Damn. I really, really hope I never do anything to piss of Glenn Greenwald.
What can one even say about this quote, included in Carl Hulse's NYT article on the Democrats' refusal yesterday to pass the Senate's FISA bill before expiration of the Protect America Act:
"I think there is probably joy throughout the terrorist cells throughout the world that the United States Congress did not do its duty today," said Representative Ted Poe, Republican of Texas.This is the kind of pure, unadulterated idiocy -- childish, cartoonish and creepy -- that Democrats for years have been allowing to bully them into submission, govern our country, and dismantle our Constitution. Outside of Andy McCarthy, Mark Steyn and their roving band of paranoid right-wing bloggers who can't sleep at night because they think (and hope) that there are dark, primitive "jihadi" super-villains hiding under their beds -- along with the Very Serious pundit class which proves their Seriousness by placing blind faith in the fear-mongering pronouncements and demands of our military and intelligence officials for more unchecked power -- nobody cares about adolescent Terrorist game-playing like this any longer. In the real world, it doesn't work, and it hasn't worked for some time.
Americans are worried and even angry about many things. Whether Osama bin Laden is throwing a party because AT&T and Verizon might have to defend themselves in court isn't one of them. Outside of National Review, K Street, and the fear-paralyzed imagination of our shrinking faux-warrior class, there is no constituency in America demanding warrantless eavesdropping or amnesty for lawbreaking telecoms.
Here's why it matters:
If Democrats describe what Bush is doing clearly, simply and honestly, then reporters will write it down and read it. It's what they do. Even reporters can understand that when Bush says: "Give me all the new warrantless eavesdropping powers I want and give AT&T protection from lawsuits, otherwise we'll be hit way worse than 9/11," that is pitiful fear-mongering of the type authoritarian politicians always invoke to obtain more unchecked power. Just make that case -- as Democrats did yesterday -- and it will prevail.
And just in case you didn't get the point earlier:
The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. But there is no risk that they will refuse requests to cooperate with legal surveillance, particularly since they are legally obligated to cooperate in those circumstances. The claim the telcoms will cease to cooperate with surveillance requests is pure fear-mongering, and is purely dishonest.
UPDATE: More background is available here, here, and here for those who haven't been following this closely.
UPDATE II: And then, of course, there are the lies. Loads of them, in fact.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
