Senators Want Secret Warrantless Wiretap Renewal 198
An anonymous reader writes "A group of Senators are meeting in secret today, while most people are focused on the 'debt ceiling' issue, in order to try to rush through a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act, which expressly allowed warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. The law isn't set to expire until next year, but some feel that the debt ceiling crisis is a good distraction to pass the extension without having to debate the issue in public. The meeting is being held in secret, but it's not classified, so people can demand to know how their Senator voted."
Re:Which Senators was in the secret meeting? (Score:5, Informative)
FTA:
Dianne Feinstein, California (chair)
Saxby Chambliss, Georgia (vice chair)
John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia
Olympia J. Snowe, Maine
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Richard Burr, North Carolina
Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland
James Risch, Idaho
Bill Nelson, Florida
Daniel Coats, Indiana
Kent Conrad, North Dakota
Roy Blunt, Missouri
Mark Udall, Colorado
Marco Rubio, Florida
Mark Warner, Virginia
Why hasn't (Score:0, Informative)
Anyone assassinated any of these senators yet for treason? I'm sure a jury of peers would find someone not guilty in doing so. Not that I'm advbo
Re:Which Senators was in the secret meeting? (Score:2, Informative)
TFA good enough for you? No one reads it, so it might as well be secret :P
Anyway, it singles out Wyden and Udall as opposing the wiretaps, and there could be others too, since that list just consists of everyone on the committee.
Re:That explains everything. (Score:4, Informative)
I need some input from the Lawn Crowd, did it feel like this in the Watergate days? I'm getting the horrible feeling that after a nice quiet 90's with nothing but a fun little sex scandal we're seeing a whole different class of nastiness today.
No, it wasn't like this.
Watergate was a relatively singular event, which elicited widescale public outrage. You couldn't go anywhere without it being a topic of convesation and dispute.
This is one of ten-thousand such outrages, perpetrated over the past decade. Like most of them, people don't know of it happening, or why it might even be wrong.
Sleep tight, America.
Re:LOL! American Freedom! (Score:4, Informative)
I've been listening to more and more old style folk music (pete seeger, woody guthrie, that era of true progressive lefties) and if you hear the 'fight' in their words and songs and compare to what the right calls 'liberal', you'd see that there are no liberals left in politics or in any kind of power.
if you mention 'unionize' to most people, they look at you like you've said a naughty word. yet, many decades ago (but less than a century) we *needed* the union movement to balance the power that the corporations had. it worked and we got 5 day work weeks.
now, likely, you and I are in software or technology and we say "WHAT 5 day work week?".
exactly.
which is why we need unions for software and technology-based workers; and all businesses where the overly-powerful corporations get to dictate, essentually unquestioned, what we do, how we get paid and even IF we get fulltime benefits (healthcare, etc).
if we had a progressive party or even members of left in the government, we'd see more balance. we might see worker rights increase instead of steadily decrease.
if you have not heard those old folk and freedom songs, give them a listen. look into almanac singers, the weavers, pete seeger, joan baez. they all had a deep feeling for our country and were real patriots. they'd all be extremely ashamed (those that are still living, I'm sure they are ashamed) of what the US has become. we made so much progress in the 60's, only to reverse and actually lose ground in this decade.
we need more rebellion and more public show of dissatisfaction with our so-called leaders.
listen to some of those old songs and put them into today's context and you'll see that we're going thru the same kinds of repression again and again. we have to fight it, again and again, too, it seems.