Anyone following news or politics right now have likely heard about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and how changes for it were voted upon by our Senate earlier this week.  One of the most notible changes include allowing communications that begin or end in a foreign country to be wiretapped by the US government without supervision by the FISA Court.  That’s right, it doesn’t matter if you are suspected of being a terrorist or not, you can be wiretapped.  This absolutely blows my mind.  Another thing that is a part of this whole vote is that Bush and company are trying to grant wireless companies immunity for providing warrentless wiretapping and record disclosure to the government so they could spy.  Again, this blows my mind.  The companies clearly broke the law yet the government is trying to retroactively let them off the hook.  One would think that the individuals that we have elected would surely make sure things things would never happen.

Not so fast. The Senate voted to allow for these changes.
I could go on and on about how this violates human rights, not to mention it’s unconstitutional, but what this whole situation illustrates to me is just how much government officials can get away with anything as long as they use the fear card.  It’s not being talked about that it will allow our millions of US citizens to have their phones and internet/emails tapped, it’s being done to “protect our freedoms from terrorists”!  How long are people going to just lie down and allow that to be the excuse for every single messed up thing our president decides to do?  It’s absolutely infuriating.

You know who else I think is messed up?  John McCain.  I used to really like the guy and really hoped he would beat out GWB for the republican nomination two elections ago.  I still think he would have been a better choice, but he has changed so much since those days.  His pandering towards the right is sickening.  He used to do what he felt was the right thing to do which is what I liked about him.  Now, he’s willing to say or do whatever it takes to get votes.  Back in 2005, he worked to ban torture.   Being that the man endured torture as a POW in Vietnam, this made total sense.  Now, though, McCain has completely shifted his stance on torture.  And that’s not the only thing he’s changed his stance on.  McCain deserves to be beat by whomever gets the democratic nod come November.  And he’ll have no one to blame but himself.