FederalRepublic.net

By Donna J. Miller

U.S. Rep. John Murtha’s booming Marine colonel’s voice filled the tight spaces between Greater Clevelanders packed into the City Club Friday to hear him protest President Bush’s war on Iraq.

He repeated the message he began trumpeting in November: that American military efforts in Iraq are failing and will continue to fail, while costing taxpayers $450 billion by the year’s end.

-Snip-

Troops are undermanned, underequipped and dying at rates higher than during World War II and the Vietnam War. “I visit the [veterans hospitals] every week. The troops don’t know what their mission is any more.” And 8,500 of them have returned with shattered bod ies or brains and the permanent “shadow on your soul” that fighting a war creates.

Murtha took questions from several luncheon attendees who worried that Bush may be planning to invade Iran. The ranking and longtime member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee nearly shouted, “we will not” be entering Iran.

Link

This is yet another example of the liberal mindset in regards to the war in Iraq: the United States is not winning in Iraq, nor will it ever win. In a nutshell, Mr. Murtha has shown the world why he is nothing less than a political coward.

One must realize the success of Iraq cannot be judged by the armchair generals of the television generation, but by the actions and accomplishments of the Iraqi people. Iraqis have come out in droves to vote in three separate elections, those elections including referendums on a temporary provisional government, the approval of a constitution, and the election and formation of a new, parlimentary government. The success of Iraqis was shown to the world in the form of purple fingers, marks to show the power of the voting populace.

Defeatists like Mr. Murtha do not look at evidence or think about what is said, but instead only look to their hate of President Bush and the Republican Party. Not only was Operation Iraqi Freedom the most successful and speedy military operation in the history of the world, but casualties are at their lowest number since the war started in March of 2003. Mr. Murtha is also quite inaccurate in his assessment that troops are dying at rates faster than that of World War II or Vietnam. He must not have ever taken a walk around the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., a memorial that lists names of tens of thousands of perished soldiers. He must’ve also forgotten the number of casualties in Operation Overlord, at the beaches at Normandy on D-Day. An estimated 2,500 allied soldiers died that day while fighting the fascism of Hitler’s Germany.

In conclusion, the defeatist tactics of Mr. Murtha are not only absurd, they are distinctly unAmerican. Instead of supporting the troops and their mission, Mr. Murtha has turned his back on the soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen exerting tremendous effort in making Iraq and ultimately America, free for generations to come.

From the Newsmax.com Wires

WASHINGTON - Democrats plan to push for more port security money while criticizing Republicans on the issue as the House debates a $91 billion measure for wars and hurricane recovery.

“If the Republicans are now deciding to get on board, then we welcome them, because for so long they have been on a sinking ship, basically saying that our ports are secure,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, lead Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Republicans dismissed the criticism, arguing that they have increased port security money over the last few years beyond what the Bush administration has requested.

“What you saw was as much money as we could spend without just throwing money at the problem, hoping something good would happen,” said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, suggesting that’s the Democrats’ approach.

In both the House and Senate, Democrats have long pushed for more money for ports only to have the Republican-controlled House reject their efforts, largely along party lines.

Link

Democrats are an interesting bunch. A party of no ideas or obstructionism at every turn, again the party manages to show the world why they haven’t been winning elections the past 12 years. In my opinion, the effort to boost money for more port security money is just a political ploy to throw more oxygen on a dying Dubai ports controversy.

The only Democrat I had even heard complaining about port security before the Dubai deal was none other than John Kerry, who has flip-flopped on every major defense issue not only during the 2004 election season, but right up to present day. That’s not saying much for the Democratic Party trying to be a party strong on defense.

I hear rhetoric everyday on television and the radio from Democrats complaining the Republican Congress has not put enough money toward this or that. However, you cannot just throw money at a problem and expect it to be corrected. We must look at the root cause of the problem or look at factors why the problem is occuring before we just throw money at it. It’s only common sense to look at problems in this way. I haven’t heard Democrats say anything to that affect; they only blame President Bush for not funding programs enough or not creating new ones.

I wonder why Democrats are even talking about raising funding for anything anyway. They want fund increases for all our country’s welfare programs, yet they continue to complain about the lack of balanced budgets and the rising deficit. Can Dems decide one way or the other? Yeah, didn’t think so.

By Nedra Pickler

A day before parts of the USA Patriot Act were to expire, President Bush signed into law a renewal that will allow the government to keep using terror-fighting tools passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush’s signature came two days after the House gave final approval to the legislation over objections that it infringes on Americans’ privacy. The president said the law has been vital to protecting Americans from terrorists.

“The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do,” Bush said during a signing ceremony in the White House East Room. “It has helped us detect terrorist cells, disrupt terrorist plots and save American lives.”

Sixteen provisions of the old law were set to expire Friday. Political battles over the legislation forced Congress to extend the expiration date twice.

To get the legislation renewed, Bush was forced to accept new curbs on the Patriot Act’s powers.
These new civil liberties protections for the first time say explicitly that people who receive subpoenas granted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for library, medical, computer and other records can challenge a gag order in court.

Some say the protections did not go far enough.

“Today marks, sadly, a missed opportunity to protect both the national security needs of this country and the rights and freedoms of its citizens,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

But Republicans want to take the law into the upcoming midterm elections to show they are acting to protect national security.

The legislation renews the expiring provisions of the original Patriot Act, including one that lets federal officials obtain “tangible items,” such as business records, from libraries and bookstores, in connection with foreign intelligence and international terrorism investigations.

Link

It took far too long for the Patriot Act to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by President Bush. The Patriot Act gives law enforcement additional tools (which have been used to fight the proliferation of drugs) to fight and investigate terrorism. Though I have my concerns about civil rights and the proper balance between the so-called police state and the protection of civil rights, I think the Patriot Act is exactly what this country needs to fight the new war of this generation - the War on Terror. I am disappointed by the liberal establishment in Congress for working to delay the Patriot Act’s renewal, showing their obstruction and their passion to defeat anything proposed by President Bush or the Republican-controlled Congress.

By LAURIE KELLMAN
Associated Press Writer

The Senate on Thursday gave its blessing to the renewal of the USA Patriot Act after adding new privacy protections designed to strike a better balance between civil liberties and the government’s power to root out terrorists.

The 89-10 vote marked a bright spot in President Bush’s troubled second term as his approval ratings dipped over the war in Iraq and his administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Renewing the act, Bush and congressional Republicans said, was key to preventing more terror attacks in the United States.

Bush applauded the Senate for overcoming “partisan attempts to block its passage.” The House was expected to approve the two-bill package next week and send it to the president, who would sign it before 16 provisions expire March 10.

“This bill will allow our law enforcement officials to continue to use the same tools against terrorists that are already used against drug dealers and other criminals, while safeguarding the civil liberties of the American people,” Bush said in a statement from India.

Critics held their ground. A December filibuster led by Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and joined by several libertarian-leaning Republicans, forced the Bush administration to agree to modest new curbs on the government’s power to probe library, bank and other records.

Feingold insisted those new protections are cosmetic.

“Americans want to defeat terrorism and they want the basic character of this country to survive and prosper,” he said. “They want both security and liberty, and unless we give them both, and we can if we try, we have failed.”

Some lawmakers who voted for the package acknowledged deep reservations about the power it would grant to any president.

“Our support for the Patriot Act does not mean a blank check for the president,” said Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who voted to pass the bill package. “What we tried to do on a bipartisan basis is have a better bill. It has been improved.”

Not enough even for the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. After prolonged negotiations produced a House-Senate compromise, Specter urged his colleagues to pass it even as he promised to introduce a new measure and hold hearings on how to fix it.

For now, Bush and his Republican allies savored a significant victory. For months, their tough-on-terror image has been tarnished by the revelation that the president authorized a secret domestic wiretapping program. The report in December gave Democrats ammunition for their charge that the Bush administration had run amok in its zeal to root out terrorists.

With the help of some Republicans, they blocked a vote on whether to renew the law before 16 provisions expired on Dec. 31.

GOP leaders were unable to break the gridlock, so Congress opted instead to extend the deadline twice while negotiations continued. In the end, the White House and the Republicans broke the stalemate by crafting a second measure that would curb some powers of law enforcement officials seeking information. Both will be sent as a package to Bush.

This second bill _ in effect an amendment to the measure renewing the 16 provisions _ would add new protections to the 2001 antiterror law in three areas. It would:

- Give recipients of court-approved subpoenas for information in terrorist investigations the right to challenge a requirement that they refrain from telling anyone.

- Eliminate a requirement that an individual provide the FBI with the name of a lawyer consulted about a National Security Letter, which is a demand for records issued by investigators.

- Clarify that most libraries are not subject to demands in those letters for information about suspected terrorists.

Passed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the original Patriot Act expanded the government’s surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers.

The renewal package would make 14 of 16 temporary provisions permanent and set four-year expirations on the others.

The renewal includes several measures not directly related to terrorism. One would make it harder for illicit labs to obtain ingredients for methamphetamine by requiring pharmacies to sell nonprescription cold medicines only from behind the counter.

Link

I am very pleased that the Senate found a compromise in the Patriot Act renewal. Though I have strong feelings on the issue of civil liberties and the encroachment of government in our lives, I feel this legislation was well overdue for a renewal. Many tools given by the Patriot Act are especially helpful in the War on Terror. It’s nice to see the government, and especially the Democratic Party, realize this legislation must get through to President Bush so our protectors can do their job. I applaud the leadership of the Senate in getting this bill through.