Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VAT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have just sponsored a new wonderful bull. It's the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008. So basically they've combined all things wrong with PRO-IP and PIRATE Acts and created this wonderful new bill. Sounds perfect, right?

I can't understand how two Senators can make such convincing arguments about what is wrong with the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act of 2008 in the form of H.R. 6304" (FISA Amendments), and then vote "yea" on Passage of the Bill.

I need someone to explain this to me.

I have included excerpts that contain remarks from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Senator Arlen Specter, as recorded in the Congressional Record for July 08, 2008. The complete record can be found here.

Again, Senator Whitehouse and Senator Specter both voted to make FISA Amendments the law of the land.

In today's Senate debate about FISA, Senator Specter pointed out that most members of Congress do not even know what the program was, but still are being asked to grant immunity. Senator Rockefeller responded by reading his own tote list of how many senators were briefed on the secret program: 37 members of the Senate.
   Specter responded that his figures for the House are: 95 members in the House were briefed. He went on to argue that these figures still show that a majority in both houses were ignorant about the program.
   But I think the more important point is that the key leadership of both parties in both houses knew all along, and are protecting their own asses with the immunity bill.

Cross-posted (as always) at The Thorn Papers. Y'all come by now.

Seems as though Senators Wicker and Cochran (along with 8 other lockstep Republicans) have found themselves on the wrong side of a Medicare issue, siding (as per usual) with the president and the insurance industry over patients and doctors. Shocking, I know.

The American Medical Association is taking action, running ads, calling out these senators by name. From CQ Politics, a little background:

The American Medical Association, the influential trade association for doctors, began running television ads Tuesday targeting 10 Republican senators who voted last week against a bill that would reverse a scheduled cut in Medicare’s physician payments.

How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its contracts with big oil.

The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq’s vast oil reserves. As The Times reported Monday, "At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry."

A prize, yes. But at what cost?

Bob Herbert asks us that question in his column today, entitled ‘Oh Happy Day’ because he tells us that is what one would here sung in the executive suites of oil companies after the deals they just made in Iraq.    The question is what achieving the happy day for the oil companies has cost the rest of us.

Senator Specter (almost a good man again) published a long eloquent statement on the shortcomings of the FISA bill and explained why he will capitulate in the end.

After reading an article at cqpolitics It seemed like we might have a ray of hope on the FISA bill after all.

The title itself gives me a little optimism - "Surveillance Showdown Promised." Yeah, there are a lot of diaries on the FISA capitulation. With good reason, it's the whole ball of yarn in my opinion - the Constitution, the 4th Amendment, Bush's disregard for the law, etc.

But hear me out - our best bet at the moment is to not only encourage our senators to strip immunity from the bill, but also support some of the amendments that will be introduced this week.

Join me below the fold and I'll explain more...

Last week I opened my email to find a communication from my friend John Hall, a Congressman from New York who is representing a portion of the state just down the road from where I live.  I respect, admire and intend to emulate Congressman's Hall's openness and communication as he explains what he did and why.  Below is the note that he sent to his email list:

Pete Donaghy, the former NBA referee that admitted to conspiring with gamblers, threw other referees and league officials under the proverbial bus when he suggested that certain refs and league officials pre-determined the outcome of specific playoff series.

Knowledgable sports fans that have engaged in gambling, both illegal and legal, have suggested for years that certain sporting events are fixed. Donaghy's comments, while they may be self-serving in that he might be hoping for a reduced sentence, may be spot on.

Steny Hoyer, Silvestre Reyes, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid:  You should all be ashamed of yourselves.  It apparently takes a Republican to tell the ACLU what Congress should be doing about the telecom immunity:

Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), a Republican long known for breaking with his party over the reach of post-9/11 executive power, is still at it. Monday, the five-term senator again demanded a judicial examination of the phone companies' role in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program...

"It's very important that there be judicial review of what the phone companies have done," Specter told a large audience gathered in Washington Monday for a conference of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It seems to me that it'd be very difficult to grant retroactive immunity when you don't even know for sure what you're giving retroactive immunity for."

Dear Democratic leadership: Is that really difficult?

Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), Judiciary Committee Ranking Member is speaking to the ACLU right now and is being aired on CSPAN2.

He is speaking out forcefully regarding warrantless wiretapping, rendition, and torture.

"

It's hard to give retroactive immunity when you don't know what you are giving immunity for."

Other speakers, including James Risen, coming up.

Republican Senator Arlen Specter is "incensed over "Spygate," and is demanding an independent investigation. Does this mean that he will finally throw his weight behind investigations to reveal the truth about the administration's warrantless wiretapping program?

Of course not.  Here's Specter's version of Spygate.

Hold on, NFL. Spygate isn't over. Not if the "incensed" Pittsburgh Steelers fan in Congress has anything to do with it. Sen. Arlen Specter on Wednesday called for an independent investigation of the New England Patriots' taping of opposing coaches' signals, possibly similar to the high-profile Mitchell Report on performance enhancing drugs in baseball.

"What is necessary is an objective investigation," Specter said at a news conference in the Capitol. "And this one has not been objective."

Pathetic.

Arlen Specter demands an investigation into "spygate"

   The issues that Congress has to deal with for the betterment of Americn are heavy indeed. Iraq, $4.00 a gallon gasoline, a record number of foreclosures, high food prices - the list goes on.

   With all of this, what does Senator Arlen Spector propose that Congress hold hearings on? why that earth-shaking matter of whether the New Englang Patriot football team videotaped signals of opposing coaches. The absurdity of Congress spending its time and energy on this picayune matter defies reason.

    Even worse, this matter of Patriot videotaping was thoroughly investigated and was found not to be credible.But who cares! The matter is a very small side issue of athletic entertainment. Right or wrong nothing approaching substance is changed or involved.

I wasn't sure what to call this diary.  The more I thought about it the more different outrageous titles drifted through my mind.  Do I call it "Wherein Arlen Specter loses his mind"?  Do I call it "We really have gone through the looking glass"?  Do I call it "Sports imitates life"?  Or do I call it "This is why people hate congress"? So many options and in the end I couldn't chose any of them.

But, my fellow Kossacks, I am going to share a story of how I came to realize (for the hundredth time) that Arlen Specter (and republicans by extension) are insane.

The Associated Press is reporting that Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter has had a recurrence of cancer.

WASHINGTON - Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter's cancer has returned. The five-term Republican said in a statement released by his office Tuesday that he was diagnosed with an early recurrence of Hodgkin's disease, which is a cancer of the lymph system.

The relationship shared between a journalist and their source is a tenuous one. Without this legislation -- in this day and age -- that relationship will cease to exist at all.

The Bush regime is trying to deliver the coup de grâce to the rule of law as we know it by making sure there are no anonymous sources to report it.

Ok, anytime the current inhabitants of the White House go to the trouble of making a website, trying to gin up support for/against something, you can bet your bottom dollar that "something" is bad for democracy, and by extension... the American people.

This website is no exception...

From the pens of the editors of the astonishing Wall Street Journal this day:

The Democrats' slow judicial roll follows their misuse of the filibuster when they were in the minority during the first Bush term. It's also an abuse of the Constitution, which gives the President the responsibility of selecting judges while the Senate has an obligation to vote up or down.

Who is abusing the U.S. Constitution?  The filibuster?