Because I wasn't already furious

[cyrano]

Glenn Greenwald on the House of Representatives and their decision to finally cave on TeleCom retroactive immunity after pretending to think about taking a stand:

And now, after picking this fight and letting it rage for weeks, they are going to do what they always do -- just meekly give in to the President, yet again generating a tidal wave of headlines trumpeting how they bowed, surrendered, caved in, and lost to the President. They're going to cast the appearance that they engaged this battle and once again got crushed, that they ran away in fear because of the fear-mongering ads that were run and the attacks from the President. They further demoralize their own base and increase the contempt in which their base justifiably holds them (if that's possible). It's almost as though they purposely picked the path that imposed on themselves all of the political costs with no benefits.

Even with their ultimate, total compliance with the President's orders, they're still going to be attacked as having Made Us Less Safe -- by waiting weeks to capitulate, rather than doing so immediately, they opened up critical intelligence gaps, caused us to lose vital intelligence, made us less safe, etc. But now, they have no way to defend themselves against those accusations because, at the end of the day, they are admitting that the President was right all along, that telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping are good and important things that the President should have had all along. So why didn't they just give it to him before the law expired? It was a loss for them on every level.

What the fuck, Democratic Party? Are you that desperate to remain in the minority?

Comments

[l2g.livejournal.com]

It must be all part of the new mentality--that having a backbone and dissenting is unpatriotic. (I seem to recall this sort of thing happened in 1930s Germany, too.)

Did Kucinich cave in as well?

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

They haven't yet been badgered into voting yet, Glenn is commenting on information coming out of the House that more and more borderline Dems are thinking that maybe the Constitution ain't really that great after all.

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

Notice they didn't really try when republicans controlled congress. The stuff this will cover up is so bad that Ashcroft and the top levels of the justice department threatened to resign if it wasn't stopped. No word has been leaked about what that was, the stuff we hear about is the stuff that is still ongoing.