Specter True To Form; Commits Treason

As was predicted last December: and March:

I am not worried about Specter.  He signaled last December that he would collapse on this one. He is a lost cause and will only do the right thing if they find the smoking gun in Bush's hand.

Senator Arlen Specter (Rep-PA) has solved the illegal Bush spying by selling out his country. When Nazis, Communists, and and other subversives failed to destroy our Constitution, Specter has managed under the guise of protecting Americans, to legalize our national nightmare; to encourage the federal government to enter our homes in the dead of night without knocking, and to search our homes without benefit of a court authorized warrant.  As noted in a Los Angeles Times editorial:

True, Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has said the program is incompatible with FISA and has called for a court to determine its constitutionality. But legislation to bring the NSA spies in from the legal cold has stalled, and Specter has complicated matters by simultaneously pressing his own bill and signing on to a (superior) measure proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Most disappointing of all, the Senate squandered an opportunity to link the confirmation of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, a former head of the NSA, to a fuller accounting by the administration of why it bypassed FISA and a promise to comply with the law in the future.

The Constitution is clear: to search there must be a warrant, and there must be probable cause to obtain it. Specter is prepared to lead the Congress to adopting legislation that would authorize the President to obtain warrants without probable cause.   Hopefully, there will be an opportunity to resurrect the Feinstein drafted legislation which protects what few precious liberties are left in this country.

As further noted in the LA Times editorial:

Fortunately, stirrings elsewhere on Capitol Hill offer a glimmer of hope for legislation to rein in the NSA. This week, 23 House Republicans joined 183 Democrats in supporting an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have prohibited expenditures for electronic surveillance in the United States except pursuant to criminal wiretapping statutes and FISA. The amendment was cosponsored in part by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who have introduced a separate measure, the NSA Oversight Act, which would make it clear that FISA remains the sole authority for the surveillance of Americans on American soil.

Comments

[A.J. Love]

This bizarre era that we live in seems to grow more bizarre by the day. What can we the people do about it? Hope and pray that the Democrats take control? As you mentioned in another recent post, a whole heckuva lot of the Democrats aren't real Democrats anyways... It is in times like these that I am thankful that I am an eternal optimist; that said, however, I am struggling for solutions.