[NYTr] The Fear of Fear Itself: NY Times' Fireside Chat

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl - Aug 7, 2007

[FDR coined the phrase speaking to the American people of the
numbing fears of depression and the looming holocaust of world war.
Here, it's the opposite.  The people are or were ready to fight against
the war and oppression, while their electees cave in to the tyrants.
What has bothered me is not that Democrats have to be realistic about
dealing with a tenuous majority and utterly callous administration.
They've developed no strategic alliance with the public majority and no
legislative strategy towards those ends beyond nickle and dime'ing it,
looking at 2008 and us as quiescent 'votes,' as Bush actively destroys
many of our rights and wages illegal, calamitous war.

Pelosi's pre-emptive 'impeachment is off the table,' and now even John
Conyers toeing that line are genuine disasters and betrayals of the
people and this moment of possibility.   And it is a moment, believe it.
Meanwhile, Bush marches on, his sprits buoyed, surging upward and
he will not stop, believe it again.  It's a deadly culture up there, but
surely, we have to make them do better.  What's the option?
Back in a week.  -Ed]

The New York Times - Aug 7, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/opinion/07tue1.html?th&emc=th

Lead Editorial

The Fear of Fear Itself

It was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress - now led
by Democrats - caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous
expansion of President Bush's powers, this time to spy on Americans in
violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in
the Senate and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they
had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at
play was their job security.

There was plenty of bad behavior. Republicans marched in mindless
lockstep with the president. There was double-dealing by the White
House. The director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, crossed
the line from being a steward of this nation's security to acting as a
White House political operative.

But mostly, the spectacle left us wondering what the Democrats -
especially their feckless Senate leaders - plan to do with their
majority in Congress if they are too scared of Republican campaign ads
to use it to protect the Constitution and restrain an out-of-control
president.

The votes in the House and Senate were supposed to fix a genuine glitch
in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the
government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping on electronic
communications that involve someone in the United States. The court
charged with enforcing that law said the government must also seek a
warrant if the people are outside the country, but their communications
are routed through data exchanges here - a technological problem that
did not exist in 1978.

Instead of just fixing that glitch, the White House and its allies on
Capitol Hill railroaded Congress into voting a vast expansion of the
president's powers. They gave the director of national intelligence and
the attorney general authority to intercept - without warrant, court
supervision or accountability - any telephone call or e-mail message
that moves in, out of or through the United States as long as there is
a "reasonable belief" that one party is not in the United States. The
new law all but eviscerates the 1978 law. The only small saving grace
is that the new statute expires in six months.

The House handled this mess somewhat better than the Senate, moving to
the floor a far more sensible bill. Mr. McConnell certified that the
House bill would address the problem raised by the court. That is,
until the White House made clear that it wanted to use the court's
ruling to grab a lot more power. Mr. McConnell then reversed his
position and demanded that Congress pass the far more expansive bill.

In the Senate, the team of Harry Reid, the majority leader, gave up
fast, agreeing to a deal that doomed any good bill. The senators then
hurriedly approved the White House bill, dumped it on the House and
skulked off on vacation. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the
fourth-ranking member of the Democratic House leadership, said
yesterday that his party would not wait for the new eavesdropping
authority to expire, and would have a new, measured bill on the floor
by October. We look forward to reading it.

But the problem with Congress last week was that Democrats were afraid
to explain to Americans why the White House bill was so bad and so
unnecessary - despite what the White House was claiming. There are good
answers, if Democrats are willing to address voters as adults. To start,
they should explain that - even if it were a good idea, and it's not -
the government does not have the capability to sort through billions of
bits of electronic communication. And the larger question: why, six
years after 9/11, is this sort of fishing expedition the supposed first
line of defense in the war on terrorism?

While serving little purpose, the new law has real dangers. It would
allow the government to intercept, without a warrant, every
communication into or out of any country, including the United States.
Instead of explaining all this to American voters - the minimal
benefits and the enormous risks - the Democrats have allowed Mr. Bush
and his fear-mongering to dominate all discussions on terrorism and
national security.

Mr. Bush claims that he has kept America safe since 9/11. But that claim
ignores the country's very real and present vulnerabilities. Six years
after the 9/11 attacks the administration has still failed to secure
American ports, railroads and airports from terrorist attack, and has
put the profits of the chemical and nuclear-power industries ahead of
safeguarding their plants.

Mr. Bush also worries Democratic strategists by talking about "staying
on the offensive" against terrorism, but it was his decision to invade
Iraq that diverted resources from the real offensive, the one against
Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Bush's incessant fear-mongering - and the Democrats' refusal to
challenge him - has had one notable success. The only issue on which
Americans say that they trust Republicans more than Democrats is
terrorism. At least those Americans are afraid of terrorists. The
Democrats who voted for this bill, and others like it over the last few
years, show only fear of Republicans.

The Democratic majority has made strides on other issues like children's
health insurance against White House opposition. As important as these
measures are, they do not excuse the Democrats from remedying the
damage Mr. Bush has done to civil liberties and the Bill of Rights.
That is their most important duty.