FISA and trust

Crooks and Liars:

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President Bush and the Republicans have been doing their best to scare the pants off the American people by lying through their teeth about the current FISA legislation and the fact-challenged pundits on Fox News Sunday did their best to perpetuate those lies this morning.

The perception they’re trying to give is that if the FISA legislation isn’t passed, our intelligence community will have to shut down operations and will no longer be able to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists — which is absurd. William Kristol is dumbfounded as to why the Democrats don’t believe the president and his appointees (who cares that they have been lying to us for years?), when they say we’ll all die if this legislation isn’t passed. Luckily, Juan Williams steps in with the reality the GOP isn’t telling the public - the U.S. government can STILL do surveillance on suspected terrorists without telecom immunity.

Gosh, why won't Dems just take the president's word? I mean it is not like he has ever gone back on his word, or abused power given to negotiate to get us into a war...It's not like we have reason to doubt his sincerity...right?


Crooks and Liars goes more into how unfounded the gloom, doom, and boom of presidential claims are really.

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Democratic Senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, appeared on Late Edition and did a great job of debunking the lies and spin being floated by President Bush and the GOP on FISA. As Juan Williams did earlier on Fox News Sunday, Reed makes it clear that allowing the flawed FISA legislation passed last August to lapse does not mean the U.S. can’t do surveillance on suspected terrorists.

Host Wolf Blitzer floated out the exact same argument William Kristol did on Fox, which is this notion that Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, is some sort of apolitical figure and somehow that makes him more believable. Reed shot that down, reminding Blitzer that the previous FISA laws are still in place and that U.S. intelligence can still go after suspects for several days before requesting a warrant.