Follow Ups To Recent Stories

Several follow ups to share with you on recent blog post topics.

More FISA Stalling

House Republicans tried again Tuesday to force a floor vote on Senate-passed legislation to overhaul the nation's electronic surveillance law.

But Democrats stood fast, insisting that negotiations continue between the House and Senate on a compromise version of the legislation.

"Congress needs to act immediately," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. He said House Republicans will try every day to bring up the Senate-passed version, which also has the backing of 21 Blue Dog Democrats.

The bone of contention here is immunity for telephony companies who have cooperated with the government to identify terrorists.  A quick refresher...

The current FISA law was made in the 1970s, when telephone services pretty much ran within a country's borders.  Now, almost 40 years later, much of the global communications network passes through U.S. technology, even if both endpoints of the call are outside the U.S.  So, we have the ability to tap phone conversations between a suspected terrorist in Iraq and a suspected terrorist in Afghanistan - why would we NOT do that?  In my Link Roundup yesterday, there were a couple stories that told exactly why the Democrats don't want this to go through: trial lawyers.  That's right, the Dems are more concerned with one of their big constituencies, trial lawyers, who would instantly lose a whole bunch of cases against these telephony companies.  To protect those trial lawyers, the Dems are rolling the dice with national security.  There are already lawsuits lined up to take out those companies, and if this retroactive immunity isn't passed, we are likely to lose a critical tool in the intelligence fight against terrorism, simply because of a bunch of greedy lawyers.

More information on the illegal alien driver that killed 4 children
This woman had apparently run afoul of the law before.  It's too bad she lived in a sanctuary city, or she might have been questioned and deported after previous offenses.  If it weren't for the sanctuary policy, it is likely those four kids would still be alive today.

MSM stages more phobia
Whenever the MSM wants to portray Americans as horrible racist/sexist/homophobic bigots, they have a problem: most Americans aren't, so it's pretty hard to get video of it.  Naturally, their solution is to make it up.  The latest attempt is another shot at portraying Islamophobia in Texas.  Don't buy the manufactured hype...statistics show that hate crimes against Muslims plummeted in 2002 and haven't risen since.

Now you're up to date!

There's my two cents.