Shockingly, We Are Still All Alive
As noted in the comments, it is going on 12 hours since the PAA has expired, and shockingly enough, we are all alive. Could it be that our President and his lackeys in the right-wing blogosphere and conservative media have been full of shit and were lying to us? These experts think so:
Many intelligence scholars and analysts outside the government say that today’s expiration of certain temporary domestic wiretapping laws will have little effect on national security, despite warnings to the contrary by the White House and Capitol Hill Republican leaders.With the Protect America Act expiring this weekend, domestic wiretapping rules will revert to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States.
The original FISA law, these experts say, provides the necessary tools for the intelligence community to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists.
And that isn’t the liberal media saying that. That is the Moonie Times.
Bush is so credibility free that even the Washington Times won’t carry his water any more, and the wimpy Democrats in Congress are for once defying him. Can you say “lame duck?”
Ugh
You might be safe where you are John, but here in DC I’m down to EIGHT BOTTLES OF BEER IN MY FRIDGE!! Now I have to brave the nuclear wasteland outside brought about by the lapse of the PAA to go find some more.
ThymeZone
I dunno, I feel a sense of loss. Now when I make a meaningless phone call, I don’t have the feeling that somebody is listening in and trying to decide if my lefty rants are actually a threat to the country. I enjoyed that feeling, it made me feel special. Now, nothing. Gone are the comforting clicks on the phone. I feel so …. alone.
I suspect that even the Washington Times figured out a long time ago that the whole FISA fight was a sucker deal, a scam designed to keep the Dems fighting over something that never really mattered at all. Now that the game isn’t working for their side, they are going to poo-pooh it.
jake
I thought I felt a disturbance in The Force. Or maybe I shouldn’t have had that third beer last night. It should be interesting to see what happens. As the days pass without massive death and destruction BushCo will have to crank up the Mighty Wurlitzer of Wet Pants. Will the Rainbow of Doom suddenly shoot up to Orange based on “Credible Information”? Will Squirtoff’s gut start to rumble like thunder? Will people say “I’m fucking sick of this shit, shut the fuck up!”
It would be nice if someone pointed out that the same Admin that is willing to protect our 2nd Am. rights even though some people misuse guns, seems very eager to throw away our 4th Am. rights to keep us “safe.”
I must keep an eye on the boob toob because there’s a good chance Bush will throw a full on hissy fit.
The WaTi has been taking smacks at Bush for a while. I bet it will be instrumental in spreading the Bush Was a Stealth Librul! rallying cry for the fRight.
Question for the lawyers: What could happen if someone filed lawsuits against the telecoms now? Would they get thrown out if the bill passed with some sort of retroactive immunity clause?
Gay Veteran
Ugh, you have beer in DC? Baltimore has been totally destroyed because the Demoncrats defied Dear Leader. Zombies are now roaming what were the streets.
Punchy
/re-rescans for party invites with Jake’s name on em….doesn’t see any…pounds fist
jake
We have beer and zombies. Fortunately we have the zombies contained, while the beer roams free.
BTW, I originally read the end of your second sentence as “...deified Dear Leader.” Lydexia is so much fun.
I am officially inviting EVERYONE to the “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass,” party on 1.20.09. It’ll either be cold as fuck or GCC warm but a good time will be had by all.
Birdzilla
Liberals ideas is to dictate what you can do in the privacy of your own home
Cain
I’m sure Harry Reid is quite unhappy since he tried oh so hard to please Bush.
cain
Ugh
I have survived the trip and returned with a sixer of Sam Adams, although I think my hair is beginning to fall-out and the zombies got my right-hand. I think that’s a fair trade.
Elvis Elvisberg
The real strange thing is that it’s not just Bush—the whole GOP, including the Heritage Foundation, were all wetting their pants yesterday. So it’s still weird to see the Washington Times reporting the news accurately.
It does contain a factual error, though, in keeping with Times policy. Nothing will revert to anything 30 years old—FISA has been repeatedly updated during the Bush administration. Just ask George Bush circa 2001:
Surveillance of communications is another essential method of law enforcement. But for a long time, we have been working under laws written in the era of rotary telephones. Under the new law, officials may conduct court-ordered surveillance of all modern forms of communication used by terrorists.
Neo
I bet you have that same rush that you had the last time you went out driving while incredibly drunk, and managed to not hit anybody.
The best part is knowing that if you actually hit anybody, you could blame it all on Bush, and the wind from the wagging heads would blow away the foul stench of the dead.
Dennis - SGMM
You’re wrong. The terrorists killed me half an hour ago.
Redhand
Yes, but never fear: Bill Kristol on “Fox News Sunday” was more than willing. Kristol is such a supercilious ass. The other flack (name escapes me) was almost as bad.
The Day After « Liberty Street
[...] “Could it be,” John Cole asks, “that our President and his lackeys in the right-wing blogosphere and conservative media have been full of shit and were lying to us??” [...]
Jess
Very poetic! And like some of the best poetry, apparently written while in an opium dream.
srv
McConnell puts domestic terrorist threats on alert
Who could have predicted?
Dennis - SGMM
Aw gee, kid, you’re all crossed up but we’ll help you on your way. See, you’re at the corner of Ignorance and Arrogance. Ya’ wanna’ follow Arrogance to where it forks. Take the right fork, that’s Incompetence. Just follow follow Incompetence all the way to Iraq and you’ll get all the foul stench of the dead you want.
jake
Oops. Sorry man, I thought you were a terrorist.
I hope you’ll let bye-gones be bye-gones and not eat my beer-pickled brains or anything.
Dennis - SGMM
Braaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins
!
TenguPhule
Birdzilla, are you sitting down?
You don’t have a right to privacy anymore.
It was revoked in Bush Signing Statement 345: Shat the Bed and I need to go to the Potty.
TenguPhule
Yes. SASQ, juicy fresh brains edition.
Continue on, Zombie Hordes!
To Mordor!
SPIIDERWEB™
I just checked and the alert level hasn’t changed.
http://www.geekandproud.net/terror/
WTF
1!!
Dennis - SGMM
Okay, I was a terrorist. Because the Protect America Act is off I can probably tell my story in safety.
My sleeper cell has been sleeping since late 2000. In 2002, our leader, Abdel Ramen, told us to all get jobs because the money to pay rent on our safe house had stopped coming. I got a job at Staples. A few months later Abdel took all of our money for an emergency mission to Las Vegas. I’m guessing that he was martyred because we never heard from him again. Anyway, we lost the safe house. Luckily for me, I’d met a nice girl (She’s a substitute teacher) and I married her to improve my cover. We borrowed some money from her parents for a down payment on our own little safe house. Occasionally, I run into some of the other guys from the sleeper cell. We remain ready for martyrdom as long as we can fit it in between Peewee League and taking care of the lawn.
Joshua
This is crazy! I was in New York City all day yesterday, and nobody crashed anything into anything and nothing blew up! I didn’t even get mugged! What’s going on? I thought I was supposed to have been immediately captured and beheaded by Islamic terrorists when the PAA expired. Why am I still alive?
cleek
i dunno man… i’m having trouble with my code-signing certificates. i think the terrriss have somehow infiltrated the root certificate authority chains and diddled the secure hashes – no more secure web browsing!
/geek
DrDave
You’re shitting me…
SamFromUtah
I think the expiration will have little effect because the Bushies are going to go ahead and continue breaking the law anyway.
Spunky N. Tadpole
deNNis yur RitE – zoMbi teRRisTs kIld Me 2 aBoUT 4 o kLok – noW i cNt rite nY bLoGposTs to gUd & i hAv 2 Go & eAT sUm bRaiNz – Servz mE RitE 4 votInG DeMKratK – gO mCcAIN
Wilfred
The Republicans have been doing their stand up ‘Protect America’ act for years now.
Joey Maloney
Yeah, well, I say that today’s expiration will also have little effect on the Cheney administration’s conduct. They’ve shit on any and every part of the Constitution and the Federal code they’ve felt like for seven years. So, what, now they’re going to say, “Oops, better not continue warrantless surveillance of Americans because IT WOULD BE AGAINST THE LAW
”
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
Joey Maloney
Or, what SamFromUtah said…
Svensker
I think the expiration will have little effect because the Bushies are going to go ahead and continue breaking the law anyway.
Well, obviously, silly, or else we wouldn’t be safe! You libruls says the dummest things.
jake
Dennis “Allah’s Little Zombie” SGMM shields the Doritos from the infidels.
catatonia
Oh go ahead, laugh it up and ignore the Mohammadean Motherships that even now hang over our major metro areas, having arrived at exactly 1201 this morning, hidden from view by cloaking devices that are activated by frequencies on a part of the electromagnetic spectrum that could only be decoded by keyword searches conducted under the PAA by telecom companies with complete immunity. E’en as the sophisticates in our major urban areas make sport of our President, their lives grind down to their inevitable end, as the deadly hummus apparatus of the Motherships is trained on NY, Washington, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Martha’s Vineyard, and the entire state of Vermont, whose residents feckless lives are doomed to death by chick peas, as soon as the ships receive the go code from A/Q’s New Number Two.
HyperIon
all this zombie talk reminds me of two characters who haven’t been seen around here for a while, Zombie Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. i don’t think ZSC posted during xmas but maybe EB will check in before the season of peeps.
vishnu schizt
“The U.S. intelligence chief said Sunday that internal Hezbollah groups or Syria may be to blame for the killing of a Hezbollah commander that has led the FBI to put domestic terror squads on alert in the United States.”
Um – what terror squads?
Invigilator
I just heard an Islamofascist mothership from my condo here in Chevy Chase! The skies are cloudy so I can’t see anything, but there is an ominous rumbling, like a basso profundo muezzin! I’m going to go hide under the bed! And I’ll take my bottle of vodka, since beer would make me have to come out and pee too soon. Farewell, comrades!
J. Michael Neal
I don’t know, guys. My burrito from Chipotle this morning tasted kind of funny. Are we sure the terrorists haven’t just disguised themselves as Mexicans, poisoning our supply of black beans as we speak?
Delia
It was a very nice day in Eugene, OR. The sun came out and everything, which was quite a change. I forgot all about the PAA being gone and the deadly motherships and all, and went shopping. But they say the rain’s coming back tomorrow, so that might be a better time to go hide under the bed.
jake
Nah. That’s just Skeletor Squirtoff’s gut sending out a signal to block the MuslimShip’s defense system.
The Other Steve
WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!
The Other Steve
It’s statistically proven that everybody dies eventually.
The Easter Bunny
Well, excuse the shit out of me. Been a little busy trying to keep the Canuckofascist hordes from pouring over the border like maple-scented locusts and disrupting the comfortable little lives of latte-slurping commies like you. And you know what? That job just got a lot harder thanks to your Canuckophile allies in Congress.
Since Protecting America apparently isn’t important to them, I have to rely on Santa’s elves for intelligence gathering now. You’d think they’d be good at that kind of thing, wouldn’t you? I mean, they’re tiny little people who worked for a guy who made a career out of entering people’s houses undetected.
Well, that’s just one of the many, many things you’re wrong about, moonbat. As it turns out, Santa’s elves are worthless little dipshits. Is it really that hard to figure out that you should take the bells off of your clothes before going on a covert op? Apparently it is, if you’re a pointy-eared little mongoloid with a holly fetish.
But hey, not your problem, right? Just forget all about the monstrous threats baying at America’s door and go have another abortion or gay marriage. I’m sure that will be a great comfort to you when you’re being impaled on a set of moose antlers by a mob of crazed tundra jockies.
Peeps, bitches!
PS: The Magical Unity Pony (he and I go way back) would like you hairless apes to leave him out of your grubby little candidate selection process, OK? Don’t make me tell you twice.
Number Six
Who is Number One?
jake
Typical defeatocrat twaddle, the Easter Bunny is going to kick your sorry ass.
Once he finds the bastard who made his feet into lucky charms.
Zifnab25
The only Mexicans you need to worry about are the ones with backpacks. Tom Tancredo told me so.
The Easter Bunny
Reeeal funny, fucknuts.
I may be busy fighting terrorists and defending freedom, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take the time to deliver an Easter basket stuffed full of ass-kickery to you, pal.
Punchy
Chipolte burritos for breakfast? Yikes
TenguPhule
Illegal Bio-weapons detected!
Security Level Code Flatulence!
demimondian
Prosthetic enhanced ass kickery, that is. From what I have read, TEB’s real motivation for the initial invasion of Hotel Claus was direct access to Santa’s collection of…err…prosthetic devices.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
And yet, shockingly, the Republic lives on. No prison camps for lefties, homosexuals, and abortionists after seven years, not 12 hours. No police state after seven years, not 12 hours. So what have you guys been whining like bitches about since Florida 2000—the imaginary threat of a harmless President?
4tehlulz
I look forward to your sudden discovery of due process on January 20, 2009.
Timb
Speaking of EEEL, go read his work at Protein Wisdom. Okay, go read Collins’s work, especially the piece attacking Greenwald for noting the righties need for an enemy. Collins uses it to connect the death of a Hezbollah leader to the Archbishop of Canterbury (somewhere the ghost of John Birch took a break from anally buggering the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover and they shared the self-satisfied smiles of folks whose work lives on long after them)!
It’s that kind of dedication to sophistry, vast international conspiracies, and disdain for the rule of law that makes EEEL and his friends so special.
Quick, EEEL, jump under your bed! A lawsuit was just filed against Verizon! Run away, scared righties, as the procession of lawsuits drags America down into Sharia law
P.S. To be fair to EEEL, he’s been brain dead since the PAA expired.
The Easter Bunny
Look, I wandered into that tubby old perv’s “special” workshop by mistake, OK? And the only reason I loaded up all of the, uh, merchandise and hauled it off to my lair is because I was afraid one of Santa’s idiot little helpers would make a mistake.
But hey, maybe depraved liberals like you think it would a good thing if little Janey America woke up on Christmas morning and unwrapped a PleazurePole 2000 instead of a Barbie Malibu Mansion.
Peeps (with vibrating action!), bitches!
TenguPhule
Wrong, you lying sack of shit.
We are in a police state now. One that has turned rights into priviliges and let us carry on day to day because they choose to do so.
You’ve helped lay the groundwork for this, don’t bitch if and when a Democrat uses it to begin the purge.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Suuuuuure, we are, moonbat. Suuuuuuuuure we are.
Tell that to my business partner who came over from the former Soviet Union. He’ll show you what a police state looks like, since you obviously have no clue.
(Note to self: They hate the “police state,” and yet they love the Che… what special retardation is this?)
timb
I have a “business partner” too. He is gay Arab, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Pakistan in the 1990’s….just in time for the Taliban. So, he’s lived under Stalin, Gorbachev, and the Taliban! Naturally, he’s a “classical liberal”, who favors an increase in government surveillance powers, a destruction of all symbols offensive to right wing trolls, and pens long jeremiads about the loss of morality due to a lack of tax cuts.
See, my fictional business partner is better than your fictious business partner.
On a serious note, EEEL is ludicrous fop. What sort of standard for freedom considers rights negotiable? James Madison was always a fool and Jefferson…a cock-eyed optimist. Absolute rights! HA. Those fools never faced engineering students from Riyadh! What are a few million native hostile Native Americans, the English burning Washington, Napoleon rampaging through Europe (and planning on conquering America). We have real problems!
TenguPhule
And keep dreaming of those sugarplum fairies, EEEL.
You do not have a right to privacy, you have a privilige of privacy.
You do not have a right to guns, you have a privilige of guns.
You do not have a right to trial or right to not be tortured.
You have a privilige of trial and not being tortured.
The thing is, your priviliges can be revoked at any time when the Junta decides it wants to take them away from you.
The Police state may choose not to use all of its powers for now, but it has them.
ET
9AM on Tuesday the 19th and we aren’t dead yet.