Saxby Chambliss Reveals the Game
In an article explaining why Dianne Feinstein is in no rush to hold a hearing on the massive dragnet sucking up your communication and mine, Saxby Chambliss is quoted as saying,
“We so rarely have open hearings,” Chambliss said.
Eleven days ago, Saxby offered this as proof there is no problem with a dragnet collection of all Americans’ phone records.
To my knowledge, we have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint relative to the gathering of this information.
Congressional oversight in a democracy, ladies and gentlemen!
He’s the definitive empty suit.
~
The guy who impugned Max Cleland’s patriotism.
Emptywheel’s June 16 tweet said it best:
Now just a minit. I haven’t registered a complaint because I didn’t know it was going on; it is a secret isn’t it?
is this not in the same right-wing vein as todays’s 5th amend decision by the supreme court?
if you do not loudly claim foul, the courts, in that case,
or the congress, in the nsa matter, have no obligation to exercise oversight.
the critical point in both situations is the implied claim that those elected to congress as leaders or those appointed to the judiciary as leaders
have NO obligation to act on their own initiative.
their interventions in favor of constitutional rights for individual citizens MUST be triggered by requests from us citizen peons – otherwise it’s off to the next federalist society convention, or maybe to jackson hole for communing with other put-upon congesscritters and judges.
life is good. passing judgement on those you will never know and clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about, when you’re a “made man” in the federalist society and the u.s. supreme court, or in the u.s. senate,
is easy work with good pay and excellent benefits,
not to mention the millions that await saxby chambliss for being on a corporate board, being a consultant to defense/secufity companies seeking gov’t contracts, and being a speaker for right-wing causes he knows are folly.
@rg:
lol!
@orionATL:
DiFi never bothers with the content of communications by us peons. I’d be surprised if Chambliss wasn’t doing the same thing.
@P J Evans:
:))
me neither, but you know her far better than i.
i do know chambliss – typical right-wing right-wing republican pol; do whatever is required to get power; do whatever is required to retain power; do whatever is required to insure a lucrative exit from power.
highly-refined, 99.9% pure, self-interest.
the nation be damned!
oh, and general k, old lad,
it’s almost tuesday.
where are those examples you promised us – at one of those “rare public hearings” – of how nsa electronic spying stopped terrorism in the “homeland”?
It just occurred to me that when Obama said his administration was going to be the most transparent ever, maybe he meant it in the sense that what they do cannot be seen.
@P J Evans: Past time to recall the [language removed]. If they’d done it right in ’83 we might not be in this mess so deep now.
@orion, But I liked you so well in caps. Please don’t let it slide:) Don’t you suppose it’s “Terrah”, “We’ve stopped Terrah in the Homeland, why aren’t you ungrateful wretches dancing in the streets”?
How the f*** did we get this passel of chumps? There’s not a half dozen in the Senate that are worth a damn, and that includes the two from my state. Scary part is their opponents were even worse.
The Senate got shed of Lieberman and Kerry and it didn’t improve the average, WTF? O’s dropped 9 points since this stuff hit. If Congress had dropped the same amount they’d be at zero, zip, nada.
Makes me long for LBJ and the Wizard of Ooze Everett Dirkson, a real Senator from Illinois. Never thought I’d hear myself say that. That’s stopped my Dad’s spinning long enough to be laughing somewhere. Sheesh.
@orionATL: Could it be that there’s SO MANY, it’s really tough to choose?
While you’re pondering your response, a little traveling music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S13mP_pfEc
Saxby, you need to recheck your facts…I know I heard citizens complain… a number of members of pacifist groups such as the American Friends Service Committee. Many anti-war groups complained.
The qualifier to Mr. Chambliss’s statement, “To my knowledge,” would leave out most of the universe, not to mention all of his credibility.
Hey, c’mon, just today the number of terrist incidents actually stopped by NSA spying rose 25%!!!
When I woke up around 7-ish, the news on NPR said there were 40 incidents where the NSA spying caused terrists to stopped and caught. Now, by suppertime, on the teebee I saw it was up to 50. Now that there is a mighty fine improvement, in about 8 hours.
Can’t do much better than that, eh?