San Francisco: Will you join Sen. Chris Dodd’s hold and proposed filibuster on any FISA bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecoms? Thanks for joining us for this chat today, Sen. Biden, and thanks for the leadership you provide the Democratic Party and America.
Sen. Joe Biden: Yes.
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, I have been working and will continue to work every step of the way to try to fix the badly flawed FISA bill. I was pleased that in the Intelligence Committee markup yesterday Senator Wyden and I were able to make some improvements to the bill, including requiring FISA court orders for wiretapping U.S. citizens overseas and more meaningful oversight by Congress and the Inspector General of the new authorities. But we still have a long way to go before this bill adequately protects the privacy of law-abiding Americans. The bill still cedes far too much power to the executive branch, which has time and again shown it will only abuse it. And I am deeply disappointed that it included retroactive immunity for anyone alleged to have cooperated with the Administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. I hope the bill will be further improved in the Judiciary Committee before it reaches the full Senate. If the bill that ultimately reaches the Senate floor includes immunity and does not adequately protect the privacy of Americans, I will fight it vigorously with every tool at my disposal.
Comcast Corp., the second-largest U.S. internet service provider, actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of net traffic equally.
The interference, which the Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests in the United States, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.
If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has revealed that she conceived of one of the major characters, Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, as gay.
"I will ensure that every family has health care -- without new taxes, without Hilarycare, without socialized medicine."Mitt Romney at the Values Voter Summit. I am guessing that he will pay for it out of his own pocket .. kind of like his campaign.
pluege says:
October 20th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
If you are the leadership, and you realize that under scenario 1, the member has just handed the Republicans a convenient distraction and a way to beat up on the image of your party, what should you do?
Damn Scarecrow, 3) Other: you join Stark and pile one because:
a) every thing he said is TRUE!!!!!!!!
b) the American people are SICK AND TIRED OF MAMBEE-PAMBEE DEMOCRATS!!!!!!
c) the American people as SICK OF REPUBLICANS AND THEIR SICK ANTI-AMERICAN WAYS!!!!!
d) the republicans will continue to do it AS LONG AS THEY GET THE REACTION THEY GOT!!!!!
e) the media will continue to play it up it AS LONG AS DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO BE KOW-TOWED!!!!
PHUCK, can’t anyone EVER LEARN??? HERE IS THE PLAY BOOK:
1) you hit republicans including that sick psychotic president and his sick psychotic anti-American administration up side the head AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY!!!! just as Pete Stark did.
2) when they howl you HIT THEM UP SIDE THE HEAD AGAIN!!!!
3) you continue to hit them up side the head - JUST AS PETE STARK DID (and just as Olbermann does) - until they SHUT THE “F” UP and start working on THE PEOPLE’S BUSINESS.
Americans respect strength. Every time democrats play ‘can’t we all just get along’ Americans think LESS OF THEM.
Damn….what is so hard to understand about this!!!.
The PQ leader accused her critics of creating a double standard: English Canadians may speak of a collective "us" which includes everyone. However, she said the PQ is branded as exclusionary by catering to the province's French-speaking majority.
Quebec's francophone majority must stop feeling afraid of appearing intolerant, she said.
A person with a biblical world view says humans are by nature selfish. We are basically self-centered & look out for ourselves first.
Kurtz was actually more instructive than he likely meant to be. These things are all the same because the press deems them to be — that is, in the minds of the Beltway Press Corps Abu Ghraib and Edward’s haircut are of equal importance. True, a rational and clear thinking person would never make that comparison, but what this really shows is how completely distorted reality is inside of the Beltway. And it explains a lot, really.
Huckabee took a more fiery approach. After talking about protecting freedom and family, Huckabee said: “Faith is also threatened, and let me share with you how. I believe that there are many who will seek our support. But let me say that it’s important that people sing from their hearts, and don’t merely lip-synch the lyrics to our songs. I think it’s important that the language of Zion is a mother tongue, and not a recently acquired second language. It’s important that a person doesn’t have more positions on issues that Elvis had waist sizes.”
A defiant Blackwater Chairman Erik Prince said yesterday he will not allow Iraqi authorities to arrest his contractors and try them in Iraq’s faulty justice system.
“We will not let our people be taken by the Iraqis,” Mr. Prince told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. At least 17 of 20 Blackwater guards being investigated for their roles in a Sept. 16 shooting incident are still in a secure compound in Baghdad’s Green Zone and carrying out limited duties.
“In an ideal sense, if there was wrongdoing, there could be a trial brought in the Iraqi court system. But that would imply that there is a valid Iraqi court system where Westerners could get a fair trial. That is not the case right now,” said Mr. Prince. Read more…
Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate’s surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That’s despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure — something first reported by Election Central’s Greg Sargent.
The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.
No more.
I have decided to place a “hold” on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President’s assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.
I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
But the danger of phoniness, aesthetic or otherwise, cannot hold a candle to the truly catastrophic foreign policy Giuliani would likely pursue if he got anywhere near the Oval Office. Watching him campaign it's pretty clear that the guy has no real sense that posturing and pandering to ethnic paranoia in New York City simply isn't the same as running a national foreign policy. The people he's coalescing around himself as his foreign policy advisors are the ones who are going to help him learn as he goes. And they are simply the most dangerous, deranged and deluded folks you can find in American political and foreign policy circles today. It's really not an exaggeration. Scrape the bottom of the "Global War on Terror" Islamofascism nutbasket and you find they've pretty much all signed on as Rudy advisors.
But I wonder if McCain underestimates his own vulnerabilities on this. If the race for the GOP nomination comes down to who is the most loyal partisan and fiercest advocate of the Republican agenda, McCain's going to lose.
I started thinking about the past few years, and McCain's record is ripe for the picking. He's worked with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) on sweeping campaign-finance reform, former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) on a Patients' Bill of Rights, and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) on immigration reform -- all bills the GOP opposed in large numbers. McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and the anti-gay constitutional amendment last year. In March 2004, asked on national television whether he would consider joining the Democratic presidential ticket as John Kerry's running mate, McCain said, "John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years. Obviously I would entertain it."
Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are an abomination before the Lord, just as gays are an abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage? Bring all of God's law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver's and Red Lobster. Yea, even Popeye's shall be cleansed. The name of Bubba shall be anathema. We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants.
I’ll tell you one thing, I sometimes hope that these crazy fucks have it right; that there is only a one, true christian God, exactly as they describe him, etc etc. Because they are in for one big, bloody surprise when they go to meet their maker and while the rest of us heathen Muslims, Buddhists, druids, agnostics, Hindus, Great Flying Spaghetti Monster worshippers, etc are filing through the Pearly Gates and saying to each other, “Well, how about that! A beard and everthing, just like they said! Hey, dibsies on that cloud over there! Wheee!”, directly to our left God will be stomping their wretched asses one at a time, straight through the clouds and telling them, “You really didn’t get it, did you? All and of you had to do was be NICE. Good-bye.” STOMP!
Ahh, the idea just warms my heart…..
This is the week Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. This is also the week where plausible allegations surfaced that the Bush administration had sought illegal wiretapping within at least 5 weeks of Bush's installation in the White House. So what is the lead article in the print edition of the NY Times Week in Review (the Sunday editorial/op-ed section)? Are you stting down? Believe me you need to.
Reporters and their cats:
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