‘Weakening our national security is their agenda’

March 15, 2006

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman sent around an email last night to his list, highlighting his take on Sen. Feingold’s censure resolution. Take a moment to read it, if for no other reason to understand what Dems are up against it. (Keep a bottle of Maalox handy…)

This week, liberal Democrat Russ Feingold called on the Senate to censure the President for a program that is successfully stopping terrorists. After months of searching, Democrat leaders are finally beginning to find their agenda: take away the tools America needs to fight terror. In the last 24 hours, fringe groups like MoveOn.org and Democrat leaders from John Kerry to Harry Reid to Dick Durbin have rallied to Feingold’s side, praising his grandstanding as a “catalyst” for the investigation of the President.

Weakening our national security is their agenda. Is it yours? Sign the petition to tell the Democrat leaders to stop undermining the War on Terror with cheap political stunts.

We are a nation at war. Our President has no more basic responsibility than to protect the American people and fight terrorists who want to kill us. It’s one thing if a lone Senator wants our government to look the other way when an Al Qaeda terrorist contacts a sleeper cell inside the United States. It’s entirely another when Democrat minority leader Harry Reid commends Feingold’s censure move for “bringing [the terrorist surveillance program] to the attention of the American people.”

Democrat leaders never miss an opportunity to put politics before our nation’s security. And now, they would rather censure the President for doing his job than actually fight the War on Terror. It’s what the MoveOn.org wing of their party wants, and now, it’s their agenda – from the top of the ticket on down.

One could go point by point, highlighting every error and lie — did you catch the constant “Democrat” instead of the grammatically correct “Democratic”? — but it’s just not worth it. As far as Mehlman is concerned, the entire Democratic Party is committed to weakening our national security. The “treason” argument was generally the favorite of the Coulter/Limbaugh crowd, but now it’s the official national party putting it in writing.

Consider this your rallying cry for the day.

We are a nation at war. Our President has no more basic responsibility than to protect the American people and fight terrorists who want to kill us.

That’s why Our President so vigorously defended the port decision that the majority of Americans were opposed to –

That’s why we STILL aren’t inspectin cargo coming into our ports.

That’s why we STILL aren’t doing anything to secure our borders to stop terrorists from crossing into America in the dead of night.

Weakening our National Security is whose agenda?

  • This week, liberal Democrat Russ Feingold called on the Senate to censure the President for a program that is successfully stopping terrorists.
    Uh right-how many “terrorists” has this program stopped? The whole censure thing isn’t even about the war on terror. It is a legal matter plain and simple. Bush broke the law, he admitted he broke the law, funny how the RNC fails to mention this. By the way, suppose we do catch someone with Bush’s illegal program-wouldn’t the case get thrown out for legality issues? Wouldn’t it be far better to ensure the program is fully legit so that in the off chance we actually do nab someone they will be able to be tried? How stupid is the RNC not to realize this?

  • Whereas The Republican Party is dedicated to selling our security to foreign powers, spying on citizens without oversight, spending future generations into the poor house, and declaring a war on an adjective.

    To sum it up The Republican Party is the party of the 21st century robber baron.

  • “Uh right-how many “terrorists” has this program stopped?” – Charlene

    I believe the count is TWO. One was the guy who talked about cutting down the Broklyn Bridge with a blow torch, but eventually dropped the idea as too stupid.

    I’m not sure of the other one.

    Now, to achieve this, not only did NSA spend all their resources on conducting warrantless spying on Americans and legal residents, but they took thousands of man-hours of the FBI to track down all the ‘leads’ they generated. And every case which the FBI eventually found evidence, they were already pursuing before they got the tip from the NSA.

    Not much of a program. But it gives Frist and Mehlman ammunition.

    On the other hand, George Bush lied about this in the 2004 campaign, when he really did not have to, so I would say it gives and Democrat with a backbone ammunition too.

  • The biggest terrorist is the administration that promotes terror for political advantage, but calls it “national security”.
    Up is down
    Good is bad
    Terror is security

  • Steve, I hope people listen to your rallying cry.

    I just called my Senator (Salazar) to find out his position on the censure motion. The aide I spoke with said they’ve heard from a LOT of people on this issue. CALL YOUR SENATOR and tell him/her to support the motion for censure!

    Weasels like Mehlman will always use the criticism = treason argument to try to change the subject. Don’t let them get away with it, and don’t let your Senator shirk his/her responsibility to hold the President accountable.

    Call your Senator!

  • And how have the Democrats responded? I’m imagining they’ll rush to the mic to pronounce they’re for a strong national security and our Commander in Chief, and that Reid, Durbin, Kerry and Feingold are Al Qaeda’s toadies. Someone please cue Joementum.

    The NSA warrrantless wiretaps were a gift to the Democrats. The Dubai Ports deal was another. Then there’s extraordinary rendition; secret CIA prisons; torture in Bagram, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanomo; the criminal bungling of Iraq; the inability to capture Osama bin Laden; turning the FBI and the CIA into the GOP’s security appartus, and abandoning Afghanistan to Taliban forces. The Republicans have turned the Constitution into wet, used toilet paper. All of these are no-brainer issues that the Democrats should be dominating the discussion on. Instead, they can’t follow through or, even worse, they side with Republicans. In my mind, that makes them culpable for every friggin’ single one of these disasters. And for what? Because some pill-popping lardass or shrill blonde toothpick might talk bad about them?

    The Democratic Party looks weak on national security because it hasn’t offered alternatives or even hinted it has thought of alternatives. “I support my Commander-in-Chief” is not good enough anymore.

  • Gridlock (re #1), the real question I have is why isn’t the DNC – or anybody – doing a one-page talking points/bullet points list much like yours and getting it out to every media outlet, reporter, commentator, blogger, person-who-dreamed-in-high-school-of-being-a-reporter, ticket buyer for Good Night & Good Luck, etc. within the same news cycle?

    Do we need to bring the whole party into a big convention center and have mandatory viewing of The War Room? Can’t we make Carville the official communications director of the party? Because if we are doing the above, we aren’t doing it very effectively. We need people who can hit back – hard, effectively, fast, everytime and hopefully “give good quote” so the media likes to use them as a source.

    Can it really be all that hard? It doesn’t seem like it should be. . .

  • God dammit, he’s proposing to censure Bush for not doing his job, not faithfully upholding the Constitution and not faithfully executing the laws of the United States of America, which he took an oath, an OATH to do.

  • I should have waited before I posted. Sorry. And to point something else out. Contrary to what Mehlman tries to say about Democrats, they are running, running from this. I can almost see what so many voters see in Republicans when the Democrats actually run from this issue, when they are willing to, almost across the board, look away when the President wilfully intentionally breaks the law.

    Is it worth pointing out what illegal overreaching just did in the case against Moussaoui? (sp?) There is a fine example of bungling the war on terror by coaching witnesses against the judge’s orders, threatening the case against this guy. We are risking letting this guy off the hook because we can’t play by the rules.

  • “We are a nation at war. Our President has no more basic responsibility than to protect the American people and fight terrorists who want to kill us.”

    ‘Bout time he got around to doing that, don’t you think?

  • I went to the RNC website – to their letters to editors section. Clicked off 5 local newspapers. Instead of using the suggested form letters, I wrote that Mehlman is dead wrong, Bush broke the law and all of Congress should be standing with Feingold. Felt good using RNC’s website for that although I’ll probably now be on a “terror suspect” list (if not already). Doubt that my letter will actually get to the papers – maybe I’ll be lucky and the transmission is auto. Just trying to overcome this powerless feeling.

  • Okay – a question just for those of you who have children.

    You’re going to their school to pick them up, and down the block you see a man who _might_ be middle eastern sitting in a car, and you notice that he has a video camera sitting on the dashboard, pointed at the school. He’s taking notes, and talking on a cell phone, and reaches over to adjust the camera. Then he sees you, and pulls a newspaper over the camera.

    What do you do?

  • Bogieville,
    he could blonde and blue-eyed and I’d STILL call the cops on him, and go over and ask what the hell he was doing.

  • Um, the exact same thing I do if I see a lily-white caucasian man doing the same thing. someone is projecting their racism on the rest of us again.

    But while suspiciously hiding the fact that one is videotaping a school full of kids and taking notes is an unusual act that invites further scrutiny, peacefully handing out leaflets (one target of the spying program) or even talking on the phone in one’s own home is not really probable cause. At least not in my country – not sure where you come from.

    One thing I would NOT do in your hypothetical, is whip out my Beretta 9000 and blow his head off on my own authority. That would be overstepping my legal bounds. Not unlike the President tapping his call without a warrant would be.

    Really, even for trolls this issue should be easy to understand: FISA allows tapping for 3 full days without a warrant; the FISA court has rejected less than 1% of the warrant applications ever submitted. There is simply no good argument — and certainly none Waumpusbogieville have ever made — for not taking the simple, responsible step that the President is sworn to do, and that is to follow the law.

  • “Okay – a question just for those of you who have children.

    You’re going to their school to pick them up, and down the block you see a man who _might_ be middle eastern sitting in a car, and you notice that he has a video camera sitting on the dashboard, pointed at the school. He’s taking notes, and talking on a cell phone, and reaches over to adjust the camera. Then he sees you, and pulls a newspaper over the camera.

    What do you do?

    I’d tell Bogieville to get his butt to a recruiter so he can start fighting “Islamofacists” in the Middle East for real instead of wasting our time with crap scenarios like this.

  • A political Party that depends, for their accession to majority status, upon their nation’s losing a war, which the said political party had invited, is tempted to engage in treasonous activities, but they are confident that they can out-source most of the really felonious work to their Middle Eastern Subsidiaries. Call it GLOBALIZATION!

  • prm, I keep telling you, recruiters generally aren’t interested in 45 year olds, even with prior service, especially if they’ve got Kellogg’s syndrome. Maybe you oughta try…

    Could the FISA folks handle any sort of volume in any sort of timely fashion? Say the bust a guy who has 100 contacts on his cell phone. 20 of them are in the US. They check those folks out, and each of them makes 20 calls that day. And each each of those folks make 20 calls. And they’re still working on translating the first batch… That’s a wide spread – heck, I know these guys get enough of our tax dollars, but you’d have to have an army to just do the paperwork.

    If this is anything like the rest of your government bureaucracy, there’s forms to be filled out. Paperwork to be completed. Trees to be killed. In triplicate.

    Let’s look at it this way – the government can’t teach your kid to read or add, but they seem to do wonders with self esteem, to the point that Junior wants to tell his ol’ man off by the time he’s 12… The government can’t effiently run the simplest of bureaucracies – how many of you guys _look forward_ to going down to city hall, or wherever, to take care of taxes, your car’s plates, your driver’s license?

    Next thing we’d know, someone would be publishing a list in the National Enquirer.

    As for being racist… Well, I’m a realist. If acknowledging that thus far, the vast majority of the terrorists we’ve been dealing with are male Islamist nutjobs from the middle east, then, I guess I’m racist. Thing is, I also figure they’ve got a few African-Americans (our prison system…), and a few idealistic but twisted Caucasians… They seem really, really light on recruiting of Scandanavian women… Plus, I don’t think they’ve recruited a single knitting granny, breast-feeding soccer mommy, or medal of honor winner… So, yeah, I profile.

    For the record, I’d dial 911, and try to get a license plate. And if it looked like the fellow was _definitely, and beyond any reasonable doubt_ going to do something violent, then I’d have to make a decision. I don’t have any kids – should I try to save yours?

  • Who is scared? I’m realistic.

    I’m also logical.

    Let’s look at the points:

    Group A wants to either convert us, or kill us. In wholesale numbers.

    Group A, due to our free country, essentially can go just about anywhere they want.

    Group A is going to succeed again.

    Of course, I suspect that some members of your party will be gleefully cheering when that event happens.

    And you know something? I don’t even live anywhere near the research triangle… I’m guessing some of you guys might. Of course one of the people you folks envision would NEVER drive a truck through a crowd…

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