run slipshod over them without a peep are just as to blame as Bush - you can easily pick out the guilty parties with who in the Democratic Party voted for this bill and are on the House Intelligence Committee - they all knew and gave approval to this nonsense when it happened and are continuing to let it happen to save their own butts. The next level of guilt are the sheep (or sheeple) that go along with the herd and vote for things like the bill because they are afraid of being called weak on terror and it might hurt the single most important thing to them - getting re-elected.

Personally, I would rather be called weak on terror than weak on freedom. That is the choice too many have made in the last 7 years.