Thanks for Commenting
Mario, can you cite the "precedents" that you are talking about as far as similar egregious and illegal actions in terms of FISA?
As far as Heather, she likes it both ways if she can have it. It's not unusual for her to speak out on an issue and then retreat on it when the actual vote comes. Personally I commend her on taking a stand on the NSA spying. She does seem to respond much more to my liking when she's under pressure for her seat.
Now if she'd just reverse her view that looking into the failed intelligence and outright distortions used to justify the Iraq War would be irrelevant gazing into the rear view mirror, I'd really start to perk up.
There are Repubs in Congress who passionately stand up to Bush, like Chuck Hagel and Arlen Spector, but I just don't see Heather that way.
Far from being a rubber stamp, I note the Legislature has stood up to the guv on any number of occasions. Have you checked out their responses to his "Year of the Child" in this session, just for one example?
http://www.nationalreview.com/
mc...00602060731.asp
Hagel and Spector repubs??
Ha Ha Ha that's funny.
More like RINOS - Repub. In Name Only
Spector has been and is a Demorat. He just put an R in front of his name to dupe voters in his conservative district.
Mario, I like your style even when I don't agree with your substance. You're a good example of how to disagree without being disagreeable (a talent I'm only sometimes able to master).
I go by CharlieABQ and Charlie66 on several online poker sites, and I have registered a CharlieABQ blog on Blogger (although I haven't started it yet). I'm available to divulge personal details in response to email to me at CharlieABQ@comcast.net.
My life is an open book, I assume that all of my communications are being monitored, and I'm not hiding from anyone or anything. I've spent the last two days in front of the University Hilton protesting Mohamed El-Genk's yearly seminar on space-based weapons and propulsion systems, and you can't get a lot more public than standing on the street with a sign reading "No Space for War Mongers!"
Yes, I was rather selective in my remarks about Heather Wilson. Heck, Mario, it's a blog. Trust me; I could go on and on for pages, but I'm figuring that doing that would be both rude and ineffective.
You state "how anyone could see this as a slight to the memory of Coretta is beyond me." Here's an excerpt from the subhead: "But the FBI's wiretapping of King was precipitated by his association with Stanley Levison, a man with reported ties to the Communist Party. Newly available documents reveal what the FBI actually knew—the vast extent of Levinson's Party activities." I can see that you are acknowledging that Robert Kennedy was out of line to tap Martin's phone, but I'm hoping that you can see that confirming Martin's association with known communists can hardly be said to honor Coretta.
By the way, I don't think we need to limit ourselves to the 1960s for examples of government overstating its right to spy on its citizens; some want to go back to the 1860s. I just heard Rush Limbaugh advocating that we emulate Lincoln by locking up journalists criticizing Dick Cheney. While Limbaugh is closer to your arguments than to mine, I don't tar you with the same brush, Mario. I'm just saying that there are those over there on the right who are close to you in some areas but farther away when they claim that the administration can crush a 10-year-old boy's testicles any time they think it will suit their purposes. I suspect that we both disagree with them at least on that.
I will admit to a grudging admiration for those principled elements of Heather Wilson's stance on this, but I don't think anything will come of it.
The wiretapping situation is predicated on massive data mining. How, after all, do they know that it's "Al Queda" on the phone if they haven't gathered the information with data mining? Is there an Al Queda phone book? No, they are capturing data from all the calls, et al., they can get and filtering out probable subjects for further investigation.
So we aren't talking about just bugging terrorists. We're talking about bugging everyone. Under what condi
Apparently I wasn't selective enough and got cut off. Continuing . . .
So we aren't talking about just bugging known terrorists. We're talking about bugging everyone, including Kofi Annan, Hillary Clinton, and Howard Dean. Are they likely to ever admit this? Nope.
One last comment on Chris' slamming Arlin Spector for being a RINO: Isn't the same guy who refused to swear in Alberto Gonzalez? Does that sound like a Democratic move?
C'MON, EVERYONE WITH ANY COMMON SENSE KNOWS HEATHER IS JUST GRANDSTANDING.
You know, Lee, she probably was triangulating a bit on the wiretapping issue
It's harder to ignore stuff like this:
"Rep. Heather Wilson, an Albuquerque Republican, said she wants to restore funding for the commodity supplemental food program, which distributed staples to 16,418 New Mexico family members and seniors in 2005."
From Albuquerque Tribune 2/20/2006 "Bush's proposed cuts cause outcry"
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/
nw_n...4481843,00.html
While it may be disingenuous of Wilson to support social services like commodity food distribution (e.g., http://www.rrfb.org/) while simultaneously supporting broader policies designed to shift resources from social services to so-called "defense" budgets, it's hard to see a "grandstand" full of folks in her circle that she's "grandstanding" to on this issue.
I think it's fair to say that most Republicans think that most of the recipients of commodity foods are capable of making a living without them but find taking public welfare to be easier than working. They can see that some recipients are "deserving" but that most are just freeloaders.
Wilson is apparently going against this position. Sure, it might be from her impulses toward noblesse oblige, but it beats nothing. Her actions on wiretapping seem self-serving, but her ultimately-doomed-to-failure attempt to preserve social programs from tax cuts and military expansions may stem from a moral source.
She has more chance of temporarily maintaining a modicum of funding for commodity food distribution than she does of affecting the data mining currently going on.
The enemy of our enemies might be our friend, at least temporarily until the baser instincts kick in . . .
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