What Happens Next?

What is the process for holding people accountable? Is there one?

Posted by Casey Morris at March 1, 2006 10:30 AM

I haven't seen anything remotely resembling one since the turn of the millenium.

p.s. You can take your catchy tag line "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and shove it, Gonzo.

Senate blocks changes to Patriot Act deal
Democrats say limits would be meaningless

Wednesday, March 1, 2006; Posted: 11:31 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Republicans moved Wednesday to prevent Democrats from trying to add more civil liberties safeguards to a renewal of the 2001 Patriot Act due to expire next week.

In a pair of votes orchestrated by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, the Senate effectively shut off amendments to a compromise between the White House and libertarian-leaning Republicans allowing some court challenges to government demands for people's records in terrorism investigations.

Democrats complained that the negotiated limits would be virtually meaningless in practice.

"No one has the right to turn this body into a rubber stamp," said Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wisconsin, the act's chief opponent. "The White House played hardball and the decision was made by some to capitulate."

The procedural wrangling in the Senate prompted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, to pull the measure off his chamber's schedule for the day. The House was not expected to vote on the matter until next week.

moew... http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/01/patriot.act.ap/index.html

What happens now is unclear. The Senate is expected to approve the full Patriot Act conference report, which the House has already approved, and then will vote on the Sununu compromise. But if the Sununu measure passes the Senate, and is not considered by the House, the full Patriot Act -- without any modifications -- could go to President Bush for signature immediately.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Patriot_Act_compromise_may_be_in_0301.html

"Gonzales also seemed to imply that the administration's original legal justification for the program was not as clear-cut as he indicated three weeks ago."

Posted by Casey Morris at March 1, 2006 10:30 AM

What does this mean? Is he admitting that actually there was no legal justification????

I hope that Ashcroft has to come before the Senate, as Arlen Specter requested - to discuss what went on between Justice Dept. lawyers when he was visited in the hospital.
(heard this AM on NPR).

This is an excerpt from Center from American Progress summary, re Bush's trip to India:

BUSH OPPOSITION IN INDIA: Media reports have noted that in traveling to India, Bush is departing "for a rare place where he and the U.S. remain popular." A 2005 Pew poll found that 71 percent of Indians view the United States favorably, and a survey published this week by an Indian newspaper found 66 percent of Indians say Bush is "a friend of India." The White House should not accept these ratings as validating its foreign policy. Fully 72 percent of Indians also believe that America is a "bully," and say their favorable views toward the United States are based on our "technology and job opportunities." Indeed, protests are expected throughout the trip, and a speech by President Bush "had to be shifted from its original venue at the Indian parliament ­ where President Clinton spoke in 2000 ­ after MPs from government parties threatened to heckle him." There is also significant anger over President Bush's visit tomorrow to the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi, the champion of nonviolent resistance. Said one writer in an Indian newspaper, "when George Bush places flowers on that famous slab of highly polished stone, millions of Indians will wince."

in honor of all the music-lovers on DCP, check out what Rickie Lee Jones has to say about Lieberman via firedoglake:

There's plenty of lingering resentment by musicians against Joe Lieberman's draconian PMRC censorship measures, and Howie Klein is having no trouble in his efforts to line them up to speak out against Lieberman and support Ned Lamont. Within minutes of sending out his initial entreaties he got this from Rickie Lee Jones:

Herr Lieberman helped me realize there is not much of a fine line left between the middle of the right and the edge of the left. We have moved so far over that even middle America stands perched on one foot, with it's one strand of hair tossed across its frowning face, trying to straighten the coffee in a cup that will forever be leaning far too right to ever feel balanced again.

No good American can go out into the street today and not turn gray with nausea at the complacency of every single newspaper, financial institution, and influential individual in the conspiracy to keep this unqualified, uneducated, unelected criminal in office. Lieberman was an important candidate, and he, above all of them, is a turn coat who helped to nullify the potency of the left.

Read the rest of the background here...
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/02/rickie-lee-jones-doesnt-like-right.html

I'm not one to post a link and run, but, as usual, Bill Moyers nails it.

http://tinyurl.com/m8ouc

Great read LT... this paragraph from Moyers should be repeated over & over & over until election day...

But let’s be realistic here. When the notorious Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he answered, “Because there is where the money is.” If I seem to be singling out the Republicans, it’s for one reason: that’s where the power is. They own the government lock, stock, and barrel. Once they gained control of the House of Representatives in 1994, their self-proclaimed revolution has gone into overdrive with their taking of the White House in 2000 and the Senate in 2002. Their revolution soon became a cash cow and Washington a one party state ruled by money.

Back on topic...

What ever happened to the NSA spying furor?
Ports tussle overshadows action in Congress on secret surveillance program

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11607917/

Monkey.. here is the other snip that need to be repeated along with that

{snip}
I have painted a bleak picture of democracy today. I believe it is a true picture. But it is not a hopeless picture. Something can be done about it. Organized people have always had to take on organized money. If they had not, blacks would still be three-fifths of a person, women wouldn’t have the vote, workers couldn’t organize, and children would still be working in the mines. Our democracy today is more real and more inclusive than existed in the days of the Founders because time and again, the people have organized themselves to insist that America become “a more perfect union.”

Feingold reads constitution on Senate floor
RAW STORY
Published: March 1, 2006

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has read the text of the U.S. constitution to his fellow Senators after the body voted 95-4 to renew controversial provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Feingold spent 34 minutes sharing the document with his fellow Senators, stopping to repeat the Fourth Amendment, which he feels the law violates.

The Fourth Amendment reads:

"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.

Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) followed Feingold's reading by heralding the recent Hall of Fame election of Negro National League baseball players, attributing the faster pace of modern ball playing to professional sports integration.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Feingold_reads_constitution_on_Senate_floor_0301.html