House Dems Are A Cheap Fucking Date

Steve Soto over at The Left Coaster brings insight to an issue I've been trying to remain cool with. Unfortunately, it seems a good amount of House Democrats have been bought out on approving immunity in last weeks FISA bill.

Steve writes of a press release,

"On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out the illegal wiretapping program without proper warrants. Ninety-four House Democrats voted in favor of this measure--rejecting immunity--on March 14, then ‘changed’ to vote in favor of the June 20 House bill--approving immunity.


“Why did these ninety-four House members have a change of heart?” asked Daniel Newman, executive director of MAPLight.org, “Their constituents deserve answers.”


MAPLight.org's research department compiled PAC campaign contributions from Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint and correlated them with the voting records of all House members who voted on last week’s FISA bill. (The analysis used data from CRP; contributions were from January 2005 through March 2008). Here are the findings:


Comparing Democrats' Votes (March 14th and June 20th votes):


Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint gave PAC contributions averaging: $8,359 to each Democrat who changed their position to support immunity for Telcos (94 Dems)


$4,987 to each Democrat who remained opposed to immunity for Telcos (116 Dems)


88 percent of the Dems who changed to supporting immunity (83 Dems of the 94) received PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint during the last three years (Jan. 2005-Mar. 2008). See below for list of these 94 Dems."

All I can think about this situation is:




Expect some quick cover-ups and textbook apologies.

FISA Capitulation and Why You Should Still Vote

I've seen alot of people jumping ship and threatening to not vote this election cycle or vote for McSame.

What part of the capitulation on FISA are you still confused about?

It fucking blows. It means that Obama is the lesser of two evils.

There is a time when it makes sense to take a stand and say "NO MORE" to voting for the lesser of two evils. This is not that time. The Scalito faction has 4 of the 9 votes. 4 years of McCain gives them 6-7 of the 9 votes.

The Scalito faction believes:

• That we are at "war" with radical Islam, although there has been no Declaration of War as required by Article 1.
  
• That this "war" justifies suspending basic rights such as habeas corpus and the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments.
  
• That the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts don't actually mean what they say. The Scalito gang would probably approve a Poll Tax.
  
• That the current weak campaign finance reform laws are unconstituional. That is, while they would happy approve a Sedition Law imprisoning people for disagreeing with the government during war, they would argue that limits on campaign contributions are an unconstitutional abridgment of free speech.
  
• They also would find that any restrictions on media consolidation to be an abridgement of free press.
  Taken together the last 3 points mean that under a Scalito government: the media would be even more one-sided than during 2002 and 2003; vote supression tactics would be widespread and more severe than since the end of Jim Crow; and corporations could openly buy elections.
  

You think the above are exaggerations? They are not -- read their dissenting opinions over the past 16 years.

For this reason, this is a time when the right thing to do is vote for the lesser of two evils.

Also, let's not confuse ourselves here and imagine that Hillary, in the same position, would not have capitulated. She's as much a triangulator as Bill and Obama are. As Krugman has documented, neither Clinton nor Obama talked much about progressive issues until Edwards forced them to.