The entire liberal media is telling you the FISA bill passed by the House Of Representatives on friday is the end of civil rights, the death of our Constitution, an example of Democrats caving to the lawless Bush administration, etc, etc. They try to drum this stuff into your head constantly, in the hope that you will forget what happened on 9/11, in the hope that you will forget WHY the Bush administration took the national security actions they took following that tragic attack, the worst ever on our homeland. They don't want you to ponder the REAL reasons for Bush's spying, because then it might look like Bush was only attempting to keep America safe from further attack, which is, after all, the job of the President. No, the liberal media wants you to believe Bush just woke up one day and illogically decided it was time to be a dictator and trample on the citizenry, for no reason really, just because Bush is an evil lawless tyrant and that's what evil lawless tyrants do. The liberal media wants you to know evil has a name, and that name is Bush. Also, the liberal media wants you to know that Bush=McCain=Republicans, just so there won't be any mistake. This IS an election year, after all.

But I assume most of you can see through the liberal media's shallow attempts at deception. Most people have the capacity for rational thought. This post is for you. I'll attempt to tell you what the new FISA update is really about.

In spite of the overblown protestations of the liberal media, many Democrats, most terrorist appeasers, and all outright Al Qaeda members, the new FISA bill is not the death of civil rights. There will be oversight of domestic spying with this new bill. It establishes a measure of balance between monitoring suspected terrorists and privacy concerns. It also attempts to establish limits on the president's executive powers. It spells out areas of domestic and international spying that needed to be spelled out.

The biggest sticking point to passage of the bill had been the provision to shield the telecommunications companies from lawsuits following the telcoms post-9/11 cooperation with the government in tracking terrorists. 40 such lawsuits were in the wings. None of the 40 persons or groups that wanted to sue the telecoms had any idea if their phones were monitored or if their rights were infringed. They just wanted to sue on principle. Democrats were hesitant to bargain away those lawsuits. The new FISA bill will shield the telcoms from lawsuits if the telcoms receive certification from the attorney general that the president ordered them to perform wiretaps to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. I like this provision, because it puts the responsibility for wiretaps on the government where it belongs. It is very troublesome to put the responsibility for making decisions about terrorism on private corporations who are torn between helping their country and treading into questionable legal territory that could cost them millions or billions of dollars.

I have some personal experience in this area. Following 9/11, I was a computer programmer/analyst for a bank. The government requested anti-terrorist type information from the bank, which I was tasked with providing them. Some of the requests involved the tracking of certain financial transactions and some involved other information, such as the reporting of all account signers who didn't have Social Security numbers. If any of you think this is improper action by the government, I can also tell you that the government has been tracking your financial information for decades. If you think your banking transactions are private, think again. They aren't. Nowadays, there are even sophisticated methodologies to track any type of unusual financial activity, and even methodolgies to predict financial activity, but that is a discussion for another time.

The point is that I certainly wouldn't have wanted to face a lawsuit for attempting to help my government track terrorist activity a few months after 9/11. The new FISA bill addresses that problem.

Some other provisions in the new FISA bill, according to the linked article, are:

- It requires the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

- The government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it.

- It would allow the government to tap a foreigner's overseas calls without FISA court approval.

- Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.

- Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop, without court approval, on an American's calls or e-mails.

- Require the government to protect American information or conversations that are collected when in communications with targeted foreigners.

- Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.

- Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.

- Prohibits the president from superseding surveillance rules in the future.

Is the new FISA bill perfect ? No.

Did the old FISA and spying procedures need to be updated to reflect the modern technological world and the new type of threat the terrorists present ? Absolutely.

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Of The House Of Representatives, had a decision to make last week. Should she bring the new FISA bill to the floor for a vote, where it would certainly pass and be signed into law immediately by President Bush, or should she prevent the bill from being voted upon, thereby allowing the Protect America Act to expire, weakening our country's ability to gather intelligence against foreign terrorist groups like Al Qaeda ?

It seems obvious that Pelosi should have chosen the democratic way and allowed the vote, but she didn't. Now Congress is on vacation and our intelligence capabilities are diminished. The question is, why would Pelosi do that ? The outward sticking point for Pelosi and pals is that they resisted giving telecom companies immunity from lawsuits for providing information to the government about Al Qaeda. Dozens of such lawsuits have been filed already, and granting retroactive immunity for these companies would kill them. If it sounds odd to you that companies would be sued for helping the government fight Al Qaeda following 9/11, it sounds odd to me as well.

If any of you think Pelosi didn't allow the vote due to 4th amendment concerns, you haven't been paying much attention. If the Democratic Congress was concerned about the 4th amendment, they would't have passed the Protect America Act to begin with, the new FISA bill wouldn't have passed the Senate, and they wouldn't have pushed for the recent 21 day extension. If the new FISA bill was a 4th amendment violation, so were all of those things. No, this wasn't about the Constitution at all. This was about something much more important to the Democratic leadership, something apparently more important than national security even…

Money.

You see, the number one contributor to Democratic political campaigns is trial lawyers. These are the very same trial lawyers who are looking to score some very big bucks by suing those telecom companies. From a Bob Novak column, called Torts And Terrorism, comes this:

Amanda Carpenter, a Townhall.com columnist, has prepared a spreadsheet showing that 66 trial lawyers representing plaintiffs in the telecommunications suits have contributed $1.5 million to Democratic senators and causes. Of the 29 Democratic senators who voted against the FISA bill last Tuesday, 24 took money from the trial lawyers (as did two absent senators, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). Eric A. Isaacson of San Diego, one of the telecommunications plaintiff's lawyers, contributed to the recent unsuccessful presidential campaign of Sen. Chris Dodd, who led the Senate fight against the bill containing immunity.

It's as simple as that. Monkey lawyers pay, monkey Congress do. Democrats know they have weakened our intelligence capabilities. One Democrat who is definitely in the know, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, warned his party colleagues of that very thing:

“What people have to understand around here is that the quality of the intelligence we are going to be receiving is going to be degraded.” (Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Floor Remarks, 02/14/08)

The Democratic leadership didn't care. They didn't care about us as a country. They just didn't want to alienate their biggest contributors, the lawyers (No wonder Obama, Hillary, and Edwards are all lawyers). This isn't a condemnation of the entire Democratic party, only the leadership and the majority view. The minority moderate Democrats, known as Blue Dogs, supported the new FISA bill, which is why it certainly would have passed when combined with near unanimous Republican support.

Thanks for nothing, Nancy Pelosi. You put special interests first, and our country second.

Enjoy your vacation.

Thursday was supposed to be a day when the House Of Representatives worked on the updates to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which has already passed the Senate. The existing bill, the Protect America Act, passed last august, expires at midnight on saturday, february 16th. Rather than working on anything so mundane as protecting americans from terrorists, the House Democrats decided instead to vote on contempt charges for White House officials Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten for not appearing before Congress on the Democrats fishing expedition investigation into the White House firing of U.S. attorneys. Minority leader John Boehner led Republicans in a House walkout in protest. Boehner said:

"We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us…Let's just get up and leave."

Indeed.

A few words about the so-called investigation into those U.S. attorney firings, which has been going on for over a year now. Those attorneys SERVE AT THE PLEASURE OF THE PRESIDENT. He appoints them and he can fire them, as presidents regularly do. For example, Bill Clinton fired 92 of the 93 U.S. attorneys, including some who were investigating BILL CLINTON. I can't tell you what a big investigation there was into that. Oh wait, yes I can tell you. There WASN'T any big investigation into that. But somehow, when Bush fires 9 U.S. attorneys, THAT is a big deal, and was done for some dark machiavellian political reasons. There isn't any evidence, but shoot, who needs evidence to conduct a witchhunt ? Not the Democrats. Since they took control of Congress in 2006, investigating all things Bush has been Job One.

Back on topic, Congress has had SIX MONTHS to pass a permanent terrorist surveillance bill, and both sides of the aisle claim to want to get it done (one side even means it). But here we are on the eve of the bill's expiration, and nothing has happened yet. I guess the high drama of watching baseball star Roger Clemens deny HGH and steroid usage is more important to the House than our national security. Maybe next week Cirque Du Soleil can testify before the House regarding highwire safety regulations, or Paris Hilton can testify about what it's like to be born filthy rich (apparently, "it's hot"). Enquiring minds want to know.

So, after twiddling their thumbs for all this time, and after attempting to kick the can down the road by passing a 21-day extension of the terrorist surveillance bill, which the Republicans shot down, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said this:

"The first step must be reconciliation of the two bills…If the president wants to work together on that — we have been trying mightily to get the administration to engage."

Let me translate that for you. Bush backs the version of the bill that the Senate has already passed. His position is crystal clear on this subject. Always has been. The sticking point here is NOT Bush, it's NOT the Senate - it's Pelosi and company. So naturally, Nancy has to make it SEEM as if it IS Bush, because partisanship is what matters most. I can't wait for president Barack Obama to come along and change all this nonsense. Yes we can ! Oh, brother.

What Pelosi's Pals want to do is strip telecom immunity from lawsuits out of the bill. In other words, if a telephone company cooperates with the government and provides phone records for international Al Qaeda suspects, the ACLU should be able to sue the pants off that telephone company, enriching lawyers, protecting the 4th amendment, and protecting Al Qaeda, er, I mean, the people. The White House insists it may need private sector cooperation with the government for future terrorist investigations. Someone over at the White House must be living in that place known as the REAL WORLD.

Congenital liar Harry Reid (D-NV) also tried to blame it all on Bush, by saying:

"Your [Bush's] opposition to an extension is inexplicable..Nonetheless, you have chosen to let the Protect America Act expire. You bear responsibility for any intelligence collection gap that may result."

Is that rich, or what ? The House has had all this time to pass the bill, at the last minute they decide to vote on something else, and Reid doesn't think the Democrats bear any responsibility for it. Good thing we don't count on old Harry the Senate Majority Leader for leadership or anything. Unbelievable.

Here's one final strange, self-contradictory comment from Pelosi:

"We are trying to pass a bill that protects the American people and protects the Constitution…We know the president has the authority to do everything he needs to do to protect the American people in the interim."

Mrs. Pelosi, I have a question. If the president has "the authority to do everything he needs to do to protect the american people" already, why would there be a need for you to "pass a bill that protects the american people" at all ? Hmmm ?

Someone's pants are on fire.

You can read an Assocated Press story about this pathetic fiasco here.