It's easy to think that changes to FISA won't really impact average Americans.  But in the global economy, you are doing a lot more international communication than you realize.

And now all that international communication can be wiretapped or intercepted without a warrant.

Including your phone sex calls.

It's been a rough couple weeks.

And I have definitely been in the 2nd stage for a while.  Seriously angry at our presumptive nominee and the congressional democrats.

But it's time for me to step back.  There are constructive things to do while this phase passes.

Mostly this is a diary to myself.

Who's job is it to get elected?  It's the candidates.

The base can and should support the candidates in order to advance their issues.  But ultimately it's the candidates responsibility to get the votes necessary to win.

Sometimes that's a painful lesson for the base.  Sometimes the candidate needs to go towards the center because the net gain in money, votes, and pundit support.

Ultimately it's the candidates tradeoff.

In the end, our elected representatives swear only one thing.

They don't swear to end the war, they don't swear to provide us with healthcare, they don't swear to increase the minimum wage...

They swear to protect and uphold the constitution.

That's it.  That's all.  Guess the founders were purity trolls.

The decider has decided.

There will be no investigations into the actions of his administration.  Executive Privilege for all.

Congress has the tools to sweep away Executive Privilege like a mote of dust in the wind.  But they are afraid.

And so we wait, watch, and learn nothing.  But I still pray that some day, they will become brave enough to reveal the full story of this administrations abuses to the American people.

I think we can neutralize impeachment as a weapon against Democrats in 2008 by starting to use it as a weapon against Republicans right now.

Imagine a set of 30 second ad spots that all follow the same formula: known leaders of GOP condemning "the president" for "lying to congress", "lying to the american people", and mentioning "need for impeachment."

In October 2006, the congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA2006).  This bill suspended habeas corpus for anyone designated an enemy  combatant and retroactively authorized the use of "alternative" interrogation techniques (torture).

This violation of our countries founding principles enjoyed broad bipartisan support.  And in fact, even with the Democrats taking control of congress there are still enough MCA2006 supporters left to pass it with a filibuster proof majority.

It's time to primary those torturers out of office.  List below.

Expanding a comment into diary.

The upper middle class is essentially defined by high earned income.  These people use education, skills, connections or whatever to earn a good living at a job they enjoy.  The American Dream is to be Upper Middle Class.

The upper class is defined by unearned income.  Essentially the upper class gets all it's income from owning rather than working.  Bush tax cuts on interest, dividends, capital gains, etc. are all targetted at lowering the taxes on unearned income.

We need to alter the debate on tax policy to better point out this distinction.

After reading an article about Democratic party unity and the Blue Dog Democrats, I decided to look them up and compare to my list of Congressional Torturers.

What I found was interesting.  37 members of the Blue Dog whatever in the 108th congress.  23 of them voted in favor of torture.  This accounted for 23 of the 30 democrats to vote for torture.  Now the Blue Dogs have increased their membership to 43 in the 110th caucus.  

This is an update of an 11/8/06 diary.  I am no longer able to update that diary for new election results.

In October 2006, 317 of our elected officials made Torture and detention without trial the rule of the land.  These officials threw away our moral standing as Americans and embraced torture as an official government policy.

It is our duty as Americans, as Progressives, as Christians, or just as Humans to remove every one of these torturers from elected office.  44 are gone and we have the duty to start removing the remaining 273 (43D/230R) in 2008.

The full list is after the break.  It is organized by when we as voters get the next chance to indicate our support (or not) of torture by keeping (or not) these elected officials.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is pretty widely regarded as a disaster by progressives and moderate Democrats.  And I believe the Congress can and should repeal it.

But they need political cover to do it...

In October 2006, 317 of our elected officials openly supported Torture and the Destruction of Habeas Corpus.  Their explicit approval of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 violated our core values as Americans, as Christians (some of us), and as Humans.

44 of those torturers are now leaving office.  Either leaving on their own or with the voters bootprint on their backside.

We still have a lot of work to do:
   - 7 more torturers are incumbents in races that are too close to call
   - 13 Senators and 29 members of the House need primary challengers
   - 48 Senators and 175 members of Congress need to be defeated in their next general election
   - 2 Members of the Executive need to be sent back the ranch

Full list below the break.