'Spineless Dems' is just about accurate. But...

I am not gonna quit on moving this country in the right direction even if it takes getting rid of every one of these moral cowards.

No matter how long or how many we've gotta move, or move out, I'm not gonna quit.

And neither should you.

If you have the time and the knowledge give me a hand with my 'Heath Shuler, Bush Dog Democrat' profile.

Thanks and keep progressive.

Dems are just as beholden to the Robber Barons as the Reps.
How long will the Good Cop/ Bad Cop routine continue to work so easily?

I'm really starting to doubt whether we can find even one testicle among the Dems in Congress, let alone two. When the hell is right and wrong going to take precendence over their goddamn politics? Never.

I would like to think that as a country, just as a species, we are evolving. We should be. Attitudes and knowledge are different as we move along. I think to a degree we were evolving into a better country. Then this administration came along, accompanied by the heavy influence from the Christian right and the neocons as well. Both groups fed the needs of the other. At that point our progress forward was stopped. Instead of improving we have slid backward into some of our old and not at all admirable ways.

From the link: "KHOU requested an interview with the FBI . . . the FBI declined comment except to say that the Bureau has changed."

Yes, I'm sure they've changed--they're worse now, in the Bush era.

You'd think this would hit the Atlanta news quickly. So far, nothing. Got a LTE out to the paper this afternoon.

To the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A new report by journalists at Houston, Texas news station KHOU, brings the impact of warrantless surveillance a little closer to home. The report details the FBI surveillance conducted on Coretta Scott King in the years after her husband’s death. The federal government listened to her calls, monitored her travel and schedules and read her private mail. All of those activities were conducted without oversight or warrants on a woman who was accused of no crimes; a completely innocent American citizen.

Earlier this month, 30 years after the King investigation was closed, Congress caved to administration demands to amend FISA law and allow Bush to continue his own illegal domestic spying program.

Democrats in control of Congress allowed this legislation to pass because they were afraid of being seen as “soft” on terrorism. Terrorism is successful when its target weakens and destroys itself out of fear – like we have been doing for the past six years by giving the executive branch unchecked power, condoning torture and indefinite detention and trampling on civil liberties.

By being “tough” on protecting our constitution and the rule of law, the very foundation of our society, we are not being “soft” on anything. In fact, we are making ourselves stronger as a nation.

[Deleted. Do not advocate violence on this site]

They are not accomodating or weak. It's real easy to just label them all a bunch of cowards rather than deal with the fact that, when it comes to this issue, they are playing their part. They are complicit.

And guess what? We The Peeps, as a nation, are too, as long as we put up with it.

(but don't get me wrong. Greenwald is one of my modern heroes; I love and respect his work)

matt greer @ 17:

which 2 administrations??

Guessing - probably Johnson and Nixon. (Could have been Nixon and Ford, but that would be late)

I wonder if the King family is considering its legal options in regard to the FBI.

Surely, if you are being spied on without warrant, and even your private mail is being opened by the government, you have some recourse through the courts.

"Government officials were afraid that she might try to complete what her husband had been doing when he died: 'attempt to tie the anti-Vietnam war movement to the civil rights movement,' as one FBI agent put it. . . . "

THIS is why he died.

Wasn't the thing that kept lawsuits from going forward was that no one could prove they were targets of such spying? Doesn't that mean now ACLU or other groups can now sue the government over this immoral and un-Constitutional spying crap (that is if Mrs King is willing to be a plaintiff)?

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people." -- Theodore Roosevelt

I would REALLY like to know which other Admin's did this.Anybody know?

25 BaScOmBe

LOL! :D

Those really interested in this might want to read up on the COINTELPRO operations of the FBI. They spied on lots of Americans from 1956 onward with very little oversight, perhaps most egregiously they spied on attorneys who were defending AMERICAN leftists, for instance, William Kunstler as he defended the Chicago 7 and other anti-war activists. The FISA law was supposed to put a stop to it. Ha.

Smack_dab @ 24:

Wasn't the thing that kept lawsuits from going forward was that no one could prove they were targets of such spying? Doesn't that mean now ACLU or other groups can now sue the government over this immoral and un-Constitutional spying crap (that is if Mrs King is willing to be a plaintiff)?

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people." -- Theodore Roosevelt

You know Coretta passed away, don't you? Her oldest daughter, Yoli, recently passed as well. I believe the three remaining children and the King Estate could and should sue. In the age of booshmongering, it is difficult to tell how far it might go... national sec and all...

Previous presidents did it with FISA approval. Do you think there's any chance that this administration won't wiretap enyone and everyone that they want to, simply for political reasons if they deem it in their self-interest?

BaScOmBe @ 31:

pissed off patricia @ 27:

I wonder if there is a statute of limitations on something like this? Something that could prevent a law suit.

any FOIA effort will produce documents which have a lot of black magic marker and a few exposed letters. and the cowardly dems won't strengthen any legal protections in the age of booshmongering.

oops! I should add that AFAIK, FOIA allows all government records to become, so there should be NO statute of limitations on the records with respect to their availability. There may,however, be a statute of limitation on any exposed crime unless some law permits the statute of limitations to start with the discovery of a crime. Unfortunately, the law ofter permits such parsing either by statute or judicial precedent.

oops! I should add that AFAIK, FOIA generally allows all government records to become available,

When I was young, there were 3 billion people, now there are 6 billion, with 9 biillion forecast in my lifetime. With increased technology, and the importance of information, no governement on the planet will reduce its spying on citizens, and are sure to increase it too. Everyone is scrambling to get "smart ID" with your life history loaded into a chip. Information is power and money. Sad, but true.

Dave @ 37:

BennyP @ 4:

Dems are just as beholden to the Robber Barons as the Reps.
How long will the Good Cop/ Bad Cop routine continue to work so easily?

They are not really two parties. It's party 1A and 1B. The lobbyists and the corporate Gods are the ones who hold all the power. It's about time that we took our power back from the corporate pirates and broke the coprporations up. Life will just continue to get worse and worse until we do break the corporate stanglehold on our lives. Consider, out-sourcing, low wages, no full time jobs, no benefits. All in the name of maximum profit. There was a story in Canada about the Royal Bank. Their profits "only" rose by 19% and the shareholders were truly pissed off by that. They didn't lose money, they just didn't get a big enough bite of cash and it sent them into a frenzy. That's what our world has come to. If the corporations don't make enough money the fat cats who control the world get pissed off. They honestly believe that they can do whatever they feel like. As long as they are getting their cash injections they don't care. If they have to strip-mine a mountain or run a shoddy chemical plant and kill thousands. They truly don't care. Money is all that they can see. The corporations rule the world and theirs not a damn thing that we can do to change that.

Money is printed by them. Money and God both share similiar attributes . . . you don't talk about either of them in polite conversation and both are man made constructs that help us navigate this sliver of time we inhabit but cannot comprehend.

Dave @ 37:

They are not really two parties. It's party 1A and 1B.

That's a pile of nonsense.

Let's look at the FISA interim bill passed on the last day of the summer session:

• FIVE-SIXTHS of all House Dems voted NO! along with all of the leadership.

• TWO-THIRDS of the Senate Dems voted NO! along with all of the leadership.

Compare the politicians who DID vote for that shit, and you have the OTHER PARTY you seem unable to distinguish from our good Democrats.

When you awaken from your dream, you're going to find that you've been pissing down your own leg. Meanwhile, you are helping the bastards who are actually at fault, by clouding the issue of CULPABILITY with your rumormongering and your lame understanding of politics.

Speaking of the King Family . . . . and I know we're not supposed to talk about cooridinated criminal activities but . .

An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King

"Doubts raised from an initial ten- year investigation and hours of interrogations of James Earl Ray prompted Pepper to take up his case. The King family, persuaded by the growing evidence, joined his struggle in 1996. At the 1999 trial seventy witnesses under oath set out the details of the conspiracy and the jury took an hour to find for the King family. It was ruled that a wide-running conspiracy existed and that government agents were involved. The story was effectively buried. "

BaScOmBe @ 38:

oops! I should add that AFAIK, FOIA generally allows all government records to become available,

Which party do you think passed FOIA in the first place? Any clue?

Following the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford wanted to sign Freedom of Information Act-strengthening amendments in the Privacy Act of 1974, but concern about leaks (by his chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and deputy Richard Cheney) and legal arguments that the bill was unconstitutional (by government lawyer Antonin Scalia, among others) persuaded Ford to veto the bill, according to declassified documents in 2004.[3] However, Congress voted to override Ford's veto, giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today, with judicial review of executive secrecy claims

(wikipedia)

A Democratic congressman from Sacramento, California, the late John Moss, was the real hero of the Freedom of Information story. Supported by extensive press coverage and active lobbying by newspaper editors, Moss led hearings beginning in 1955 that documented and denounced excessive government secrecy. But as long as Eisenhower was president, Moss could hardly find a Republican co-sponsor for his proposed openness reforms.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB194/index.htm

(the eventual 'sponsor' he found was a cat named Ronald Dumbsfeld -- who with Dick the Dick Cheney later tried to muzzle the act).

mudshark @ 47:

J Edgar Hoovers legacy......spy on your own citizens........wasn't he a cross dresser too.... typical

Hoover is the guy who used to deny the existence of "the mafia" . . . said people who believed in the mafia were a bunch of conspiracy nuts.

Give the guy a little credit . . . he does look better in a dress than Rudi

Marilyn @ 5:

It is time to replace all the so-called representatives in Congress.

Members of the House are 'replaced' every two years.

• The real question is what the hell are you talking about? Because 'replacing them all' is equivalent to saying 'move to the Moon.' WHO will you WORK to replace, and with whom?

Anything else is just horsefeathers.

I guess the Gov't feels that unless your white it aint right, so wire tap will be alwright. Just a bunch of scare guys who know that they are out number 3 to 1 in America, so the MAN must keep everybody else down from the ladder of success.

Keep them down...whip them.. whip them and wiretap them all around...what a FOCKING disgrace!!!!

mudshark @ 49:

I think we can expect more trolls posing as disinfranchised Dems...just to make us disinfranchised with our party...........

Indeed. We have also noticed a big uptick in the number of agent provocateurs during the street protests/vigils.

Strength in numbers, know your enemy, don't bash the party right before the session -- THAT'S WHEN YOU OUGHT TO BE CALLING OUT SUPPORT FOR THE UPCOMING AGENDA, and calling on the weaker Dems and the few brave R to join with us!

• Do you want to pass a better FISA? We're going to try, but defeatist postings which announce the supposed 'cowardice' of our representatives is like declaring to your child that they will be a failure.

YOU are working the wrong magic, bluegal.

It looks like Paul in LA is more willing to defend 'wobbly' Democrats than he is the Democratic Layity. (SP).

Your perpetual insistence on calling people with which you disagree liars is ... winning. But I'm sure I'm wrong in this as well ... surely you would agree.

Gotta solution. Moving to Europe. For one thing, they actually even have data privacy laws.....even pre-fascism here someone with appropriate clearances (a licensed PI for example) could pull up credit card and debit transactions LEGALLY with no oversight. Far as I'm concerned it's between me, Amazon.com and Mastercard what I'm ordering off the internet, where I'm eating lunch, when or where I'm drawing cash.

My only concern is that my income stream is in USD, and I'm afraid of a currency collapse.

V V

Paul in LA @ 45:

E Ryno @ 43:

Its spineless people that are the problem. The Democrat/Republican polarity labels are meaningless.

That's a LIE. Look at the votes. You will find 90% of our caucus on one side, and 100% of their caucus on the other.

Quite clearly the party labels mean plenty.

Who are your real targets for replacement. The Dem party is not infallible or perfect. There are many politicians we need to WORK to replace. Who is on your list. Because when you bash the Dems in your anonymous generalities, you are harming our chances of recovering from this coup, in a very real manner.

The preceding was paid for by the Democratic Party Cheerleader Convention. How dare any of you question the Dems! Why don't you know they will save us all, I tell ya, save us all....you know Paul, you sound a bit like those talking head experts on television that label those with differing points of view as liberals and/or conservatives. It's much easier than actually admitting anything. Are you one of those lifelong party voters regardless of who is running? That is what is wrong with our electoral process.

Tip of the iceberg. I wonder how many top Democrats are on a list somewhere? Hopefully they will pick up enough seats in 2008 so that Blue Dogs and Lieberman can be told where to go.

thank you all who point out the transparent hypocrisy of the dems......isn't every republican scandal also pointing out the weakness of the democrats.

too bad there is no "left" left in this country.

“Spineless Dems Won’t Stop Future Abuses”
This kind of CRAP is PERFECT for the weekend before Congress comes into session.
How many REPUBLICANS can you elect with this kind of JIVE?
Six months of oversight produced the retirement of the AG who wrote the terrorism policy, AND the retirement of Bush’s main political advisor, AND the retirement of about 20 other cronies, AND a promise from Speaker Pelosi to rewrite FISA top to bottom.
But, no, it’s better to keep on bashing the Dems, so that we can get a WORSE gov’t through BLAMING THE WRONG PEOPLE.
Let’s have no more of this anonymous ’spineless Dems’. Who EXACTLY are you talking about?

Who am I talking about? Hmmmm. Could it be the SPINELESS DEMOCRATS who

1. Cheerfully voted to continue funding the war with no time limit or pullout date

2. Who voted for the clearly insane domestic spying bill

3. Who are about to roll on another $50 billion for the war

mayhap?

The Deomcratic leadership is utterly spineless when it comes to what matters: Stopping the war and rolling back the republican police state.

The Bill of Rights was enacted to protect citizens from governmental excesses. Therefore, it is the natural tendency of the government to erode those rights. Since our politicians are bought off by corporations, this is a government of the corporation, by the corporations, and especially, for the corporation. These corporate owned politicians could care less about ordinary people and their rights under the Constitution.

I just know that Mrs. King is turning over in her grave about this UN Godly treatment.

How sad this is to know that these people would do such a thing to her, especially after the loss of her husband.

What the hell did they want?, and what did they possibly think she was doing so important they would do something like that to her?

These basssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssstards.

tweakerbell @ 61:Who am I talking about? Hmmmm. Could it be the SPINELESS DEMOCRATS who 1. Cheerfully voted to continue funding the war with no time limit or pullout date"

The Congress passed a supplemental which required a pullout, by a date certain, and it was vetoed. There were not enough votes to overcome the veto, and the Blue Dog Dems withdrew their support for further actions. So the Dems put 1. Minimum wage increases, the first in more than a decade, and 2. Katrina rebuilding funding, in the 'majority' bill. NEITHER of those cases would have passed otherwise. That's real help to poor Americans, and real help to Katrina victims -- it's not an inconsiderable accomplishment, especially with the military appropriations bill, which comes back up in a week or so, still pending.

"2. Who voted for the clearly insane domestic spying bill"

Which 'spineless Dems' are in fact Blue Dogs (24 votes) and 12 others in the House, and about 1/3 of the Senate Dems, all of whom are NOT spineless -- they AGREE with Bush's policies on some level.

"3. Who are about to roll on another $50 billion for the war mayhap?"

The Cost of the Iraq War So Far…
August 29th, 2007 by Office of the Speaker

The Washington Post reported today that President Bush is preparing a request to Congress for $50 billion more to fund his failed policies in Iraq – policies that have cost the American people dearly both in lives and taxpayer dollars. The American people are demanding a New Direction on the Iraq war not another quarterly invoice. It is time to wind down this war and begin to bring our troops home safely and soon.

"The Deomcratic leadership is utterly spineless when it comes to what matters: Stopping the war and rolling back the republican police state."

Sure thing. Which is why AG Gonzales no longer has a job. Which is why the FISA replacement bill is coming up next week. Which is why the Democrats have THREE TIMES gotten Bush to sign his agreement that the US will NOT establish permanent airbases, and will NOT attempt to control Iraq's oil resources. His signature isn't worth spit -- but the Dem House is on record with what it interprets as LEGAL US foreign policy, and your kind of PATHETIC Dem bashing is the hard work of IDIOTS.

You aren't the solution. Your analysis is non-factual, and you attack the wrong people. Probably, you do no personal political work other than throw tomatoes from the shadows.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, to justify your demands to be better served?

CensoredFan @ 63:

What are you doing?blockquote>

WORKING because even the DEMS haven't helped this nation in the last 30 years.

http://www.bartcop.com/chartdeficits803.jpg

(it's dated, but you can continue the chart downward all you like)

Equilibrio, there are vigils going on all over town. Where do you live?

If you see people downtown, protest with them downtown.

I know of major Friday protests in Studio City, on La Cienega & Pico, in WLA, in Long Beach, and there are no doubt many others. Try indymedia for your area, or try Move-On, which just held a round of Tuesday protests for impeachment (protests I support, even though I don't support bashing the Dems over the CORRECT undercount in the Senate).

Also, both Federal Buildings have protests every week, going back five years.