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Today, Illinois Congressman and DC power player Rahm Emanuel voted for the $700 Billion bailout bill. His Green Party challenger in the 5th District, Alan Augustson, has issued a statement this evening unconditionally condemning Emanuel’s vote:

I wish to state for the record my extreme displeasure with Congress, for its passage of the $700B so-called “Bailout Bill”.

When American working families go belly-up in this present, hostile economy, they are treated to endless lectures about “responsibility”, about “lifestyle choices” and “good judgment”. People who have no inkling of their individual circumstances will call them “deadbeats” to their very faces.

However, when major global investment firms suffer the natural consequences of their own greed, unscrupulousness and incompetence, apparently they can avoid all the above and simply get rescued by the American taxpayer.

While I am, as I said, angered, I am not at all surprised. The incumbent in my district, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL-05), received over $800,000 in contributions in 2007-2008 from securities and investment firms, insurance companies and commercial banks. Rep. Emanuel has always been an entirely client-oriented politician; his latest outrage merely makes obvious who his real constituents are.

The people of my district will not keep their jobs one additional day for this measure — by and large, they have lost them already. Nor will it fix the root causes of the economic crisis — our failing infrastructure, the global devaluation of labor, and the depletion of the world’s resources due to overpopulation and overconsumption.

Our government continues to shed, bit by bit, its last pretenses of public service, and we are less free, less prosperous, less safe and less respected every day for it. If the people fail to effect real change in November, their opportunity to do so ever again may be lost. They will be too caught up in the struggle for survival to care any longer about freedom, justice or peace.

The debate between Joseph Biden and Sarah Palin is over. Assuming you watched the debate, what are your reactions to it?

On Thursday, September 25, Senator Russell Feingold gave a speech before the Senate that got absolutely no coverage in the papers. Coming in the wake of Constitution Day, it should have; it provides a capstone to a week of hearings held by Senator Feingold to remind us of the constitutional liberties we have lost and chart a course toward their restoration.

To help remedy the failings of the inattentive professional media, let me make it available to you. Here is the transcript of Feingold’s speech, entitled “Restoring the Rule of Law”:

Senator Russell Feingold: Mr. President, last week we celebrated the 221st anniversary of the day in 1787 when 39 members of the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in Philadelphia. It is a sad fact, as we consider that anniversary, that for the past 7 1/2 years, and especially since 9/11, the Bush administration has treated the Constitution and the rule of law with a disrespect never before seen in the history of this country.

By now, the public can be excused for being almost numb to new revelations of Government wrongdoing and overreaching. The catalog is really breathtaking, even when immensely complicated and far-reaching programs and events are reduced to simple catch phrases: torture, Guantanamo, ignoring the Geneva Conventions, warrantless wiretapping, data mining, destruction of e-mails, U.S. attorney firings, stonewalling of congressional oversight, abuse of the state secrets doctrine and executive privilege, secret abrogation of Executive orders, signing statements.

This is a shameful legacy that will haunt our country for years to come. That is why I believe so strongly that the next President of the United States–whoever that may be–must pledge his commitment to restoring the rule of law in this country and then take the necessary steps to demonstrate that commitment. That is why, also, I held a hearing last week in the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee asking a range of legal and historical experts exactly what the new President and the new Congress must do to repair the damage done by the current administration to the rule of law.

There can be no dispute that the rule of law is central to our democracy and our system of government. But what does “the rule of law” really mean? Well, as Thomas Paine said in 1776, “In America, the law is king.”

That, of course, was a truly revolutionary concept at a time when, in many places, the kings were the law. But more then 200 years later, we still must struggle to fulfill Paine’s simply stated vision. It is not always easy, nor is it something that, once done, need not be carefully maintained.

Justice Frankfurter wrote that law “is an enveloping and permeating habituation of behavior, reflecting the counsels of reason on the part of those entrusted with power in reconciling the pressures of conflicting interests. Once we conceive ‘the rule of law’ as embracing the whole range of presuppositions on which government is conducted ….. , the relevant question is not, has it been achieved, but, is it conscientiously and systematically pursued.”

The post-September 11 period is not, of course, the first time that the checks and balances of our system of government have been placed under great strain. As Berkeley law professors Daniel Farber and Anne Joseph O’Connell wrote in testimony submitted for the hearing on this topic:

“The greatest constitutional crisis in our history came with the Civil War, which tested the nature of the Union, the scope of presidential power, and the extent of liberty that can survive in war time.”

But as legal scholar Louis Fisher of the Library of Congress described in his testimony, President Lincoln pursued a much different approach than our current President when he believed he needed to act in an extra-constitutional manner to save the Union. He acted openly, and sought Congress’s participation and ultimately approval of his actions.

According to Dr. Fisher, Lincoln took actions we are all familiar with, including withdrawing funds from the Treasury without an appropriation, calling up the troops, placing a blockade on the South, and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. In ordering those actions, Lincoln never claimed to be acting legally or constitutionally and never argued that Article II somehow allowed him to do what he did. Instead, Lincoln admitted to exceeding the constitutional boundaries of his office and therefore needed the sanction of Congress. ….. He recognized that the superior lawmaking body was Congress, not the President.

Now, of course, each era brings its own challenges to the conscientious and systematic pursuit of the rule of law. How the leaders of our government respond to those challenges at the time they occur is, of course, critical. But recognizing that leaders do not always perform perfectly, that not every President is an Abraham Lincoln, the years that follow a crisis are perhaps even more important. As Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh testified at the hearing:

“As difficult as the last 7 years have been, they loom far less important in the grand scheme of things than the next 8, which will determine whether the pendulum of U.S. policy swings back from the extreme place to which it has been pushed, or stays stuck in a ‘new normal’ position under which our policies toward national security, law, and human rights remain wholly subsumed by the ‘War on Terror.’”

I could not agree more.

So the obvious question is: Where do we go from here? One of the most important things that the next President must do, whoever he may be, is take concrete steps to restore the rule of law in this country. He must make sure that the excesses of this administration don’t become so ingrained in our system that they change the very notion of what the law is. And he must recognize that we can protect our national security–in fact, we can do it more effectively–without trampling on the rights of the American people or the rule of law.

That, of course, is much easier said than done. But there is one immediate step that, while it may be viewed as symbolic, is critically important for the next President to take: stating clearly and unequivocally in the inaugural address that he renounces the current administration’s abuses of executive power and that his administration will uphold the rule of law. To be sure, this isn’t the only subject the new president should address, but it is among the most urgent. Where he stands on executive power goes beyond policy and politics and speaks to his respect for the Constitution itself. And a willingness to raise this issue in the inaugural address will send a message, loud and clear, to the American public, to Congress and to every level of government that the days of lawlessness and excess are over.

Thomas Jefferson said this in his first inaugural address:

“The essential principles of our Government form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation ….. [S]hould we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety.”

I hope our next President will echo that sentiment in his inaugural address. Indeed, demonstrating that commitment on day one will go a long way toward reinstating what Ohio State University Law Professor Peter Shane called a “rule of law culture” in government. As he explained in his hearing testimony:

“The written documents of law have to be buttressed by a set of norms, conventional expectations, and routine behaviors that lead officials to behave as if they are accountable to the public interest and to legitimate sources of legal and political authority at all times, even when the written rules are ambiguous and even when they could probably get away with merely self-serving behavior.”

This cuts to the core of the problem that the next President will face: After 8 years of disregard for the rule of law at the highest level of government, how can we instill new norms and expectations throughout the Federal Government? Stating that commitment in the inaugural address will go a long way in that direction.

But it is not only a matter of a new President saying. “OK, I won’t do that anymore.” This President’s transgressions are so deep and the damage to our system of government so extensive that a concerted effort from the executive and legislative branches will be needed. And that means the new President will, in some respects, have to go against his institutional interests–a challenge that we cannot underestimate.

That is why I called the hearing last week on this topic–to hear from legal and historical experts on how the next President should go about tackling the wreckage that this President will leave behind. I asked witnesses to be forward-looking–not to simply review what has gone wrong in the past 7 or 8 years, but to address very specifically what needs to be set right starting next year and how to go about doing it. In addition to the testimony of the witnesses at the hearing, I solicited written testimony from advocates, law professors, historians and other experts. I was pleased that we received nearly 30 written submissions from a host of national groups and distinguished individuals.

At the hearing, we heard testimony from one of the foremost legal scholars in the country about just how far outside mainstream legal thought the current administration went. We heard comparisons to the events leading up to the Church Committee’s investigation in the 1970s, from the man who served as chief counsel to that committee. We heard from a former Republican Member of Congress about Congress’s failure to assert itself as a coequal branch of government. We heard from the former head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel about the perversion of the law that was allowed to occur in that important office. We heard from a former White House chief of staff about the dangers of the excessive executive secrecy that permeated the government under this administration. We heard from a leading national security lawyer about the harm that post-9/11 domestic surveillance policies have done to our national security. And we heard from the head of one of the leading human rights organizations about the damage our interrogation and detention policies have done to our reputation abroad.

But most importantly, we heard from every one of these individuals their specific prescriptions for moving beyond these mistakes–for taking the steps that are necessary to restore our core American principles.

Indeed, between the hearing witnesses and the written testimony that was submitted, the subcommittee received an enormous number of recommendations, including many provocative and important ideas. They range from the general to the very specific, and they cover a variety of subject matters, from government secrecy to detention and interrogation policy to surveillance to separation of powers. I am very pleased that so many experts took the time to offer these proposals.

Let me take a few minutes today to share some examples of the kinds of recommendations that the witnesses provided, both those who testified at the hearing and those who submitted written testimony. Several suggestions reinforce my belief that the new administration must set a clear tone of adherence to the rule of law from the start. Mark Agrast of the Center for American Progress Action Fund suggests that the President should convene a White House conference on the rule of law, and pledge to work with Congress to give priority to measures to restore public confidence in the rule of law. Former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger argues that:

“[T]he next President should ….. affirmatively adopt a view of presidential power that recognizes the roles and authorities of all three co-equal branches and that takes account of settled judicial precedent.”

Many of our witnesses are concerned about the impact of the last 8 years on the separation of powers, and specifically about Congress’s failure to stand up to the president as he asserted more and more unconstrained power. Several strongly suggest oversight and investigative hearings to determine what exactly happened. Frederick Schwarz of the Brennan Center suggests an independent, bipartisan, investigatory commission to assess what has gone wrong and what has gone right with the Nation’s policies concerning terrorism. Such a commission would allow the public to get the full story of the abuses of the Bush administration, providing accountability and a mechanism for developing protections against future abuse that can be implemented by the executive and legislative branches. The ACLU suggests more narrowly focused oversight hearings in Congress to reveal illegal or improper executive branch activity, and argues that Congress must deny funding for programs it believes are abusive or illegal.

Former Congressman Mickey Edwards, a Republican from Oklahoma, also argues that Congress must use the power of the purse to assert its will in interbranch disagreements. He believes that Congress should aggressively utilize its subpoena power to get the information it needs. Being able to enforce congressional subpoenas, of course, is an important component of oversight, and several witnesses had suggestions on that topic. Common Cause believes that the next president should issue an Executive order mandating Federal agencies’ complete cooperation with congressional investigations. University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Seth Kreimer argues that officials who ignored legitimate congressional subpoenas should be prosecuted. The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suggests that Congress enact legislation granting jurisdiction to the Federal courts over cases seeking enforcement of congressional subpoenas. And Bruce Fein, a former Reagan administration official, believes a special three-judge court should be created that could appoint an independent counsel to enforce contempt findings against the executive branch since the Department of Justice refused to enforce congressional subpoenas during this administration.

Many of the suggestions from our witnesses focus on the decisionmaking of our national security agencies. Stephen Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists suggests enhancing oversight of intelligence agencies by using cleared auditors from the GAO. And Mark Agrast advocates establishing a national security law committee within the National Security Council to make decisions on legal issues related to national security.

A crucial part of restoring the rule of law in the next administration will be rebuilding the reputation of the office of legal counsel. Walter Dellinger, joined by a prestigious group of former OLC attorneys, provided detailed testimony on how that can be done. The incoming attorney general should pay very close heed to this advice.

Another issue that almost every person or group mentioned in their submissions is the problem of excessive government secrecy. This problem permeates all of the other rule of law issues discussed at the hearing. When the executive branch invokes the state secrets privilege to shut down lawsuits, hides its programs behind secret OLC opinions, overclassifies information to avoid public disclosure, and interprets the Freedom of Information Act as an information withholding statute, it shuts down all of the means to detect and respond to its abuses of the rule of law–whether those abuses involve torture, domestic spying, or the firing of U.S. attorneys for partisan gain.

With regard to this administration’s overuse of the state secrets privilege, University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone and many others recommend that Congress pass S. 2533, the State Secrets Protection Act, which was reported out of the Judiciary Committee in April. The bill takes the simple and obvious step of requiring courts to review allegedly privileged documents to determine whether they really are privileged.

To address the rampant problem of overclassification, several submissions, including that of John Podesta from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, urge the next President to rewrite the executive order on classification to reverse some of the changes made by President Bush to that order. In particular, President Bush eliminated provisions that established a presumption against classification in cases of significant doubt, that permitted senior agency officials to declassify information in exceptional cases where the public interest in disclosure outweighs the need to protect the information, and that prohibited reclassification of materials that have been released to the public. Contributors argue that these provisions be restored.

On the issue of secret OLC opinions and other manifestations of secret law, there is general agreement that legislation is needed to require greater disclosure of the law under which the executive branch operates. A number of submissions recommend the passage of 2 bills I introduced this year: the Executive Order Integrity Act, which requires the president to publish notice in the Federal Register when revoking or modifying a published Executive order, and the OLC Reporting Act, which requires the Attorney General to report to Congress when the Department of Justice concludes that the executive branch is not bound by a statute.

Finally, the National Security Archive and others address the proper standard for disclosure of information under the Freedom of Information Act. Attorney General Reno issued a memorandum in 1993 that contained a “presumption of disclosure”: even if a document was technically exempt from disclosure under FOIA, the Department of Justice would defend the withholding only if disclosure would actually harm an interest protected by the exemption. Attorney General Ashcroft reversed that presumption in 2001. Contributors uniformly recommend that the new administration immediately restore the presumption of disclosure.

The subcommittee also received numerous recommendations for reforming our detention and interrogation policy. Detailed plans for accomplishing the difficult task of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay were presented by Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First, by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, by Harold Koh, and by a group of 20 leading scholars. There is near-universal agreement that Guantanamo should be closed. These thoughtful proposals deserve careful consideration. A number of groups also recommend dismantling the current system of military commissions, and instead trying terrorist suspects in U.S. courts or military courts-martial.

With respect to interrogation practices, Princeton’s Deborah Pearlstein and others argue that the U.S. Government should have a single, government-wide standard of humane detainee treatment. Massimino suggests that the President and the Congress should invest in efforts to pursue the most effective and humane means of intelligence gathering. And Harold Koh emphasizes the importance of fully complying with obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture.

And finally, a number of recommendations were made on government surveillance and privacy issues. National security lawyer Suzanne Spaulding argues that the next administration should undertake a comprehensive review of domestic intelligence activities and authorities, to assess their effectiveness and to ensure that they support, rather than undermine, the rule of law. She points to a number of key issues for review, many of which were also mentioned in other submissions as issues where changes need to be made.

These include the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the related amendments made this summer; national security letters and other Patriot Act authorities; the first amendment implications of domestic spying activities; data mining and other data collection and analysis activities; profiling in the name of counterterrorism; the appropriate role of the many Federal, State and local entities that are now involved in domestic intelligence gathering; and the need to enhance transparency and oversight in all of these areas. This is a long list, but Spaulding argues that too many of these powers were created piecemeal, without consideration of how they fit together and without adequate consideration for the need to respect civil liberties.

This is just a sampling of the careful and interesting proposals that the subcommittee received. Taken together, these recommendations should serve as an excellent source for both branches of government. While I am not at this time going to propose a specific plan of action to the next President or the next Congress, I am reviewing the legislative proposals that have been submitted, and I hope my colleagues will take advantage of them as well. I thank each and every person who made the effort to submit these recommendations. They have done this country a real service.

In January, I intend to present the full hearing record to the new President, and urge him to take specific actions to restore the rule of law. These recommendations should serve as a blueprint for the new President so that he can get started right away on this immense and extremely important job of restoring the rule of law.

It will not be easy. Even those steps that are almost universally agreed upon, such as the necessity of closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay, pose tricky legal and practical questions. And, of course, there may be institutional resistance within the executive branch to actions that are viewed as ceding power to the other branches of government, no matter how unprecedented the executive power theories that need to be undone. But as Suzanne Spaulding explained at the hearing:

“We have to demonstrate that we still believe what our founders understood; that this system of checks and balances and respect for civil liberties is not a luxury of peace and tranquility but was created in a time of great peril as the best hope for keeping this nation strong and resilient.”

This is an important point, because the polices pursued by this administration have not kept this Nation “strong and resilient.” They have undermined national unity, diminished our international standing and alliances, and hurt our efforts to counter the serious threat we face from al-Qaida and its affiliates. By putting policies in place that accord with basic American principles, we can strengthen our national security as well.

As I said at the outset, it is the years that follow a crisis that may matter most, that are the true test of the strength of our democracy. So I hope that the next President will carefully review the many recommendations that have been presented, because the future of our democracy depends on it.

In this speech Senator Feingold puts it all the pieces together, cataloging what we’ve lost over the past two presidential terms and what we have to do to get it all back. But even all this is only a summary of the work Feingold’s done in bringing together experts in his Rule of Law hearings. To access the extensive written and spoken testimony of the Rule of Law hearings this month, visit Russell Feingold’s dedicated webpage here.

Tonight the First Presidential Debate between John McCain and Barack Obama will be aired on TV at 9 PM on just about all the network news stations, and we are all prepared to …

… to what? Learn something new? You know, the differences between Obama and McCain are pretty clear to those who’ve been paying attention. Chances are the two candidates aren’t going to be releasing any brand spanking new policy proposals on the stage in Mississippi tonight. Then again, four days ago I wouldn’t have guessed that John McCain would have suspended and restarted his campaign within 48 hours’ time. Who knows what we’ll see? Maybe Barack Obama will spit out an epithet. Maybe John McCain will reveal that he’s a Muslim.

While we watch, let’s have fun. Below are three printable Obama-McCain Debate Bingo cards filled with words and phrases with a varying likelihood of being propelled out of a candidate’s mouth tonight. You know the rules: five across, five down or five diagonally in a row and you win. Win what? That’s up to you. I don’t suggest turning it into a drinking game, though, unless you have a high tolerance for alcohol. I expect these phrases to be turning up quite a bit, and you wouldn’t want to be so drunk that you didn’t catch every last catchphrase or soundbite or veiled insult, would you? Hmm. Okay, go ahead and turn it into a drinking game if you like.

And here’s a blank playing card for you to write in your own favorite debate catchphrases…

Today, in the wake of the massive collapse of financial corporations traceable to exactly the sort of deregulation John McCain loves, the McCain campaign groped in a panic for some policy, any policy, that would make it look like John McCain cares about the economy.

Chief McCain campaign economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin hit the airwaves and the telephones this morning with what he thought was a commonsense winner: Americans, says Holtz-Eakin, should get behind John McCain because John McCain has decided he supports giving shareholders the right to vote on CEO salaries.

Wall Street Journal:

John McCain’s senior policy adviser outlined a quartet of ideas to further supervise the U.S. economy, an expansion of his policy positions.

Doug Holtz-Eakin, a senior adviser to the Republican candidate and a former Congressional Budget Office director, offered the specifics in a briefing with reporters…

There would also be improvements in corporate governance, Holtz-Eakin said, pushing for complete transparency in the cash and non-cash compensation for all CEOs that can be presented to shareholders for a vote. “Is this money going to the CEO or should it be put in research and development or should it be put into some other use?” Holtz-Eakin said. “We don’t see that in America right now.”

NPR Morning Edition:

Holtz-Eakin says McCain feels CEO salaries would be reined in quickly if they were put before shareholders for a vote. Shareholders might start thinking, “Gee, that could be my money or that could be money we plow into investment or research.”

Hmm. Shareholders getting to vote on CEO salaries… Shareholders getting to vote on CEO salaries… Gosh darn it, I just know I’ve heard that somewhere before…

Oh, right!

S. 1181: a bill to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to provide shareholders with an advisory vote on executive compensation.

The bill was introduced to the Senate on April 20, 2007, well over a year ago. Funnily enough, though, John McCain’s name isn’t listed as either the sponsor or one of the cosponsors (those Senators who think the bill’s enough of a good idea to sign their name to it).

John McCain didn’t sign on to the bill. But who did? Who introduced that legislation well over a year ago? Let me look that up. Hmmm, let’s see…

Oh, here it is. Barack Obama introduced that legislation to the Senate over a year ago.

I guess that makes John McCain an Obama supporter.

On Sunday August 31, I approached Ohio 15th District congressional candidate Mary Jo Kilroy at a campaign event and with her permission recorded the following conversation about the FISA Amendments Act, a law passed this year that enables wiretaps, searches and seizures without notification or a warrant. Kilroy has no written material on her campaign website regarding the FISA Amendments Act, so I asked her to comment on her position regarding that law:

Jim Cook: Regarding the FISA Amendments Act, if you were in the 110th Congress would you have voted for or against that bill?

Mary Jo Kilroy: Yeah, again, I’ve got to say that I don’t know the final form of the bill, but let me talk about some of the issues. I think that we can have a safe America without trampling on civil liberties, and I think that the FISA courts as constituted now provide the opportunity for immediate wiretaps but then go and get a warrant, and I think that’s important that we don’t have unlimited warrantless searches. The 48 hour period to get a warrant gives the administration time to get evidence and go to court and have that approved by an independent branch of government, which is one of the checks and balances in our constitution.

But the telecom immunity issue for retroactive telecom immunity, I would have opposed.

Cook: OK, if I told you there was a 7-day period in the FISA Amendments Act that passed and that was signed into law…

Kilroy: I can’t say.

Cook: If there’s a period of 7 days in which the president can search electronically and also engage in physical search, because there’s a physical search provision, if you were told that that was part of the FISA Amendments Act and then there was an additional 60 day period…

Kilroy: I’m going to have to take a look at it myself. I don’t really like having people say, “If I told you this…”

Cook: OK. Let’s imagine hypothetically that you found out that there was a bill. OK? I’m not going to say it’s this bill. It allows a 67 day period during which the president could search anyone anywhere without a warrant and then could keep the evidence afterward and use that information they obtained. Is that the kind of thing you’d support?

Kilroy: I’m a strong supporter of our Constitution and our Bill of Rights and I think that we can live within our Bill of Rights including the constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure of American homes, invading American zones of privacy, and I think that we can be secure in this country and protect our privacy as citizens.

Cook: OK, so if you found out that it was part of the federal law…

Kilroy: Let me take a look at what the federal law is, actually. I think that the FISA courts are appropriate and they’ve been in use and the FISA court provides for a way to have the administration immediately wiretap and then go to the FISA court and then get a warrant, and I think that is a good way to do it.

Cook: Thank you very much, Ms. Kilroy.

Kilroy: You’re welcome.

So what is Mary Jo Kilroy’s position as a congressional candidate regarding the FISA Amendments Act? It’s hard to say. Kilroy’s remarks about supporting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are general and include enough wiggle words like “unreasonable” to be compatible with almost any position. Kilroy’s characterization of the structure of the FISA court is actually a description of how the FISA court worked before the passage of the FISA Amendments Act, not how it works now. And when I tried to ask her specifically about her position regarding the FISA Amendments Act, she waved off the questions as hypothetical and said she’d have to read the Act before answering.

I came out of this conversation despite a few attempts still not knowing where Mary Jo Kilroy stands on the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act and her legislative plans regarding warrantless wiretapping. It was a frustrating experience, like trying to eat fog with a spoon.

Fortunately, Kilroy twice said she’d have to take a look at the FISA Amendments Act. This gives me an opportunity for a follow-up. I’m going to draft an annotated one-page summary with bullet point descriptions of the provisions of the FISA Amendments Act, then attach it to the text of the law. Then I’m going to try very, very hard to put that paper right in her hand.

When I’m done writing that one-page summary I’ll be sure to post it so that you can use it in conversations with your candidates, too.

The backlash was inevitable.

Last week, the Democratic Party filled its quadrennial convention with references to gods, appeals to gods and even the claim that gods are working for the Democrats. Well, that’s not entirely accurate; actually, all of the many references to gods during the Democratic National Convention were references to one, single, provincial God: the Abrahamic God of the Bible. That involved a fair amount of exclusion of Americans whose religious identity just doesn’t fit within the concept of an Abrahamic God. Americans who’ve been told they no longer fit inside the shrinking Democratic Party tent are understandably upset.

But even within the Abrahamic religious boundaries squabbling has broken out as members of various religious traditions and sectarian denominations ask why their religious viewpoint hasn’t been represented, or why on earth those other chaplains got a chance to get up stage. Take the Catholic News Agency, which is outraged — outraged!! — on behalf of Archbishop Charles J. Chaput because he was not invited to bless the Democratic National Convention in a benediction of his very own:

Democratic Convention’s non-invitation of Archbishop Chaput an “insult,” Democrat says

…Raymond Flynn, former Democratic mayor of Boston and former ambassador to the Vatican during the Clinton administration, said not inviting the archbishop to pray or speak was “a serious oversight.”

“Chaput is one of the most respected leaders of the Catholic Church in America,” he said, according to the Washington Times. “His record is a strong commitment to social and economic justice and the principles of the Catholic faith. He’s also a strong patriot.

“Pro-life Democrats who are proud Catholics like myself feel this is an insult to our values… The party should be aware there are strong pro-life people who are politically successful,” Flynn continued.

Brian Stuckey of Denver followed up:

The fact that the bishop—an ardent pro-life Catholic—is committed to defending the unborn may not sit well with liberal Democrats who do not share his conservative views. As he put it, “I am trying to convince people that they should not be embarrassed at being Catholic and not buy the supposedly American notion that people should shelve their faith when they enter the public square.” In an era when moral absolutes have been relegated to a lesser role in society, the omission of Archbishop Chaput is an outrage to many conservative Christians—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—who do not embrace the moral relativism in our society.

Then there’s Peter S.’s response to a mushy-mouthed half-protest against humanist exclusion at the DNC by Greg Epstein:

This is a bunch of liberal horse-squeeze.

Religions differ radically from each other in their basic beliefs on God and the meaning of life and what comes after death. These beliefs govern to some extent the follower’s actions in this life. Some of these religions are subversive, violent, controlling, and militant. This is not acceptable.

If you want to be all-inclusive (which I think is a mistake) there should be at least some standards held by all in order to participate or the whole concept will break down. IE: denounce violence, freedom of speech, gender equality, no bondage/slavery, etc.

Well, I guess that would exclude all the religions based on the Old Testament then, Peter. But Peter and Brian and the Catholic News Agency are all following the same impulse: seeing that the Democratic Party decided to invite some religious sects into the political fold, they began a fight over which sects would garner the DNC stamp of approval and which would would be ostracized. The result was not a demonstration of religious inclusion, but rather a scuffle over the boundaries of religious exclusion.

The lesson from the DNC experience this year is clear. Want to start a religious civil war in America? Then by all means turn government into an instrument of religious proselytization. The mitres will be doffed and the crescents will be drawn before you can shout “Our Father who art in…”

Six days out, the Democratic Party has definitively shoved Bill Richardson’s speech of Thursday, August 28 down the memory hole. The DNC spent nearly a week simply pretending that Richardson didn’t give a speech, not including Richardson’s speech at all in its list of convention speeches.

This morning, I see that the Democrats have finally added Bill Richardson to the list of speakers on their convention webpage. But have they posted the text of his speech, as they’ve done for all other convention speakers? No, they haven’t. They’ve posted the text of the speech he was assigned to give. But he didn’t utter a word of that speech. Bill Richardson actually gave a completely different speech, one that he wrote himself.

The speech Bill Richardson actually gave was the only one during the entire Democratic National Convention to refer to the Bill of Rights. The speech was the only one to refer disparagingly to George W. Bush’s program of warrantless domestic spying. The speech was the only one to demand that the next president not just say he supports the Constitution but actually behave in a manner that supports the Constitution.

The crowd loved it. They cheered wildly at these passages. The Democratic Party, however, was not amused. Apparently the Democratic Party establishment would rather you didn’t know that one of its members supports civil liberty and opposes domestic spying upon your sorry citizen ass. Down the memory hole it went, replaced by the speech Bill Richardson only gave in a fictional alternate universe, one in which the Democratic Party does not control the truth.

And yes, the Democratic Party does appear to control the truth. For all their supposed rigor, not one of our lauded news organizations has printed the actual words Bill Richardson spoke in Invesco stadium last Thursday. No, they printed the speech Richardson was assigned to give, the transcript the DNC sent to them, instead. 220 Google listings are returned for the text of the speech Bill Richardson did not give. Only 1 Google listing is returned for the text of the speech Bill Richardson actually gave.

Times the word “Constitution” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

Times the phrase “Fourth Amendment” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

Times the word “Surveillance” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

Times the word “Warrant” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

Times the word “Warrantless” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

Times the word “Wiretapping” was spoken in Barack Obama’s nomination speech of August 28: 0

I’m just saying. On the very first day Barack Obama enters office as our next president, we need to have a movement ready to pressure this man into paying attention and to putting freedom back on the front burner.

I have the feeling Bill Richardson pulled a clever quickie on the Democrats.

The only speaker to address the issue of warrantless wiretapping to domestically spy on American citizens during the entire Democratic National Convention was Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico.

I have found a copy of the prepared, approved text of Bill Richardson’s remarks for the DNC speech given to the press so they can engage in the nifty trick of having something wise to say about it right away, making them look extra smart. Here’s another copy of it. The Associated Press and Politico are still providing it as the transcript more than eleven hours later [as of 7:11 pm ET] as if this is what Bill Richardson actually said. It isn’t, which Politico would know if it weren’t just shoveling out the pieces of paper handed to it. Here’s yet another copy of the not-actual transcript that the DNC vetted for Bill Richardson. This time, in a classic example of fake corporate reporting on the cheap, KSBW not only provided the transcript but “reported” an excerpt from it one of their chosen “highlights” of the evening, as if Bill Richardson said it. Bill Richardson didn’t.

As you can see below, the prepared, vetted text did not refer to the regime of domestic spying begun illegally by George W. Bush and made legal (despite the Constitution) with the utterly disappointing help of Senator and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, who flip-flopped in June to go from an opponent of warrantless wiretapping to a proponent of it… indeed, to someone who promises to employ warrantless wiretapping as president.

The DNC remains either confused or upset after Richardson’s speech, not offering the text of Bill Richardson’s remarks while already offering the text of Al Gore’s remarks and Susan Eisenhower’s and Dick Durbin’s remarks even though they came afterwards, Bill Richardson went so far off script. Heck, even after they’d stuck up Barack Obama’s speech they still hadn’t posted Richardson’s speech. I think it’s because they didn’t have the text of the speech Bill Richardson actually gave. They seemed to be caught off guard, as if in one big collective, “Herm…” followed by a big collective “hummina hummina.”

The prepared, vetted text of Bill Richardson’s speech given to the press is on the left. The actual transcription of Bill Richardson’s spoken words is on the right:

Thank you, Bill Richardson, for putting remarks about warrantless wiretapping back in there. Shame on the Democratic Party vetters who handed him a speech in which those words were absent.

Thanks for briefly mentioning torture at the Democratic National Convention, Al Gore. Barely any speaker at the DNC has touched it. Thanks for talking in the abstract about respect for the Constitution. No speaker I’ve heard so far other than you at the DNC has touched it, besides Bill Richardson (who seems to have departed from the approved text of his remarks).

“Inconvenient truths must be acknowledged if we are to have wise governance.”

That’s what you just said in your speech in a stadium before what could be a hundred thousand people, Al Gore. I wish that you had spoken about the inconvenient truth of warrantless wiretapping. You’ve spoken about it before. You’ve written long passages about it. I know you care about it. But you didn’t talk about it tonight. Not one speaker out of dozens that I can find has spoken of it during the entire Democratic National Convention, other than Bill Richardson — who to reiterate it appears pointedly departed from the official text of his prepared remarks in order to talk about civil liberty.

The speeches are vetted by the Democratic Party. Who vetted out talk about the unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping that silently plagues our nation?