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Ear to the Ground

Bush’s Wiretapping Bill Stalls in Congress

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Posted on Sep 8, 2006

Phew! President Bush’s attempt to provide legal support for his warrantless wiretapping program appears dead—for now—in the Senate.

  • Quote of the day (from Sen. Russ Feingold): “The president has basically said: I’ll agree to let a court decide if I’m breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I’m not breaking the law.”


    AP:

    President Bush’s support proved insufficient to push a bill authorizing his warrantless wiretapping program through the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

    Sen. Arlen Specter, the committee’s chairman, said the bill stalled because of election-year obstructionism.

    “We have seen the incipient stage of filibuster by amendment,” the Pennsylvania Republican testily declared as he called off a vote to move his bill to the Senate floor. “Filibuster by speech, filibuster by amendment. Obstructionism.”

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    By Aaitje, September 9, 2006 at 11:43 pm Link to this comment
    (Unregistered commenter)

    Sen. Specter likes to play “liberal” when he’s courting votes in his State, but in all truth, he’s as right-wing/neo-con as all the other Bushites in Congress.

    Unlike the other Republicans, Specter isn’t up for reelection, so he can dance to the Bush Regime’s tune all he pleases.

    The three other Republicans that already sent statements that they wanted to “study” the bill more closely are most likely up for reelection, and would in all likelihood have voted for Bush’s bill for even more power, were it not for that.

    Specter can be pissed at Sen. Russ Feingold all he wants, but the fact remains that this is *still* a Republican Congress, and that the majority in the judiciary committee are REPUBLICANS so when he speaks about “obstructionism”, it’s good for us to remember that it’s not the Democratic Senators, but the three Republican Senators that should be the recipients of Specter’s tirade, although AP reported as if Feingold, who’s DOING HIS JOB as the “check” in the “checks and balances” of the opposing party, is the one, the AP believes, the American people should blame for not giving Bush even MORE power to spy on, and oppress said American people—and his political opponents, of course.

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    By Madeline Pelland, September 8, 2006 at 9:28 pm Link to this comment
    (Unregistered commenter)

    Well I can tell you I don’t believe nor trust ANYTHING Arlen Specter has to say about anything and I’ll tell you why…. TO those of you too young enough to remember when our American president Kennedy was publically executed on the streets of Dallas on that tragic fall day on November 22, 1963….it was caught on film and our dear president was clearly shot from the front
    and the bullet hit him in the front side of his head….also other shots may have hit him coming from other angles as well…..but it was none other than Mr Specter that came up with what was famously called the ” Magic Bullet theory” that one bullet that was found after the assassination was in pristine condition….after it was told to the American public that it hit the President from behind then travered and hit Govenor Connelly
    who was sitting in front of the President and it went through his body and YET the bullet was not damaged after going though two victims body, hitting bone…...Anybody who knows anything about shooting and bullets know this is impossible!!! Yet Mr. Spector came up with this explanation to support the lone gunman theory and that Oswald acted alone…..Well we all know now 40 years after Mr Kennedy was brually murdered that the commission set up in the 70’s finally concluded that the Kennedy assassination was probably the act of more than one shooter….So if Spector was wrong back then about the assassination conclusions of an American President why should we believe him now?!!!! To understand what is going on now the American people have to go back in history to 1963 when the America we knew changed forever….Wake up and question the powers that be!!!!! I only wish we had bloggers and the Internet back on November 23, 1963 and maybe we could be closer to the truth of what happened that sad fall day on the streets of Dallas…....

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