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Or, 10 Motives to Fear Why the Democrats Voted to Allow Continuation of Warrantless SearchesI can see only ten potential reasons why those currently (and hopefully temporarily) in control of the Democratic Party so cravenly caved in to Bush and conspired with him to violate the Constitution and our fundamental freedoms by granting him near dictatorial powers for spying and searching without warrants:
1. They have never bothered to read the Constitution. Maybe all they have time to read is bribe requests from lobbyists.
2. They do not understand or have forgotten how central it is to our democracy and what we stand for in the world. D’oh.
3. They can’t read or are of such minimal intellectual capacity that they cannot comprehend the plain meaning and obvious intent of the words. It makes Bush’s stumbling through a children’s story while 9/11 was in progress seem professorial in comparison.
4. Their copies of the Constitution are missing several important pages. I wouldn’t put is past Bushites to razor blade all copies they can locate, but I am beginning to doubt the ability of Democrats to notice.
5. They don’t care or they are lazy, or incompetent or cowards afraid of a fight. From their actions over the last several years, this is sadly an emerging pattern.
6. They have been bought off or being blackmailed. Wouldn’t it be an interesting irony if whatever blackmail is being used was obtained by this same illegal power the Executive Branch has been using for years to secretly search communications?
7. They are more interested in preserving their perks of office than they are obeying their oath of office in which they expressly swore to defend the Constitution. The oath, by the way, is not to defend people or places from attack by terrorists, but to defend the CONSTITUTION.
8. They do not recognize how easily the power to spy and search without warrants can be abused. Nothing prevents it from being used against Americans for purely partisan purposes such as finding dirt to blackmail or destroy political opponents. This is especially possible when there is little or no oversight such as a neutral court to help, at least a little, to discourage violations. That is why the founding fathers made the absolute prohibition such a key and highlighted provision. If the ambiguous prohibition against infringing the right of “militias” to bear arms has been interpreted so broadly that it is perceived as allowing everyone to have any guns they want, then surely an explicit and unequivocal prohibition against searches without warrants ought to be enforced as written.
9. They do not believe Bush and his monomaniacal cabal are capable of using the power in ways not allowed by law. Actually, if this is the reason, it falls into the gross stupidity category already mentioned above since how could anyone who reads not be aware of what Bush and the minions he exemplifies have been doing?
10. They see themselves gaining control of the White House and want the power to spy and search without warrants for themselves.
Keep in mind that to prevent this particular assault on the Constitution, all the Democrats had to do was simply not bring the bill up for a vote. Nothing else. It would have automatically died a natural death this Fall. They did not need to fear a Presidential veto. They did not have to worry about a filibuster stalling work in Congress for a lengthy period. They did not have to worry about having enough votes to win. They did not have to worry about looking ineffectual. They would have greatly pleased their constituents. There would have been little harm as evidenced by the fact that the millions of violations by Bush for literally years so far has not actually accomplished anything useful in saving the nation for harm. The Democrats did not have to even take a position one way or the other and would have had cover by claiming it was not their fault. They could have legitimately said hundreds of bills never see the light of day and there are other things of more importance claiming attention on their limited time. Consequently, they had little worry that doing nothing could be effectively used against them when running for office.
Why then did the Democrats bizarrely go along with a lengthy extension of the surveillance and wiretapping without warrants outrage? It is not clear which of reasons speculated above resulted in such gross offenses against the Constitution, but whatever the reason, it is scary. We apparently need to replace the present Democrats in Congress as well as the President and all his followers.
Maybe what we need on ballots is a “NONE OF THE ABOVE” option when voting so that a new election is immediately held and none of those running at the time are permitted to be in the new race.
