![Luke2[1]](http://www.fortwaynenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/luke21.jpg)
Luke Puckett, 2nd District GOP candidate, stared in awe Monday at how fast his congressman caved under pressure from Nancy Pelosi and the liberal Democratic Congress during last week’s Protect America Act debate. Donnelly voted with the Republican leadership Friday morning but switched his vote to side with the Democratic leadership that afternoon.
On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would permanently extend the Protect America Act by a vote of 68-29. On Wednesday, House Republicans sought to vote on this same bill. When House Democrat leaders objected, Republicans forced a vote on considering the bill. All but five House Democrats voted to block the House from considering a permanent extension of the law. Joe Donnelly was one of these 5 Democrats. Later that day, Republicans again tried to offer an amendment to pass the Senate bill, yet all but one Democrat voted to prevent the amendment from being voted on. Joe Donnelly was NOT this one Democrat. Shamefully, most the 21 Democrats who sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in support of the Senate bill still sided with their liberal leadership on at least one of these two votes, proving that this letter was just a shallow grasp for political cover.
“Either Joe Donnelly’s personal idea of how to protect Hoosiers and our American homeland changed from morning to afternoon, or this is just the latest example of Donnelly telling the folks of the district one thing and doing the exact opposite when he gets to Washington” Puckett says. “Actions speak louder than words, and this particular flip-flop of Donnelly’s is even more alarming because it deals with the future safety of our Hoosier families”.
Prior to enactment of the Protect America Act, wholly international communications transmitted over a wire required a FISA court order. This requirement has hindered our intelligence community’s ability to collect vital intelligence from terrorists communicating with other foreign intelligence targets located in a foreign country. It is difficult to compile enough information in a short period of time on a foreign person of interest to satisfy the FISA statute, and this is where the terrorist loophole arises. The protect America Act has been credited for stopping a number of terrorist attacks before they happened.
Democrats have now headed home for a ten day recess with the Protect America Act about to expire. Despite Democrat claims that there is no harm in that, DNI McConnell wrote in the Washington Post Friday that:
“Without the act in place, vital programs would be plunged into uncertainty and delay, and capabilities would continue to decline. Under the Protect America Act, we obtained valuable insight and understanding, leading to the disruption of planned terrorist attacks. Expiration would lead to the loss of important tools our workforce relies on to discover the locations, intentions and capabilities of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets abroad.”
Puckett concludes, “How many more terrorist attacks will we have to prevent before Joe Donnelly and the Democratic Congress allow us to permanently extend the Protect America Act?”
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Give me a break. The Protect America Act? More like the “Illegal Wiretapping Act as well as give retroactive immunity to the president and the rest of his corporate buddies that violated the constitution act”
You know there was a day when Republicans believed in civil liberties - in freedom. That day is long gone - hell the Bush administration doesn’t even support the 2nd amendment anymore.
The party has become one of big government control and rule - even at the cost of liberty. It’s about damn time the House held the line on FISA expansion and good for Donnelly for finally seeing the light. A government can never fully protect it’s citizens without fully removing their liberty. I know which way Puckett and the Republicans want to go and I’m not interested.
Protect America Act? Does anybody really believe that crap…
Jeff..”Protect America Act? Does anybody really believe that crap…
Uh yeah, a lot of us do.
I find it humorous you and others would think the Federal Government has the time, resources and inclination to “wiretap” important people such as yourself. You’ve seen too many movies.
Using 1978 surveillance technology for land line phones in 2007 is absurd and dangerous and allowing the telecom companies to be sued by every hippie with an agenda is ridiculous as well.
You are being paranoid of the wrong people, you should worry about the ones that want to blow the shit out buildings, not the ones that want to stop them.
Yes Jeff, some of us want America safe from our enemies. If you cannot remember 9/11, I am very sad for you.
The NSA has been around since 1952. It was created to monitor foreign signal intelligence. That is what it did then …that is what it does now.
What was OK for Democratic administrations during wartime and peace is suddenly not ok in the midst of our war against radical Islamists? This is not about the Bush administration. The Bush Derangement Syndrome obviously overcomes even seemingly intelligent leftists.
Tim,
If you don’t think these companies are re-routing all the traffic for storage and data mining it then you are naive. By all definition that is a wiretap even if there isn’t a white van parked down the road. And if you violate the US Constitution then there should be repercussions. Just because the President asked you to do so is not an excuse.
Gadfly,
I remember 9/11 but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to trade essential liberty for the guise of “government protection”. This isn’t political - I don’t care if it’s a Republican or a Democratic President - this is WRONG.
I simply refuse to trade in my liberty to help support the first steps to the US Enabling Act…
Just what is it Jeff, specifically, that you think the government is going to do with this technology that will infringe on your ability to live your life as “free”? What specifically can you see them doing to restrict you in any way??
Tim,
I reject the premise that my life must somehow be knowingly affected in order for the government to have violated the constitution.
Having said that one only needs to look back at Richard Nixon’s illegal spying activity to see how this could be abused. Citizens could be illegally targeted for their political views, economic or social status, etc.
That’s preposterous. Every single surveillance technique in the world has the potential for abuse, but that doesn’t mean you simply throw up your hands and say the hell with it.
The violation of the constitution argument is pretty far-fetched. The framers of the constituition could never have dreamed of the technological advances we’ve made, and I’m certain they roll over in their graves at the shear silliness of your arguments about rights to privacy when intercepting communications from Kandahar to Dearborn (exchanging recipes for goats balls I’m sure, nothing nefarious) .
“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.”
The Bill of Rights transcends technology…
Tim Zank,
Every single person has the potential to be a terrorist threat. Does that mean we should use this as a pretext for trashing everyone’s civil liberties?
If any one individual actually did pose a credible threat, I really doubt that President Bush would have any trouble finding a Federal Judge to sign off on surveillance. He just doesn’t want to be bothered with it though. That is something to be scared of.
Phil, explain to me, please, in detail, how monitoring transmissions back and forth in a matrix to identify patterns on cell phone calls originating from Pakistan, Afghanistan, or Iraq is in any way “trashing everyone’s civil liberties?”
When our intelligence agencies perform this surveillance, is the motive (in your opinion) to catch foriegn jihadis and thwart attacks on us and our interests, or is it really just a vast right wing conspiracy to suppress and control the true freedoms of liberal Americans? Do you actually believe these agencies have the electronic capability available, much less the man power, to monitor the phone calls of even a fraction of U.S. citizens? Try to wrap your head around this, say they want to target and monitor the phone conversations of only 10% of the American population.
10% of roughly 300 million people is 30 million phone calls, how many employees would it take to monitor, identify, listen to and record 30 MILLION phone calls a day every Day??
How about if big brother only wants to “eavesdrop” on 1% of the population?
How many employees will it take to monitor 3 million phone calls a freakin’ day???? How in the F&^k could they ever hire enough people, assemble a call center large enough and EVER keep it under wraps with that many employees?
My point is, with most ridiculous assumptions, fears or conspiracy theories, if you take the time to think it through and apply common sense (and sometimes basic math) it illustrates how ridiculous and unfounded those fears are.
Tim,
It’s all done by routing all the traffic to massive servers where the info is datamined for specific content. The government spies are leveraging technology - they don’t have thousands of people sitting around listening to phone calls…
All this boggles the mind.
Let’s listen in on calls limitied to, major threats to National
Security using the telecommunications network called Phones.
Last I checked, the telecommunications are getting their pants
sued off for providing Intel. Pretty soon they will be put out of business.
Jeff, they would still need thousands of people to interpret the info…We simply don’t have the “Buck Rogers” or “Star Trek” technology you think we have….You can store gazillions of bits of info on a disc, it still takes a human being to disseminate the info, in this case to abuse the info it would take thousands of people. You’re paranoia is overwhelmed and fueled by misinformation and a general distrust of government.
For comparisons sake, I’m flabbergasted you are concerned about data mining of transmissions out of the middleast, yet are 100 % supportive of local governments denying the rights of property owners and business owners with a law against a perfectly legal product (cigarettes) on private property.
It illustrates an underlying liberal bias that ALWAYS says basically, “It’s only trashing somebodies civil liberties if I don’t agree with it”.
In response to the inevitable “health issue” rebuttal you are sure to raise, 2nd hand smoke might irritate you, but an Al Queda missile will just flat out frickin’ kill ya.
Again, please tell me what this datamining info will be used for that scares you? This type of surveillance is very specific and has NOTHING to do with our current domestic “eavesdropping” or “wiretap” regulations whatsoever.
They are not even remotely connected or related.