The Sunshine Empire

President Bush made Congressional Democrats bend to his iron will this week by getting them to all collectively ask “how high” when he demanded changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  Now at least from what has been publicly discussed about this I agree in principle.  If the two members of a conversation are both in foreign countries and the call is simply switched through the United States then I do not feel that constitutes domestic conversations and they should be able to view that as foreign intelligence.  But should they follow through it would be a win for the President.  He gets to have Democrats bend over like they did in the good ‘ole post-9/11 days, and it’s on what used to be his trump issue.  But the one thing that bothers me about this is when Bush takes his time, and then when it’s opportune he  jumps out and starts braying about how it should have been done yesterday and it’s the Democrats fault it’s not.  The  illegal warrant-less wiretapping has been disclosed now for years, and the supposed ruling from the FISA court that caused this to be a priority was in January.  If this was so fucking deathly important why weren’t we having this discussion years ago.  Bush could have had his rubber stamp Republican Congress pass it and he could have it signed before he gets milk and cookies and gets tucked in.

Some of my conservative friends will start with the conspiracy thing, yet it would floor me if a political shop filled with some of the best marketing people in politics was not the genesis of some of the planning and timing.   This thing did not become and issue until 7 months after it should have been an issue.  Many conservatives use the tired supposition that liberals don’t think that terrorism is a threat, and that is wrong.  What I wonder is if any conservatives really think it is.  Can you remember the last grandiose raising of the terror color code to orange?  Exactly, I can’t either.