Thanks to his brilliant grassroots efforts, his exhaustive and skillful community organization talents, President Elect Barack Obama has pulled off a landslide Election. Through his exhaustive campaign in which he elicited the support of thousands of volunteers, his extraordinary discipline, his tireless, never ending hard work, the severe lack of sleep, the sacrifice of his personal and family life, and despite the attacks and the attacks and the attacks and the misinformation and the misinformation and the blatant media bias, the bias, the bias, and the appalling regional ignorance, the ignorance, the ignorance, and the hate talk, the hate talk, the hate talk, somehow, despite all of the symbolic and vociferous right wing smearing and screaming, finally the majority of Americans heard through the deafening clamor and voted for truth, hope, change and a return to normality.
The president-elect won overwhelmingly among blacks, Hispanics and voters under the age of 30. He made inroads among important swing groups, including Catholics, suburbanites, political independents, even veterans. He won in the Midwest, where Mr. Kerry had lost. He even made small gains among groups that typically have been solidly Republican - whites, conservatives, Southerners, regular churchgoers.
And, according to the The Politico, the most affluent voters were key to Obama's win.
Thankfully, for the entire planet, the last eight years of the Republican Dark Ages and Reign of Financial Terror have crashed and burned, hopefully forever.
Those who are coming to this story today have jumped into the middle of quite a tale. I put myself in a tough position last time by promising to link a British "garden of lust", Benjamin Franklin, and 18th Century bloggers into a narrative that concludes with the nascent United States of America and its shiny new Fourth Amendment.
So far, amazingly enough, I'm pulling it off.
If you need to catch up, here's what's been going on:
When last we met...it was in a world of scandal and intrigue; with King George III and the Earl of Bute (and of course, their assorted minions) very upset with John Entick, author, and John Wilkes, author and world-class raconteur (and drinking buddy to Franklin), because they had the temerity to...well, blog.
The Earl of Bute had taken so much abuse from the Johns that he had been forced to resign from his position as Prime Minister...leaving the minions under his control, many said, only now from behind the scenes.
Something needed to be done...and when you have minions, you put them to use.
This may be one of the strangest tales I have ever brought to the table, Gentle Reader, and yet one of the most fundamental in describing the birth of our Bill of Rights...and most especially the Fourth Amendment.
As many of you know, the new FISA compromise may or may not allow warrantless wiretapping of American citizens on a wholesale scale.
Something you may not know is that a similar debate raged in England (centered around the right of Government to seize the papers of whomever they chose, and use the papers as evidence against those persons) during the reign of King George III-or that it involved scandalous sexual behavior, Benjamin Franklin, the 18th Century version of blogging, and two men who decided to take on the corruption of the Crown...and won.
And because of all that, we have a Fourth Amendment today.
Ready for a tale of liberty and ribaldry?
Then let's plunge right in, shall we?
Many words have been proffered regarding the FISA bill this week, and I was actually preparing an analysis of the events when, to my surprise, I received an email that made me alter my schedule completely.
I want to apologize in advance to Danny Medress, over at Democracy for America, for whom I was preparing the analysis; and all I can tell you, Danny, is that this was of such import that the schedule had to be slipped.
That said, presented here in its entirety is the memo I received ...and having read it through, I have to say I feel much safer.
"Many times throughout my lifetime I have sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. This isn't a part-time Constitution. We as a nation cannot grant anyone sweeping amnesty if they break the rules. It's appalling that my opponent, John Cornyn, puts his special interest campaign contributors ahead of the Constitution. Texans have had enough.
Americans will not accept an abuse of power, and they will not accept corporations getting away with breaking the law.
We already have a law in place that balances national security concerns while adhering to the Constitution. This is not the time to compromise the privacy of the American people and not the time to disregard the Constitution of United States. I regret that the Senate has voted this way."
A fellow former volunteer from the 2006 Barbara Radnofsky (Texas Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate)campaign sent a very interesting article to our group this morning. It is a piece written by a non-partisan, non-profit watch dog organization regarding the 94 Democrats who have had a change of heart and now support Bush's FISA.
Many of us have been extremely perplexed, to say the very least, as to why some of our House Democratic lawmakers would cave into an ongoing Republican assault on our civil liberties. Sadly, it seems that one of the driving forces behind the votes may be money related.
The article is written by Pamela Heisey of MAPLight.org. Below is a profile of MAPLight:
The prospects for correctly fixing the Protect America Act seem to be dimming this week. There is a lot going on in Congress, according to Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake. Her excellent piece on Monday, "FISA Update," gives the likely schedule of what will be happening right now to pending intelligence legislation in and out of committee. It contains a very useful contact list of legislators whose votes my or may not be going the right way to protect our civil liberties.
(I'm afraid we'll all have to be much more familiar with these terms before this is all over. - promoted by boadicea)
There is a new law on the books that affects all U.S. citizens. It has the potentially comforting but ironic title, "The Protect America Act." The law (PAA, for short) is the latest amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. It was hurriedly passed by Congress in August, 2007.
The subject of the legislation - PAA - is very difficult to comprehend. As a matter of fact Congress did not really comprehend the amendment for which they were voting. Wisely, they made it temporary with a "Sunset" provision. It will have to be fixed by February of next year. And Congress needs our help to do this. But in order to weigh in to your elected officials on the law's problems, we must understand the complexities of the Act.
Two thing caught my attention this afternoon. First, there was this from the FISA ( Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) revision hearings on the hill and , I would suspect, an orchestrated editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
Both argue the case for the Unitary Executive. Translation: The President as Law Unto Himself.
link Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement - New York Times
"Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants."
