Dem-controlled senate extends "awful" Bush law

Hey, remember when, after 2800 people were killed on 9/11, the Bush administration introduced--and congress passed--a law that allowed the gummint to wiretap calls between the U.S. and certain foreign countries?

Remember how the NYT and WaPo screamed that this was the End of the World, a ghastly invasion of our privacy, a coup by the eeebil Booosh and his Wepubwican Wascals? They wailed that it was an intolerable blow to freedom, to our right to privacy, our right to...well, you name it. It was just *awful* what Boosh and the Rethugs had done.

Remember all the screaming and headlines and gnashing of teeth?

Actually you prolly don't, unless you're one of the five percent of us who actually follow politics in detail and keep our own records. But no matter.

Guess what happened last Friday? The U.S. senate passed a bill extending these same provisions for another five years. Vote was 73-23.

Uh, wait...don't the Democrats have majority control of the senate? Why yes, yes they do.

But if that's true, and if this measure was so *awful* when Boosh introduced it, how the hell did it pass the senate with virtually all Democrats voting for it?

Gosh, that's a total mystery, citizen.

No, wait: There's absolutely no double-standard there, citizen, and you are not to ask any more questions about this non-event that we thought had been disappeared down the memory hole.

To help make the Democrat-approved extension of the *awful*, terrible, freedom-smashing law a non-event, here's the headline the WaPo used: "Senate approves measure to renew controversial surveillance authority."

Yeah, dat's da ticket...it's merely "controversial."


"We have always been at war with Eastasia."--Washington Post

(Wonder if anyone under 25 knows what this is from?)