If GOP Wins Big Tonight Will Dems Use Filibusters Come January?

There is the real prospect that the Repukes could seize control of the Senate when the dust settles after this mid-term. Right now the pukes hold 45 seats and the Dems 55 (including Bernie Sanders a socialist who votes with them), so if they gain at least 6 seats - which is possible- they would end up with a 51-49 majority in the Senate as well as a sizable majority in the House which they've held since 2010.

I don't believe this will actually happen, as I instead see the Ds hanging on by their fingernails, with a a 50-50 standoff in the Senate - the tie vote going to VP Joe Biden. So it would be a 'win' albeit a narrow won. But anything is possible. A primary indicator is the North Carolina race. If Kay Hagen wins (assuming too many African-Americans aren't hindered from voting), then look for the Dems to hold on, same if Mark Udall edges by Cory Gardener in Colorado.

But what if, as Nate Silver forecasts (75 % probability) the Repubs DO take the Senate? Then congress will be totally in their hands with only Obama the 'firewall' to act against their insanity using his veto power. (And veto he must, and veto, veto and veto - until his left hand goes into spasm.)

The good thing is that whatever advantage the Reeps manage to secure it won't be sufficient to get any of their wackier legislation passed - including rolling back the Affordable Care Act, increasing interest on private student loans (from 6.8% to 8%) or militarizing the southern border as part of "immigration reform"

However, in order to prevent these nutso laws being passed one of two things must happen: 1) The Democrats need to use the filibuster - demanding 60 vote majorities the same way the Reeps did when they were a Senate minority, and 2) If the Dems punk out with (1) and lose their cojones when it counts, then Obama must be ready with his veto pen.

Indeed, I would argue that if the Reeps do gain the Senate and hold the House (99% likely), the Democrats must become as "obstructionist" as the Reeps were when they had only 45 seats.  That means using the filibuster at every turn to block all legislation issuing from the Reep zone, including any approval of the Keystone pipeline.  After all, the Reeps will have been rewarded for their obstructionism so why not the Dems?

Harder to figure, as Scarborough noted this a.m.,  is why Americans would reward these jerks anyway, given all they've done is block Obama's agenda at every turn.  They have contributed to the worst congress in history with their do-nothingism and have a 20 percent approval rating (this is compared to 42% for Obama in the most recent polls).

Repub pollster Frank Luntz, this morning on CBS, opined the election is not really about Obama at all, but about "Washington", but I am not sure I buy it. Tune in any time to FOX, including Hannity and O'Reilly, and all you hear and see is anti-Obama blather. It's no wonder their viewers (surveys show 47 % of repukes go to no other station) and end up brainwashed Obama haters.

If in fact it is really about Washington, as Luntz suggests, then it is the Republicans who should lose big because they are the party - via their incessant 'call in' filibusters, who've mucked it up the most. Especially as Luntz said that in his own polling what mattered to voters the most was "accountability and getting things done". Well, Katy bar the door, the Repukes fail on all counts there! Or is it people are really living in a parallels universe where the Reepos have been beyond reproach in their work?

Whatever the outcome in a potential GOP Senate takeover, 51 seats or 54 (making a 9 seat gain and the greatest since 1994 and the 'Contract On America') the Dems cannot allow themselves to be suckered into accepting that any R-takeover translates to a "mandate". It doesn't. It amounts to a temporary advantage that will likely be reversed in the next election. The same as the GOP 2002 gains were reversed in 2006.

The main thing we need is for the Democrats to stand with the people, come hell or high water, and that means filibustering whenever it's needed - which will likely be about every week!

Edward Snowden Vindicated by Judge's Ruling That NSA Dragnet Program is Unconstitutional

"I have little doubt the author of our Constitution, James Madison,  would be aghast"

"The government does not cite a single instance where the program actually stopped an imminent attack"

 - Federal Circuit Judge Richard Leon ruling against NSA super dragnet spying yesterday.

Richard Leon is another hero and defender of the Constitution irrespective of whether or not his momentous ruling on the NSA monster spy programs are overturned on appeal. We know it only takes one voice, even in the minority, to espouse truth and constitutional principles even if liars, reprobates and traitors are arrayed against them - to the extent of re-doing earlier laws (like the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to render the illegal, legal.

Judge Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington on Monday, argued that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US constitution, in the most significant legal setback for the agency since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by whistleblower  and constitutional hero, Edward Snowden.

Judge Leon declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.

You have nailed it, Judge Leon, and I already noted this in many previous posts. The 4th amendment is VERY clear that specific warrants must be issued, not mass warrants! I don't give a fuck how "inconvenient" it is or how long and arduous that process might be. Tough shit! Either adhere to the principles or admit you're traitors to your constitutional oaths. People can read the words of the Fourth for themselves below:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Read it slowly and carefully, especially the emphasized portions over again. Clearly, the NSA MASS-grabbing of data violates directly the 4th amendment, and yeah, I'm as much a stickler about the 4th as the gun people are about the 2nd.

As I noted before, "secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion - under the Reich Laws. A fundamental right to privacy, meanwhile, insists there exist bona fide entities that one can uniquely own, e.g. papers, effects – including photos or what not- that are private. Without this fundamental right, then, “personal papers, effects” has no meaning hence the 4th amendment is meaningless.

It is clear to me that Judge Leon recognizes this, even if neoliberal coward and administration mouthpiece Jay Carney (calling for Snowden's return and prosecution) doesn't. Will Carney ever pull his head out of his ass? Probably never!

But what do you expect from Carney? The ruling, by the US district court for the District of Columbia, is a blow to the Obama administration, and sets up a legal battle that will drag on for months, almost certainly destined to end up in the Supreme Court. It was welcomed by campaigners pressing to rein in the NSA, and by Snowden, who issued a rare public statement saying it had vindicated his disclosures. It is also likely to influence other legal challenges to the NSA, currently working their way through federal courts.

Judge Leon expressed doubt about the central rationale for the program cited by the NSA: that it is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack".

Leon added:

“Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”

If such instances  of actual success - based specifically on the dragnet programs - are not cited, then obviously we can't ascertain if the protection of the program is all based on some BS smokescreen  or not. Telling us that to provide the information would "risk national security" is horse patootey and insults our intelligence. It also gives cover to the spooks to do whatever the hell they want.

Leon’s opinion also contained stern and repeated warnings that he was inclined to rule that the metadata collection performed by the NSA – and defended vigorously by the NSA director Keith Alexander on CBS on Sunday night – was unconstitutional. (Alexander, treating us all like untutored children or idiots insisted he saw no other way to do the collection other than by mass dragnet - as one cheeky Denver Post letter writer put it, he could as well "put us all in prison then he can see and hear what we're doing and when any time he wants.")

Leon added:

“Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government’s interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA’s bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment,”

Leon also said that the mass collection of phone metadata, revealed by the Guardian in June, was "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" in its scope.  He also wrote:

"The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979,"

Referring to the year in which the US Supreme Court ruled on a fourth amendment case upon which the NSA now relies to justify the bulk records program. But he also implied that the later revision of that law was the main outrage: since it was done after the Bushies perpetrated warrantless wiretaps after 2005.  The pusillanimous punk traitor congress- instead of holding Bush to account and impeaching his sorry ass - let him get away with it by changing the 1978 FISA law to make mass warrantless wiretapping legal. It is amazing how few know about this and that all appeals to the later revised "law" are bogus.

Meanwhile, in a statement released subsequent to the ruling (related to Glenn Greenwald), Snowden said:

“I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”

We can only hope and trust this is the case, and that if and when it ends up at the Supreme Court they will perform their constitutional duty irrespective of their ideology.

Lastly, I was delighted to see Colorado Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the dragnet collection, welcomed the judgment.  In his words:

"The ruling underscores what I have argued for years: [that] the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the US constitution and has failed to make us safer,"


Maybe one of these days, Mr. Obama - a  constitutional scholar at one time - will begin to see that.

New Poll Shows More Voting Americans Disagree with Gov't Surveillance - and Regard Snowden as a Whistleblower, NOT Traitor!

As reported in The Denver Post yesterday, at least registered voters appear to have their heads screwed on straight, and manifestly reject the NSA mass surveillance, asserting it goes too far and undermines civil liberties. In addition, 55% in the poll say Snowden is a whistleblower, not a "traitor". This is a crucial distinction because it shows registered voters at least aren't buying the media and political class' misbegotten narrative that Snowden turned against his country. NO, he exposed the lawless excesses of his country- trying to steer it back onto the constitutional straight and narrow.

The poll results disclosed that 45% said that "the government's anti-terrorism efforts go too far and infringe on civil liberties" which is a mammoth shift from a 2010 survey where 63% indicated the "government didn't go far enough". (Hmmm.....perhaps the gov't responded to this earlier finding by excess!)  In the current survey, 40% found that the gov't didn't go far enough.  Meanwhile, 34% of voters still believe Snowden to be a "traitor" and this indicates they've been brainwashed by the constant media drumbeat.  Or their political parties' blather, if affiliated.

The poll conducted by Quinnipiac University asked 2, 014 registered voters if the government has "gone too far" in domestic surveillance and efforts and whether Edward Snowden - former NSA computing contractor- is a whistleblower or traitor.   What is most interesting to me is the poll finding when one goes beneath the numbers and how in many respects the division is not by political party. Adherents of both Dems and Repubs appear to line up with their political whores.....errrrr.....reps..in being inclined to the government not going far enough and Snowden is a "traitor" trope. As the Post notes (p. 21A):

"In a country that is split sharply on virtually every political issue along Democratic and Republican lines, there is virtually no difference on this question by political party".

In other words, it is precisely those politically affiliated with the corporate parties who also echo their narratives and views. Meanwhile, a solid 49% of independents (like me) believe the government went too far in its dragnet scooping up of data. This shows in no uncertain terms that political affiliation can be hazardous to your political well being and perceptions.

I've seen this displayed in my own household as wifey (a registered Dem) has been reluctant to condemn the  NSA surveillance probably because (like most Dems)  she doesn't wish to "pile on" to Obama or add to his woes. (Though most Ds would have if it was Mitt Romney who'd been doing it!) No surprise that when these D-affiliateds do poll that the gov't is going too far  they also poll that "it's necessary". To which I say, 'Bullshit!' It is not necessary and such a claim doesn't even pass the most basic moron laugh test.

As I pointed out to her and would to any registered Dem voter, Obama was responsible for his own (recent NSA)  woes by signing on to this surveillance when he could have stood up and vetoed the extension of the misbegotten, re-crafted FISA law in 2011. That "law" was really a rewriting of the 1978 FISA law, to make it consistent with Bush's 2005-06 illegal warrantless wiretapping. In other words it made the illegal, legal. Obama, being a former  constitutional law professor, has no excuse and the integrity of the nation's 4th amendment provisions must trump political interest or affiliation. But don't tell that to wifey, or the Dem political class including: Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz or most of the pro-Dem media stars of MSNBC! 

In like manner, Repukes (e.g. Lindsey Graham, Peter King etc.)  have lined up and come to Obama's defense (most of them with few exceptions, e.g. Rand Paul) in condemning Snowden and the leaks because...DUH! ....they want $200b a year to continue to be spent on the perpetual war-surveillance state. It doesn't take a Mensa IQ to grasp that the Rs have always demanded more for war-surveillance and tax cuts in order to bleed down limited federal revenues, thereby making it easier to justify cutting social insurance programs. By no means are they truly coming to Obama's aid out of the goodness of their little hearts, they are really driving up deficits to put more pressure on him to make severe cuts in September when we'll likely face another debt ceiling increase.

Meanwhile, only a few Dems have had the courage of their convictions and stood up to this crap, including Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, who has pushed the Obama administration to be more transparent in its domestic spying programs. As the Post notes (ibid.):

"Udall, along with Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden have called the government's interpretation of certain sections (e.g. 215) of the Patriot Act too intrusive and not necessary to protect the United States from a terrorist attack.'

Sen. Udall is also the one who recently observed that "Americans would be shocked if they found out how the federal government was interpreting the Patriot Act to infringe on law abiding Americans' constitutional privacy rights."

Look, either we are a nation that respects constitutional rights or we admit we're now lawless rogues who pursue a "war on terror" that the rest of the world calls a "war of terror". We are not earning any friends and each day the Afghan morass goes on along with indiscriminate drone kills, it's likely creating 1,000 new terrorists. Is this what we want? Americans need to break away from the droning PR wags on corporate network television and do their own thinking for a change - unaffected by propaganda. Else, they may well mutate into what I called "good Germans" in my July 4 blog post.