FISA rises again:
Nicole Belle reports, “Silvestre Reyes Indicates He Is Now Fine With GOP Telecom/FISA Bill.” I had to look at the date to be sure I hadn’t stumbled on an old post. Haven’t we been through this before? What is wrong with these people? This guy is supposed to be an important Democrat. Digby: “There just isn’t enough money at stake to explain this. Nobody’s suing for the money, they are suing for the discovery. Something bad happened here and the Democrats are helping the Republicans cover it up.” Dday: “Barack Obama could put an end to this today if he wanted. He could tell his colleagues in the House and the Senate that they should not work so hard to codify into law what his opponent is calling for - the ability for an executive to secretly spy on Americans.”
There’s simply no doubt in my mind that this administration routinely used blackmail as a political strategy. I just don’t think there’s any sane way to argue otherwise. It is simply not human nature for the GOP to effectively maintain a party line for this extended period of time without coercion (especially in the past few years, when political survival and self-interest would dictate otherwise), and while I do believe we have many craven Democrats, sheer venality doesn’t explain support for legislation like this.
Maybe the Democrats want the ability to spy because they want to amass enough ammo against the Republicans to keep them out of power. Who knows? Not us.
