A bill to restore to American intelligence agencies the authority they formerly had to monitor, unfettered, the communications of foreign terrorists passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee said that every day that our spy shops don’t have this authority our intelligence is being “degraded.”
National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell, a former vice admiral of the Navy, an intelligence officer for 25 years, and head of the National Security Agency under President Clinton, said that without this authorization, vital intelligence is being “lost.”
A letter sent by 25 state Attorneys General of both parties says that America’s security is being “jeopardized” by the refusal of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow her members to vote on the bill – which, it is believed, would pass with bipartisan support in the House as well. The moderate Blue Dog Democrats are pushing Pelosi to permit the vote.
And in an interview with National Journal, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing this bill – which also contains a provision granting legal protection to telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with the U.S. intelligence officials to detect and prevent acts of terrorism.
"I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity," former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. "They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context." Last month, Senator Obama voted to strip language in an intelligence bill that would have granted to Verizon, AT&T and other companies the immunity.
Regarding the telecoms, Senator Rockefeller has said: "What is the big payoff for the telephone companies? They get paid a lot of money? No. They get paid nothing. What do they get for this (for cooperating with intelligence officials to prevent terrorism)? They get $40 billion worth of suits, grief, trashing, but they do it."
I have publicly praised those Democrats — e.g. Rep. Joe Donnelly of Indiana — who have taken a principled stand on this issue and, by doing so, incurred the wrath of Speaker Pelosi, the trial lawyers who stand to make billions of dollars, MoveOn.org, the ACLU and CAIR (the Council on American Islamic Relations, a pro-Islamist group which has organized a campaign against the Senate bill).
Yet for some reason, in all the mainstream media coverage of this issue, those who support the bill are portrayed as “partisans,” and those who oppose it are called “civil rights advocates” or something equally flattering. Why is that? Discuss among yourselves.
There’s much more on this issue – the substance and principles, not the politics — here.[emphasis mine]
This is relevant to the post just previous to this one. From a psychological perspective, the behavior of the MSM in this as in so many other matters appears to be motivated by underlying ideological principles of which they are largely unaware; and almost none have thought through the consequences of promoting those principles.
Beneath the conscious, deliberate bias and blatant manipulation of news for 'the good' of us all, is an uncritical, unthinking cognitive apparatus that has been virtually destroyed by years of academic propaganda-- to the point that many of these journalists simply regurgitate the marxist talking points in which they have been marinating for several decades--without even recognizing them as such.
Instead, they believe that their behavior is truly motivated by a desire for 'social justice' and 'peace'.
Many of these walking, talking advertisements for 21st century neo-marxist fascism--who laughingly call themselves "objective journalists"-- are nothing but the mindless zombies of a not-quite-dead marxism/communism/socialism that rose from its 20th century grave. What gave new life to these moldering and rotting ideas that certainly deserved to die after the mass death and destruction they caused, was the energizing power of postmodern rhetoric, cultivated in the hallowed halls of academia, and inoculated into the unsuspectng children who came there to learn.
Instead of learning to think, they were indoctrinated into the ever-growing ranks of leftist zombiest churned out by those institutions.
The zombies of the MSM walk among us without hinderance; wreaking havoc and mindlessly mouthing the multicultural platitudes and encouraging the 'class struggle' and promoting marxist envy--in other words, generally behaving like this undead ideology is some sort of beacon of "hope" or "change" for today's world.
These zombies prey on the soul and eat the life force of free societies like ours; and, like the utterly clueless Sean of the Dead, we go through our days oblivious to the havoc, barely noticing that something is very wrong.
Eventually, even the hapless Sean's perceptual and cognitive abilities kicked into gear and were able to override the overly emotional self-involvement to make him aware of the danger.
Godzilla and the many monsters in Japanese and American cinema were symbolic of the dangerous and frightening forces unleashed after WWII. In our own time, it is the ubiquitous fascination with zombies that symbolizes the forces that threaten to engulf our society and the world.
What better image than a zombie is there to represent the horrifying mindlessness of the herd mentality that the political left have re-dedicated themselves to in the new century?
UPDATE: Charles Johnson asks, "What the hell is wrong with our mainstream wire sources?"
Also, GatewayPundit wonders about this story.
The answer? Zombies. See above.
UPDATE II: Disaster preparedness--even for zombie invasions! (hat tip: Instapundit)
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