Keep up the call volume!

Tell the Senators to filibuster!

One word:

FILIBUSTER!

And in case Democrats haven't noticed, Bill Clinton had proven (as if it really needed to be proven) that it's now safe to attack Republicans on national security without appearing to be weak on it themselves.

There is no downside to filibustering this loathsome bill, and only upside. Whereas there is 100% downside to allowing it to pass, and no upside.

This is a no-brainer, the politically safe and likely smart thing to do, not to mention the principled and honorable thing to do. This is where we can and must finally stop the Republicans' unnecessary and unwarranted steady dismantling of the constitution.

Absolutely 48 is more than enough to sustain a filibuster. FILIBUSTER.  Even if 7 wimps peel away. FILIBUSTER.

There's a prior agreement not to filibuster. I don't think Reid will go back on it.

Note that Nelson is the only Dem voting no. Landreiu voted yes.

It would have needed Snowe, Collins, and DeWine (or Voinovich). Tough under any circumstances.

Matt,

What's up with Sherrod Brown?  Please don't tell me that he cast that vote because he thinks he needs to look tough going down the stretch in his Senate race.  If he is an example of the best of our 'progressive' candidates, then things are worse than I thought....

From the NYT

"We are dealing with the enemy in war, not defendants in our criminal justice system," said Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "In time of war it is not practical to apply the same rules of evidence that we apply in civil trials or courts martial for our troops."

Hmmmm. Legally we're not at war. The President has not asked for nor has Congress granted a declaration of war. So we're not at war, all the bombast aside. Read those words again: we're not at war. We have troops on the ground in Iraq getting killed every day, but we're not at war. And if we were, there are those pesky Geneva Conventions that cover all of this . . . conventions which this administration has repeatedly said and demonstrated that it no longer abides by.

Ah but what about the war on terror? It's a stirring lexical construct, but not a legal one. So again, we are not at war. The writ was famously put aside by President Lincoln but then, there was an actual war going on. No, the war on terror is a necessary law enforcement and intelligence gathering exercise wrapped in the rhetoric of something much larger, a rhetoric that establishes no clear goals, no definable end point, no parameters for its construct, and no legal basis for its prosecution.

The slope remains slippery. The dems are dancing behind President Clinton who is in a prime position to fire away and those positioning for the election cycle in November and in 2008. I just don't see anything other than more erosion of the rule of law for at least the next two years.

Having said that, we need to keep up the noise.

Called...

Specter
Reid (twice)
Durbin
Snowe
Collins
Obama (twice)
Feingold
Leahy
Kerry

Do we have a chance??

Screw the prior agreement not to filibuster. The Rethugs have swatted away every attempt to address the worst parts of the bill; I would call that acting in bad faith. By my lights, the Dems are under no obligation to honor an agreement with proven liars. Weren't they assured that there were only "technical changes" to the bill? Yet we now know there were substantive changes that made a bad bill even worse. Fuck Senate comity. The Dems have plenty of dry powder left--I say use it.

...he could keep bills like this from getting to the floor, stuff Bush's judges up his keister, investigate Halliburton [complete this list yourself]

I say:

1. Win Lamont. This will demonstrate that the netroots are not just piss and wind.

2. Leave Brown and Ford and the rest of the backslidin' Christians alone, at least for the next few weeks.

3. Send money to Ben Nelson. He's in a state that was won by Bush 65% and he's running against a billionaire. (Okay, I'm kidding; I wouldn't send him money either. But I hope he wins).

4. Blame the voters. They really ARE conservative.

The Dems are letting themselves get date-raped again. Don't any of them carry a Taser in their purse?

If you are looking for an explanation, just remember the majority crowd in power right now are descendants of the people who committed genocide on the native Americans.

Reid is not decided yet on tomorrow's vote or a filibuster so keeping calling preferably with strong messages. Snowe's office said they are working on amendments and she has not decided on tomorrow's vote.

The bill passed by the house, allows ANYONE to be designated as an "Enemy Combatant" at the whim of the president. Even American citizens can essentially be "disappeared" under this act.

ANYTHING passed by the senate will include this in the conference report.

Howard Coble, in his position as chairman of the Judiciary committee on homeland security, pushed through an appropriation of 481 million dollars for building domestic detention camps. That's right: DOMESTIC detention camps.

This is the same Howard Coble that is on record as having favored the detention of Japanese Americans during WWII. "It was for their own good;" he said. (google his record)

I wondered at the time about the domestic detention camps. Now, I don't need to wonder. What many, in the past, have chalked-up to racial bigotry, now seems to be revealed as an overwhelming belief in "social stability." After all, no society is more "stable" than a police state.

Soviet practices such as this drove the "cold war" of the 1950's. Americas HATED the Soviets and Stalinism. Nixon rose to power teaching Americans to FEAR the communist system and loss of freedom.

But that was the republican party of then. This is the republican party of today.

These camps are for you and me.

To : Majority Leader Harry Reid (I can dream, can't I?)

Dear Senator Reid:

I realize that you've made a `gentleman's agreement' with the Republicans not to filibuster the Military Commissions Bill, but the problem is there are no gentlemen on the other side of the aisle. Every amendment to this abominable affront to democracy and human decency has been swatted away by the GOP, and now Senator Warner has the audacity to ask that we `trust him' to keep an out-of-control, rogue executive in check in spite of the tremendous leeway the bill would give him in abandoning the rule of law regarding so-called `enemy combatants.'

Senator Reid, your Republican colleagues have acted in bad faith. You have every right within the limits of personal integrity and honor to abrogate the agreement to limit debate. You were sold a pig in a poke, and they didn't even try to put lipstick on it.

With Respect,
Fred Woolsey

Mind you, Dems standing up for habeas corpus should be a no-brainer, you might say.

But - for only the NE Nelson to go off the reservation on a vote like this - bearing in mind that 34 Dems abandoned ship on the vote on passage of the corresponding House bill - I would count as a score for Harry.

And - of course - the scope for GOP catch and release was strictly limited: Chafee was a cinch, it was Specter's amendment, one of the Maine sisters had a hair appointment - only Sununu might have been prevailed upon to side with the management.

As it is, the GOP Big Push on national security is a shambles: the NSA bill went nowhere, the detainee bill has been mired in back-and-forth.

I don't think Uncle H is going to risk giving them a chance to regroup by attempting a filibuster.

Voting for a principled amendment like Specter's is one thing: allowing oneself to be painted as a bomb-thrower by one's GOP opponent is something that a good many more than just Nelson would find too much to stomach.