Sen. Michael Enzi (Republican of Wyoming)
Sen. Michael Bennet (Democrat of Colorado)
Sen. Kent Conrad (Democrat of North Dakota)
Sen. John Hoeven (Republican of North Dakota)
Sen. Mike Johanns (Republican of Nebraska)
Sen. Tim Johnson (Democrat of South Dakota)
Sen. Jerry Moran (Republican of Kansas)
Sen. John Thune (Republican of South Dakota)
Sen. Tom Udall (Democrat of New Mexico)
Sen. Mark Udall (Democrat of Colorado)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat of Rhode Island)

Given this list, what do you guess the proposed national mammal is? Would you make a different choice?

They’re calling the legislation The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Extension Act of 2012. President Barack Obama supports it, without equivocation.

The legislation, if passed, will extend the FISA Amendments Act, without any reform, until June 1, 2017. That’s five months after President Obama’s second term in office will end, if Barack Obama gains a second term at all.

The FISA Amendments Act is one of the worst laws passed at the urging of George W. Bush. The FISA Amendments Act sets up a gigantic electronic surveillance dragnet that allows the government to grab, store and search Americans’ personal telephone calls, emails, Internet activities, and other private communications, without a search warrant, and without proof that the information was gathered because of suspicion of any particular crime or conspiracy. It’s a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment, which states that the private information of American citizens cannot be seized without a search warrant specifically noting the person and place that is to be searched, backed with proof of probable cause to believe that a particular crime has been committed.

When Barack Obama campaigned to become President of the United States in 2008, he voted in favor of the FISA Amendments Act, even though he had earlier made a promise never to vote for such a law. It was just the first of his broken promises.

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama promised that, although he had voted for the FISA Amendments Act, as President he would be sure to work with Congress to reform the laws, to end its violations of Americans’ constitutional rights. In spite of this promise, President Obama has never supported any law that would reform the FISA Amendments Act.

Now, Barack Obama is supporting The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Extension Act of 2012, legislation that will keep the FISA Amendments Act in place, without any reform, until after he leaves the White House. In effect, President Obama is now saying that he has no intention to reform the FISA Amendments Act, ever. Obama is saying that, if he is given a second term in office, he will keep George W. Bush’s attack on the Constitution in place, and that he’s happy to do so.

Barack Obama has made his position very clear. There are no clever hints that reform might take place, if only he is given a second term. Obama is saying that if we vote for him, we’re voting for a person who wants to keep a government surveillance program, more powerful than anything that George Orwell could imagine, that targets law abiding Americans, the limits of which even Congress does not know.

So, now the time has come to make your position on this issue very clear. Will you, like Barack Obama, support the extension of Big Brother electronic surveillance powers used against the American people?

If you stand with Barack Obama on this issue, you may call yourself a Democrat, but you can never again call yourself a liberal, or a progressive. You can never describe yourself as a lover of freedom, or of constitutional rights, without being a liar.

You have an alternative: You can do your duty as a citizen of the United States of America, and speak out loudly against The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 Extension Act of 2012.

Which choice do you make?

We also can’t tell you who on the committee voted in favor of advancing the legislation toward the floor of the U.S. senate. We can’t even say whether there were any votes in opposition at all. Even the simple fact of which senators were present at the committee meeting is unavailable to us.

That’s because when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence met yesterday to discuss and hold a vote on legislation to extend the FISA Amendments Act by five years, it did so as part of a secret hearing, shutting out the American people.

This law is depriving us of our constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment to protection from warrantless searches and seizures of our personal information, but the Senate isn’t even allowing us to know what they know, and what they’re voting on, in regards to the law. There isn’t any official legislation yet on the books for us to investigate through the Library of Congress. We’re all left in the dark, lucky that a reporter at the Washington Post has an inside relationship.

That’s not how a democracy ought to work.

What’s worse is that even the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence isn’t being told how the extraordinary, unconstitutional powers of the FISA Amendments Act are being used. Senator Ron Wyden has stated that the Executive Branch has refused to tell anyone on the committee how many Americans are having their personal communications wiretapped by the government, in what conditions the surveillance is taking place, and with what justification. Even in secret, the small number of U.S. senators who are supposed to be given clearance to have information about how the FISA Amendments Act is being used are being deprived of that information by the Obama Administration.

And yet, that committee just voted in approval of legislation that, if passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law, will allow the FISA Amendments Act spying against Americans to continue for five more years without any reform. Why?

We’ve been through several rounds of this, under George W. Bush and under Barack Obama, and the American people have never gotten adequate answers to their questions. There is no public evidence that the FISA Amendments Act is being conducted constitutionally, or even that it is genuinely targeting terrorists.

The time has come for the FISA Amendments Act to expire. Years have passed in which reforms of the law could have been crafted. Yet, no reforms are even being proposed by the White House or Congress. Therefore, the only responsible vote for any member of Congress on any legislation that extends the FISA Amendments Act in any way is NO.

The problem is that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Federal courts have ruled DOMA unconstitutional. It’s unconstitutional on more than one count.

1. Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution mandates that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” But under DOMA, this clause is directly contradicted, declaring that “No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State…”. This gives same-sex marriages and different-sex marriages are given separate and unequal status. The marriages of different-sex couples must be recognized at the federal level in all 50 states, no matter in what state they were married. The marriages of same-sex couples are denied that recognition. That brings us to…

2. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has an equal protection clause making it unconstitutional for any state to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Under DOMA, Indiana is required to acknowledge the marriage of straight couples in Massachusetts, but is allowed to reject the validity the marriage of same-sex couples in Massachusetts. That is unequal protection under law. I’m not just saying that. Federal Judge Jeffrey White made that ruling in February of this year.

People talk about how much Ron Paul loves the Constitution and supports the Constitution and defends the Constitution. But in supporting the Defense of Marriage Act over and over again, in forbidding the Justice Department to take a stance against the Act, Ron Paul subverts the very same Constitution that he frequently waves in the air and claims to value so deeply.

Mr. Constitution, my foot.

Reading about the legislation, my attention was drawn to the date of the original passage of the sanctions being modified. 1996 was 16 years ago. Of course, sanctions against Iran are much older than that. The first sanctions by the United States against Iran went into effect in 1979 – 33 years ago.

One and a half generations of sanctions have not brought Iran to its knees. They haven’t resulted in the replacement of the Islamic government with a secular democracy. They haven’t persuaded the government of Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups. They haven’t prevented the government of Iran from developing a nuclear energy program that could be used to support a nuclear weapons program, as nuclear energy has here in the United States.

What have these sanctions achieved? They have resulted a restricted flow of oil from Iran. The legislation passed yesterday would restrict Iran’s contribution to the international oil markets even further, by expanding sanctions to prohibit trade in oil from projects outside of Iran. S. 2101, if signed into law, will ban the sale of oil from any drilling or refining project in which the government of Iran is an investment or partner, no matter where that drilling or refining takes place. Petrochemical products derived from oil, when they come from such projects outside of Iran, would also be prohibited.

Will this expansion of sanctions convince the government of Iran to change course? There’s little reason to believe so. After all, it was just two years ago that Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010. Iran didn’t blink an eye with that expansion of sanctions. Why would Iran’s reaction be different now?

The text of S. 2101 acknowledges that “Successive Presidents of the United States have determined that the pursuit of nuclear weapons capabilities by the Government of Iran presents a danger…” and that “Successive Congresses have recognized the threat that the Government of Iran and its policies present…”. In other words, Iran has been dangerous for years and years and years. The danger of Iran has become a comfortable sort crisis, an ongoing threat that never really comes to a head, but keeps on providing justifications for economic restrictions.

If the sanctions aren’t reducing the dangerous activities of the government of Iran, then why do politicians in Washington D.C. keep tightening sanctions against Iran? Maybe the purpose of the sanctions isn’t really to change Iran, so much as to take advantage of Iran’s extremism in order to take actions that are appealing for other reasons.

In general, the sanctions against Iran mostly focus on oil and products derived from oil. The new sanctions legislation passed yesterday increase the restrictions on oil, even oil that comes from outside Iran. These sanctions reduce the amount of oil on the market, and that reduced supply, through predictable economic mechanisms, increases the price of oil. So, the sanctions allow oil companies outside of Iran are able to make a higher profit without having to work any harder for it. The tighter the sanctions against Iran get, the more money the oil companies make.

So, it’s not strictly true to say that the sanctions against Iran are not working. They’re working very well for the executives and wealthy investors whose fortunes are connected to the price of a barrel of oil.

Passage of the Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Human Rights Act may not do a thing to improve human rights, to enhance regional peace, or to thwart the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But then, such changes may be beside the point.

Gary Ackerman, Jason Altmire, Robert Andrews, Joe Baca, John Barrow, Shelley Berkley, Howard Berman, Sanford Bishop, Tim Bishop, Dan Boren, Leon Boswell, Bob Brady, Corrine Brown, Russ Carnahan, John Carney, Ben Chandler, Judy Chu, Gerald Connolly, Jim Cooper, Jim Costa, Joe Courtney, Mark Critz, Henry Cuellar, Elijah Cummings, Susan Davis, Norm Dicks, John Dingell, Lloyd Doggett, Joe Donnelly, Eliot Engel, Charles Gonzalez, Al Green, Gene Green, Colleen Hanabusa, Martin Heinrich, Brian Higgins, Ruben Hinojosa, Mazie Hirono, Kathy Hochul, Tim Holden, Steny Hoyer, Steve Israel, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Jim Jordan, Marcy Kaptur, Dale Kildee, Larry Kissell, James Langevin, John Larson, Sander Levin, Dan Lipinski, David Loebsack, Jim Matheson, Carolyn McCarthy, Carolyn McCarthy, Mike McIntyre, Jim McNerney, Gregory Meeks, Bill Owens, Ed Pastor, Ed Perlmutter, Collin Peterson, Silvestre Reyes, Laura Richardson, Mike Ross, Dutch Ruppersberger, Adam Schiff, David Scott, Terri Sewell, Brad Sherman, Heath Shuler, Albio Sires, Adam Smith, Betty Sutton, Ed Towns, Nikki Tsongas, Peter Visclosky, and Tim Walz

These are the names of the 77 Democrats in the House of Representatives who voted on Friday in favor of passing H.R. 4310, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

You may remember how, last year, Republicans in Congress pushed Democrats into what was called a “compromise”. The deal was that a Special Committee from the House and Senate would be authorized to come up with a plan for reducing the budget deficit, through increases in revenue or through reductions in spending. That committee had a deadline to come up with a plan, and if they didn’t meet that deadline, then there would be automatic spending reductions in programs like Medicare and the military.

There would be no new taxes if the deadline wasn’t met, though, so the Republicans on that Special Committee just sat there, with no intention to come up with any plan, happy to let the spending reductions go into place. This year, there were supposed to be automatic reductions in money for Medicare and for the military alike.

The cuts in Medicare are coming through, but with the version of the National Defense Authorization Act just passed by the House of Representatives, the cuts in military spending do not take place. A vote for this legislation, essentially, is a vote to allow cuts in Medicare without any counter-balancing cuts in military spending or tax increases. It’s a vote to put all the economic burden onto working Americans, while allowing the wealthy to keep their special tax loopholes.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 as passed by the House of Friday preserves spending on extravagant weapons program that the Pentagon says it doesn’t want. It keeps open redundant military bases that are not strategically necessary.

The money to pay for this wasteful military spending is being taken from older Americans, by reducing their health care benefits.

Who would vote for such a thing? Well, almost every Republican in the House of Representatives voted in favor of this unjust redistribution of wealth. It’s not just a Republican problem, though. The 77 Democrats listed above voted to approve this unjust arrangement as well.

These Democratic politicians don’t deserve to be re-elected. If you are represented by one of the Democrats listed above, give your representative a call through the congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Ask to be connected to your representative’s office, and leave a simple message with the aide who picks up the phone: I’m a liberal, and I won’t be voting for you in November, and it’s because you voted for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

John Barrow
Sanford Bishop
Dan Boren
Ben Chandler
Henry Cuellar
Jim Matheson
Mike McIntyre
Gary Peters
Collin Peterson
Laura Richardson
Mike Ross
Heath Shuler

The Franks amendment eliminates funding for programs in which the United States cooperates with Russia to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The reason that Trent Franks, other congressional Republicans and these 12 Democrats gave for eliminating nuclear nonproliferation: Russia has given military aid to Syria.

I don’t know anyone who would argue that the Syrian government is a decent regime deserving of any kind of foreign support. However, Russian support for the Syrian government is a functionally separate issue. If nuclear weapons materials and technology from Russia go unprotected, and are taken by terrorists, mercenaries, or agents of another government, such an incident would do nothing to help overthrow the current Syrian regime. It would only create an additional foreign policy problem, and put the world in even greater risk of a nuclear holocaust.

The amount of spending required for the benefit of protection from nuclear weapons proliferation is minimal. If these dozen Democrats really wanted to save money, they could have voted for another proposed amendment to H.R. 4310, from Congressman Ed Markey. The Markey amendment would have saved a large amount of money by delaying the development of a new generation of bomber aircraft designed specifically to shoot nuclear missiles at foreign cities from a long range.

The Markey amendment was defeated. All but one (Gary Peters) of the dozen Democrats who voted in favor of ending nuclear nonproliferation voted against delaying the development of the expensive nuclear bomber.

The issue isn’t what’s happening in Syria at the moment. It isn’t cutting spending. The issue is nuclear weapons. Too many members of Congress favor the expansion of America’s nuclear weapons, and don’t care to even try to control the spread of nuclear weapons out of Russia.

Inevitably, destiny starts looking like it’s going to be late, if it ever will come at all, and signs of deviation from the certain future start appearing. These signs make the believers in destiny to look a little bit stupid, and so the believers start to stomp and fume. Instead of re-examining their beliefs, they rage against the people and events that dare to dissent from their vision of a certain future.

That’s just what’s happened with a group of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. They’re members of a political cult called American Exceptionalism, and they’ve identified a threat to their cult in the Obama White House: Lack of a clear mission for the USA in outer space.

Yesterday, this group of Republican politicians introduced H. Con. Res. 124, a resolution “expressing the sense of the Congress that President Obama’s delays in implementing a clear mission for the American space program represent a clear threat to American Exceptionalism”.

The names of the members of this pouting little group of congressional believers in outer space destiny are:
Randy Hultgren (Republican-IL, District 14)
Sandy Adams (Republican-FL, District 24)
Rob Bishop (Republican-UT, District 1)
Mo Brooks (Republican-AL, District 5)
Jason Chaffetz (Republican-UT, District 3)
John Culberson (Republican-TX, District 7)
Steven LaTourette (Republican-OH, District 14)
Pete Olson (Republican-TX, District 22)
Steven Palazzo (Republican-MS, District 4)
Ted Poe (Republican-TX, District 2)
Bill Posey (Republican-FL, District 15)
Tom Price (Republican-GA, District 6)
Lamar Smith (Republican-TX, District 21)
Allen West (Republican-FL, District 22)
Frank Wolf (Republican-VA, District 10)
Kevin Yoder (Republican-KS, District 3)

There’s a little flaw with their legislation, of course. American Exceptionalism is the belief that the United States of America has a predetermined destiny: To become greater than all other nations and to spread its influence far and wide. The cosponsors of H. Con. Res. 124 clearly believe that space travel has a central role in America’s destiny. They believe that there’s something necessary about space ships owned by the United States in whatever the future holds.

Maybe they grew up watching Star Trek. Maybe they believe that outer space is the home of the gods. Maybe they’re still waiting for the gadgetry of The Jetsons to show up. I don’t know what their vision of America’s destiny in outer space is, specifically, other than to say that they believe that America’s destined greatness is being interfered with by a failure to come up with outer space missions that have what they deem to be sufficient pizazz. Buck Rogers has not yet arrived, and someone must be held accountable.

If these astro-politicians would take a minute to calm down and think things through, they would realize that there’s really no point to H. Con. Res. 124. There’s no use in battling over destiny. If there is such a thing as destiny, it is by definition destined to come true. Nothing so trifling as a lack of focus on spaceships by the President of the United States can prevent true destiny from coming true.

If there really is a predetermined plan for greatness of the USA through journeys into outer space, then it will come to pass, and doesn’t need the help of a congressional resolution. If, on the other hand, there is no real outer space destiny of American Exceptionalism, well, what’s the big fuss about? Members of Congress can still get out toy spaceships and Star Wars action figures and play with them after all the interns have gone home.

Doesn’t this loose spending of government money contradict Republican claims that their political party is dedicated to fiscal responsibility? Not according to Congressman Joe Wilson. Yesterday, Representative Wilson rose to give a speech to his colleagues in Congress, telling them that military spending is somehow different than all other government spending. Representative Wilson declared that military spending “does not contribute to our growing national debt.”

How does that work? How could it be that dollar spent on schools for America’s kids increases the national debt, but a dollar spent on bombs and bullets used to kill people in America’s wars does not increase the national debt? Are there different economic rules that govern military spending and domestic spending?

Joe Wilson, you lie. A dollar of debt is a dollar of debt, regardless of the way that it’s spent. Republicans can’t expect us to believe that they’re against big government spending, after voting for a big government spending bill like H.R. 4310.

Yet, last week Congressman Coffman said something that made a lot of sense. Coffman called for the withdrawal of American soldiers from Europe. In a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Coffman said, “In January, the Pentagon announced that two U.S. Army combat brigade teams would be withdrawn from Europe. I don’t think that goes far enough. The current proposal is only a step in the right direction. We should retain only the headquarters and support infrastructure necessary for expeditionary capabilities, and we should withdraw all four combat brigades from Europe. In order for the U.S. military to modernize and move forward towards a more agile strategy, we must close bases in Europe. There is no longer a strategic reason to maintain nearly 80,000 troops in Europe.”

Coffman is right. It’s been almost 70 years since Adolph Hitler was a threat. The Soviet Union has been gone for an entire generation now. So, why should the American people keep paying to support a massive American military infrastructure on the European continent?

Europe won’t fall apart if the American military leaves, and back here at home, government support for schools and hospitals is being drastically reduced due to draconian budget legislation. It would be unforgivable for Congress to maintain our country’s outdated military presence in Europe while forcing people here in the USA to make sacrifices in order to support the extra expense.

If we could see more Republican legislation for cuts in military spending of the sort that Mike Coffman has offered, it would make the GOP claim of standing for fiscal responsibility a lot more believable.