Activism Across America

Al Franken likes to depict himself as a well-informed, straight-talking kind of guy. Franken says that if he is elected to the United States Senate, he will stand up for the rights of voters in Minnesota.

So why is it, then, that Al Franken refuses to take a position on the FISA Amendments Act?

Go ahead and search through Al Franken’s Senate campaign web site. Search the news. Search the blogs. Nowhere does Al Franken even mention the FISA Amendments Act.

This proposed law threatens to take away Americans’ constitutional rights, and to destroy the system of checks and balances that keeps our democracy alive. The FISA Amendments Act represents one of the worst policies of George W. Bush - spying on millions of Americans without a search warrant or any other form of judicial control. The FISA Amendments Act is corrupt to the core.

So, why won’t Al Franken take a stand? Has Franken been too lazy to bother to read the FISA Amendments Act, or is he just too afraid to condemn this latest abuse from the politicians of fear?

John Linder, of Georgia’s 7th district, is a downright despicable member of Congress, and rather lazy too. When Linder does show up to vote, he almost always casts a vote the wrong way. John Linder has voted for laws banning free protest, and free speech, and for big government spying. Heck, John Linder has even voted against Head Start preschools. Picking on little kids is tacky, Congressman Linder.

Don’t think that means I’m about to endorse John Linder’s challenger, Doug Heckman. Yes, Doug Heckman has the Democratic nomination, but he’s not really much of a Democrat, to tell the truth.

Doug Heckman has endorsed the FISA Amendments Act. The FISA Amendments Act retroactively legalizes a corrupt government spying program that gathered private information about the personal communications of millions of Americans so that George W. Bush and his aides could look at them at their leisure.

Doug Heckman had the gall to state recently, “This bill ensures—as Senator Obama said recently—that ’somebody’s watching the watchers.’”

Pardon me, but has Doug Heckman even read the FISA Amendments Act? No one who has actually read the law could say such a ridiculous thing. The FISA Amendments Act does not ensure that “somebody’s watching the watchers”. What the FISA Amendments Act actually does is give the Attorney General of the United States the authority to set massive spy operations against Americans into action, and then make the Attorney General the sole person in all the federal government to certify that the spying is taking place according to the law.

Look on page 77, Mr. Heckman. Read it. You’ll see quite clearly that there’s nobody watching the watchers except the watchers themselves. The FISA Amendments Act puts the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse.

No one, and I mean no one, so profoundly stupid as to endorse the FISA Amendments Act deserves any citizen’s vote. That goes for Democrats as well as Republicans.

John Linder ought to be kicked out of Congress, but to be honest, Doug Heckman wouldn’t be much of an improvement. I have advice to the Democrats of Georgia’s 7th congressional district: In 2010, why don’t you nominate someone for Congress who is knows the Constitution, and who actually reads laws before he endorses them?