Congress suffered a collective failure of courage this past August by failing to stand up for Americans’ due process and privacy rights when it mattered most. The Senate and House caved under White House pressure and voted to OK the gutting of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Put in place after the overreaching of Nixon’s White House, FISA has helped protect Americans’ liberties for 30 years by acting as a check on the government’s surveillance activities for intelligence purposes.

That all changed in August, when Congress – cowering in the face of the White House’s threats – agreed to ratify and expand the Bush-Cheney Administration’s power to spy on Americans, at home and abroad, without warrants.

Take action now: send your Representatives and Senators in Congress a spine so that they can stand up to the White House and fix FISA. We can’t accept anything less than a law that will protect Americans’ constitutional rights and provide oversight of government surveillance.

Congress Needs A Spine

The Democrats Who Enable Bush

By Helen Thomas, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/27476


Congress, please stop enabling this man:

Makes one wonder how much "dirt" he and Rove pulled together on all the Democrats (and Republicans) ~ well, everybody, really, in their "Reign of Terror."

How Congress Forgot Its Own Strength

By MARIO M. CUOMO
October 7, 2007

SENATORS Jim Webb of Virginia and Hillary Clinton of New York are right to demand that the president go before Congress to ask for a “declaration of war” before proceeding with an attack against Iran or any other nation. But there is no need for this demand to be put into law, as the two Democrats and their colleagues are seeking to do, any more than there is need for legislation to guarantee our right of free speech or anything else protected by the Constitution.

Article I, Section 8 already provides that only Congress has the power to declare war. Perhaps the founders’ greatest concern in writing the Constitution was that they might unintentionally create a president who was too much like the British monarch, whom they despised. They expressed that concern in part by assuring that the president would not have the power to declare war.

Congress’s refusal to comply with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution has led to a catastrophic aftermath. Such a tragedy should never be allowed to happen again. Rather than enact new legislation that would create constitutional ambiguity, the Democratic leadership in Congress should assert its strength by simply announcing it will allow no “resolutions” or “authorizations” purporting to delegate to the president Congress’s constitutional power to declare war against any other nation. Nor will there be any new war without Congress’s solemn deliberation and declaration of war.

The Democrats should go still further and announce that no money will be appropriated for any military action against another nation without a proper declaration of war. And this should be the position of the Democratic presidential candidates as well. How else can they make the case that they are less likely than President Bush to wage dangerous, improvident wars?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/opinion/07cuomo.html

Edwards: Dems need to show 'backbone'

By AMY LORENTZEN
Associated Press Writer

"It is time for our party, the Democratic Party, to show a little backbone, to have a little guts, to stand up for working men and women," the former North Carolina senator says. "If we are not their voice, they will never have a voice."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=3804663

GIVE STENY A SPINE

URGENT ACTION: CALL, FAX, EMAIL HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER STENY HOYER TO SUPPORT IMPEACHMENT.

THIS SUPPORT ACTION FOR THE KUCINICH RESOLUTION CURRENTLY UNDER CONSIDERATION IN THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IS DIRECTED AT KEY PARTY LEADERS BLOCKING IMPEACHMENT. OUR DEMAND IS TO OPEN HEARINGS IMMEDIATELY. (The letter is a collaborative effort by two Los Angeles area groups, Valley Impeach and Valley Dems United, and is the third in a series of urgent actions by Valley Impeach targeting these leaders.)

We encourage all impeachment, antiwar, progressive organizations around the country to join in this action. Spread the word. We need to flood party leader Steny Hoyer's office with thousands of calls, faxes, and emails.

DO IT TODAY! Send this email on to your lists as well… Let's spread this nation wide!!!

For more information about how your organization can participate in similar actions, please contact: valley.impeach@gmail.com

Please copy this letter below, sign it and send it out by FAX or call directly ASAP, delivery instructions are provided after the letter. His office will not receive emails outside his district and US Mail delivery is significantly delayed to Congress.

Thanks!

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/28590

Cynthia Tucker:

Still, here's some counterintuitive advice for the Democrats: Don't hedge. Lead. Do the right thing. Come out clearly and forcefully for putting illegal immigrants already in the country on a path to citizenship. This is no time to trim or triangulate. Show some spine. America is ready for reasoned leadership on this issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20071110/cm_u...ridethehighroad

Here we go again, more concessions ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — Congressional leaders are assembling a $500 billion package to try to resolve an impasse by providing President Bush with unfettered money for the Iraq war in exchange for new spending on popular domestic programs.

If acceptable to lawmakers and the White House, the package to be considered in the House as early as Tuesday would avert the threat of a shutdown of federal agencies and end a dispute that has lasted months and pitted Congressional Democrats against Mr. Bush and his Republican allies.

Senior lawmakers and Congressional aides said the broad outlines of the proposal called for the House to consider $30 billion for military operations in Afghanistan, as well as money for military bases and support programs for military families to quiet fears of Pentagon layoffs because of a lack of money.

The Senate would then add up to $40 billion for Iraq combat operations, with the expectation the final war spending total would produce enough Republican support to offset defections by House Democrats.

After the measure returns to the House for a final vote, Democrats opposed to the war are likely to vote against it but may not be able to stop it. The decision to free some money for the war without a deadline or goal for withdrawal would represent a major concession by Democrats. They had earlier said they would not send Mr. Bush any more war money this year unless he accepted a change in Iraq policy.

But Democratic leaders now say they have concluded that a logjam of 11 appropriations bills cannot be broken without acceding to at least some of the president’s demand for more war money.

“One way or another, there, I believe, will be bridge funding provided, and should be,” Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Friday, referring to money to pay for combat into early 2008.

Under the Democratic plan described by senior aides, the Iraq money would be voted on separately, to allow lawmakers opposed to the war to add money for health care, education, home heating programs, border enforcement and other initiatives.

The emerging proposal is similar to the way the White House and Democrats settled their initial showdown this year over Iraq spending, with Democrats’ dropping their demand for a withdrawal timeline in exchange for added spending at home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/08/