GOP United In Covering For President, Just Not Sure How To Do It

Please read this. This is from DailyKos. Oh, how this infuriates me! These GOP traitors need to be stopped! They've set our country on a disastrous course. Treasonous bastards! All of them. "You don't like the rules, change them" is what the Republicans have become. Stop the arrogant, reckless abuse of power now! They have us heading towards Nazi Germany!

I had to rant, so I thought this would be a good place to do it. :)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/3/1/104247/8879

<snip>

GOP United In Covering For President, Just Not Sure How To Do It
by georgia10
Wed Mar 01, 2006 at 08:42:47 AM PDT
The New York Times reports today that Republicans are "seeking to bridge differences" on legislation that would retroactively make legal Bush's illegal spying program.

eople at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity because its deliberations were supposed to be confidential, said the group remained sharply divided. On one side, Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has proposed a bill that would require the administration to seek periodic approval for the program as a whole from the existing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as well as its approval for specific wiretaps.

Congress created the court in 1978 as part of a broad overhaul of intelligence agencies and gave it the power to issue special secret warrants to eavesdrop on specific suspected foreign agents, but the Bush administration's program has so far circumvented the law.

Others in the meeting questioned whether the foreign-intelligence court's approval for the whole program might risk rejection by the Supreme Court, according to the people present. They said still others argued that involving a court would clash with the president's war powers.


Specter's legislation (which Glenn Greenwald analyzes here) is essentially a scruffier version of FISA which would bring Bush's program under the review of the FISA court. Frist has already completed his legal diagnosis and declared the program is "constitutional." He maintains it does not require more legislation, though he's open to "buttressing" what he says is the current authority for it. Then you have the likes of Pat Roberts who made it clear that any opposition to the program is "political opportunism" and legislation should embrace the program, not reject it.

Specter, who has repeatedly stated the program is illegal, has chosen (again) to provide cover for the President instead of addressing the fact the President broke the law. Even if Specter's legislation is passed, there is nothing stopping the President from issuing one of his infamous signing statements, reiterating his belief that Executive has an unbounded inherent power in a time of war, and ignoring any sort of oversight legislation. And so, while Republicans debate away in secret session about how best to make this pesky scandal disappear before midterms, the GOP remains united in embracing the radical claim that the President is indeed above the law.

These are not Reagan Republicans, they are not traditional conservatives. They are Nixonites, every one of them, from Specter on down. President Nixon famously claimed that "when the president does , that means it's not illegal." That fundamentally erroneous claim has become the motto of this Republican party. Nixonites like Frist, Roberts, and yes, even Specter, are set on shaping the law to conform to the President's actions, even though it should be the President's actions that should conform to the law in the first place. The President claims he has the authority to break the law, and Republicans refuse to challenge him. Nixon would have a loved a Congress like this...

<snip>

ALL CORRUPT REPUBLICANS!

CORRUPT! CORRUPT! CORRUPT!

IMPEACH THEM ALL!

End of rant.

There are the bad, really vile crooks, liars and creeps and then there are the the "good" Rs that let the bad guys do whatever the bad ones wanted fully aware but mutely complicit. NO R should be in power. When it is finally found how they corrupted elections the Rep Party should be banned From office for a decade.