Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Saturday, August 04, 2007

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

Attributed, probably but not necessarily correctly, to Benjamin Franklin.

Well, that didn't take long. FISA appears to have been gutted, 'cause the Decider Dumbass decided it was to be so.
Under pressure from President Bush, House Democrats on Saturday grudgingly prepared to move ahead with approving changes in a terrorist surveillance program despite serious reservations about the scope of the measure.

With time running out before a scheduled monthlong break and the Senate already in recess, House Democrats confronted the choice of accepting the administration’s bill or letting it die. If it died, that would leave Democratic lawmakers, who have long been anxious about appearing weak on national security issues[.]

Congratulations, Democrats, you both look and have demonstrated you are weak, precisely by capitulating yet again to what everybody knows you know is wrong. I know, I know, it must be difficult for you all, the Republicans being vile scoundrels every one, little better than gangsters at this point, infantile obstructionists, and so on. But you Democrats are showing yourselves all too palpably to be simply untrustworthy, timorous, pathetic cowards, acting against your own convictions, or at any rate acting against the wishes of those of us who elected you, opting time after time after time to buckle and to compromise to the posturing of the Killer Clowns, and never once gaining anything by it but losing instead ever more and more of our now terrifyingly tenuous hold on civil liberties, accountability, legitimacy, world standing in the face of the onslaught of nearly universally reviled Movement Republicanism.

Honestly, what a desolation it all is. I feel angry and ashamed and disgusted. Get a spine, get a brain, or get lost! Do your jobs, Democrats! Do what we elected you to do! Not to put too fine a point on it, when you act like losers, we all lose!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's kind of scary that the same administration that has increased its executive power so dramatically in recent years, including the power to spy on its own citizens, is also the most secretive in history. Dick Cheney invented his own "Top Secret" designation, which has no force of law, but which looks like it's being respected anyway.

You would think that, if anything, the foundation of a healthy democracy would be the opposite of what is happening: the increasing power of the people to watch their rulers.