{"id":12418,"date":"2007-08-03T10:35:06","date_gmt":"2007-08-03T14:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12418.html"},"modified":"2007-08-03T10:35:06","modified_gmt":"2007-08-03T14:35:06","slug":"lott-to-dc-run-for-your-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/lott-to-dc-run-for-your-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Lott to DC: Run for your lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I realize that the White House is desperate to gain increased surveillance power under a &#8220;revised&#8221; FISA, and I know lawmakers have shown a serious willingness to give the president more of what he wants.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s just no reason for Trent Lott to scare the bejeezus out of people who live and work in the nation&#8217;s capital.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/issues\/1_1\/breakingnews\/19681-1.html\">Roll Call reported<\/a> late yesterday, &#8220;Capitol Police officials have stepped up the department&#8217;s security presence on Capitol Hill in response to intelligence indicating the increased possibility of an al-Qaida terrorist attack on Congress sometime between now and Sept. 11.&#8221; One assumes they&#8217;re working on something more reliable that Michael Chertoff&#8217;s gut.<\/p>\n<p>But leave it to Lott to push the matter too far.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Without mentioning a specific threat to the Capitol, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ominously advised Thursday that Congress needed to pass changes to terrorist surveillance laws before leaving for the August recess and warned that otherwise &#8220;the disaster could be on our doorstep.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When asked if people should leave Washington, D.C., during the month of August, Lott responded, &#8220;I think it would be good to leave town in August, and it would probably be good to stay out until September the 12th.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, tell me. What, exactly, are people who live and work in DC supposed to do in response to comments like these? How about families who&#8217;ve planned August vacations to DC before the kids have to go back to school?<\/p>\n<p>As Spencer Ackerman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tpmmuckraker.com\/archives\/003851.php\">put it<\/a>, &#8220;There&#8217;s irresponsibility. There&#8217;s demagoguery. And then there&#8217;s Trent Lott.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I realize that the White House is desperate to gain increased surveillance power under a &#8220;revised&#8221; FISA, and I know lawmakers have shown a serious willingness to give the president more of what he wants. But there&#8217;s just no reason for Trent Lott to scare the bejeezus out of people who live and work in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}