How long will we let the Republicans hold the fear card?
This morning, Glenn Greenwald, who blogs for Salon.com, posted "GOP politics in a nutshell": “A new House Republican ad warns that we'll all be slaughtered, and soon, by bad dark people, unless we give the government all the new unchecked powers it's demanding.”
The ad:
On Feb. 7th , I included this FAQ in my post:
Question: Isn’t our safety from terrorist attacks threatened if the “Protect America Act” isn’t extended?
Answer: No. The FISA bill that the Protect America Act would replace is still in place. It allows for emergency (warrantless) electronic surveillance when the Attorney General determines that it’s necessary. Then, within 72 hours of the AG’s authorization, he/she must obtain a judicial order issued by the FISA court. That’s our protection, folks.
On February 14th, Greenwald posted "FISA 101."
Excerpt:
“Every President until George Bush was able to defend the nation by engaging in surveillance under FISA. That even includes the Great and Powerful Warrior Ronald Reagan, who vanquished the incomparably nefarious Soviet Union while adhering to FISA. It was only George Bush who claimed that we would All Die unless FISA was modernized, and it was modernized -- repeatedly, to his satisfaction and at his direction.
“FISA and the Protect America Act both equally allow eavesdropping on the Terrorists Who Want to Kill Us. The material difference is that FISA requires warrants for eavesdropping on Americans (after the fact, if necessary) while the Protect America Act allows the President to eavesdrop on any Americans without having any oversight at all. The difference does not relate to the ability to eavesdrop on the Terrorists but on the nature and level of oversight from that eavsdropping. Moreover, the FISA Court is and always has been a rubber-stamping tribunal that does not ever block any surveillance on any suspected Terrorists.
“Thus, we're not all going to die under FISA. We're not ‘going dark.’ FISA is a modern law that was re-written at George Bush's direction and which he himself said allowed for full surveillance on all of the evil Terrorists and all of their complex, super-modern means of communications. None of this has anything to do with the Government's ability to listen in When Osama Calls. It is only about whether the nation's largest telecoms will have pending lawsuits, brought by their customers for breaking the law, dismissed by Congress. Is that really so hard to understand and explain?”
