I am beginning a journey today to a new place to live. That journey won't take me very far, just from Lansdowne to Northeastern Philadelphia, but it is a move nonetheless. And moving, by its very definition, is a lot of work. But it's not all just packing boxes and lugging furniture. (Unfortunately, that part does still have to be done.) But that's not what this diary series is going to be about. Follow me below the fold to find out more.
Well, by now we all know that the House passed the shameful (and inherently unconstitutional by just about any study of the Constitution) disgrace that is the current FISA bill with a whopping 105 Democrats supporting its passage. This is the bill that makes the warrantless wiretapping legal as well as provides immunity for the telecom companies who knowingly provided the Bush Administration with our conversations illegally.
Many of us know that a filibuster is the surest way to kill a bill in the Senate and that there are 49 Democratic Senators, nine more than are needed to sustain a filibuster. By now, many of us also know that Obama intends to vote for the bill, as of course does head capitulator Harry Reid and other assorted Senators including some Democrats. And we are starting to hear the gurgling forth of excuses from a few of them, much of it akin to what we heard in the House last Friday.
Seeing that there may, in fact, not be enough Constitution-loving Democrats to filibuster this stain of a bill, and given that "not enough votes to filibuster" should never be an excuse for something this odious to pass in the Senate, I offer (or rather educate and/or remind) the Senators of not only the meaning of the FISA bill but also ways to block a bill that exist in the Senate in addition to a filibuster.
