The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday punted to the full Senate various forms of legislation that would, in effect, retroactively rubberstamp Cheney, Inc's warrant-less wiretapping.
Now, we all know that the reason the Repubs are pushing this now is two-fold:
1) To get Bush off the hook for spying on dangerous and scary peace protesters and Democratic activists, and
2) To give Rove and company a little fodder for crying "See? they love terrorists more than your safety!!". Tits their only option left to try to take some of the power out of wave that set to wash them out of power in November.
The bills are going to the floor; we cannot avoid the debate and we shouldn't want to. We can win this fight, but only if we keep it simple and apply direct pressure.
First off, terrorism is
not the real issue when it comes to the NSA warrant-less wiretapping scandal. The Repubs, the Cheney faction especially, think the POTUS should have king-like powers. They want to bring back the bad old days of the Nixon era; when presidents kept enemies lists and used the power of the Executive to spy on and attack their political opponents. What they really want is to bring back the days when the FBI and other agencies were used to intimidate the likes of that terrifying terrorist, Dr. Martin Luther King. Terrorism, and the fear of it, is only the club they are using to get try to get their way.
So far, they've been successful.
But they have only made it as far as they have by (try not to be shocked) lying their weasely spying asses off. Its the same old story, "Blah blah blah. War on terror. Blah blah blah vote Democrat and die." Pathetic and shrill. They claim, over and over, that Dems want to stop spying on terrorists. Bullshit. There isn't a single damn Democrat in the party who thinks we shouldn't do everything legal to protect ourselves from terrorism, and they know it. They just want go back to spying on their political enemies and are using fear of terrorism as cover.
And that's where our winning message comes in. Rather than playing defense and protesting that "we're strong on terror,too!" (whatever the fuck that means), or getting bogged down in the legal intricacies of the FISA courts, etc,. Fuck nuance. there are just two things we need to say:
1) Get a warrant, Mr. President!
and its corollary:
2) Why won't the President just get a warrant? What is he hiding?
See, the FISA court was created just exactly so we could spy on bad guys here at home without worrying that whomever happened to the living at 1600 Penn. Ave. at the time was using his powers to do what Nixon was caught doing: abusing Executive power. Getting a warrant isn't a roadblock, its a spotlight; a tiny but bright bit of oversight that makes sure that the guys sitting the the Big Chair aren't using their elected office for their own petty, vindictive ends.
So, its time for us here in the blogosphere to step the Hell up and by of some practical use to our nation and the Democratic Party. We need to hit this simple message over and over and let our Dems in Congress focus on hanging Iraq around the necks of every damn Republican in both chambers. We need to be their political cover on this so that they have some strong ground to stand on without playing into the R's hands.
We can win this one, damn it, but we have to be the ones to take the lead on getting the message out.
Say it with me now:
Get a warrant, Mr. President!
Why won't the President just get a warrant? What is he hiding?