Todd Akinon is either completely ignorant or a bald-faced liar (although I wouldn’t rule out both being the case.) Here he is on the floor of the House:
For those of you too impatient to load the video, or would rather avoid seeing Akin speak at all costs:
I rise to call attention to a tragedy of our own making.
In May of this year, a U.S. soldier, Alex Jimenez, along with several of his friends, were captured by al Qaeda. As our intelligence officers wanted to tap into wires to try to find his whereabouts, they were hobbled and had to wait ten hours for lawyers to get through the FISA court, to allow them to get the critical information they needed. That information lost, this soldier and his compatriots have never been found, although the bodies of one or two have been found.
You won’t be surprised to find out that it’s complete BS. Think Progress debunked the story yesterday; the delay was caused by the Bush Administration’s own bungling interagency process and a missing Alberto Gonzales. The FISA court had nothing to do with it, which makes sense. The FISA law actually empowers the government to wiretap in advance of getting a warrant (up to 72 hours), so how could the court delay the wiretap in the first place?
So have you called your representative yet to make sure that individual warrants are preserved?
We simply must find someone (preferably middle-of-the-road Democrat) to run against Akin next year. I know the numbers aren’t great in that district but I think there are 3 factors that make Akin beatable.
1. MO-02 is a conservative district but Akin is far more conservative than the district.
2. 2008 is likely to be a high-water mark year for the Democrats
3. Akin is far more stupid than the people he represents.
Has anybody heard of about any credible candidates who are thinking about running?
How can Rep Akin get up in the US House and spew that kind of deceptive, fraudulent and erroneous rhetoric?
Is he really interested in serving Mo’s 2nd, or he more enraptured to just try to game the American public and politic?
In the case of an intelligence emergency, of course FISA provides for a grace period of 72 hours clear, before the court order…
Very McCarthy-esque of Akin, don’t you think?
So concerned, he is, with bringing online the accoutrements of a police state just to serve his political agenda.
Todd Akin is doing a disservice to our troops by lying, Todd Akin is doing disservice to America by lying, and his brand of obsolete politics is simply harming the integrity and dignity of our country.
He supports the war in Iraq, he received a zero legislative rating on a scale of 0-100 from the Children’s Defense Fund, a zero legislative rating on a scale of 0-100 from the Sierra Club on the environment – and a zero rating on international affairs from Citizens for Global Solutions, needless to say he’s the kind of political force that needs to be retired from our corridors of power.
More to come,
Byron DeLear
and, as I remember, there were actually a couple of “moderate” democratic types who ran in the last Democratic primary as well as a third, perennial candidate who had next to no chance of garnering more than a few votes in the general election. Unfortunately, the two viable candiates split the majority vote, and the aforementioned third candidate, won the nomination with a few thousand votes (which was about all he got in the general election as well if memory serves me–I know I forced myself to vote for him just because the alternative was Akin).
Many people in my neighborhood are knee-jerk Republicans, but there are those here who are aware of what is going on and are disturbed by the war, government corruption and by the efforts of the Bush administration to weaken programs such as Social Security. I also suspect that few of the people who vote for Akin know just how extreme his views on such issues as separation of church and state, etc. really are, since I am told that he kept his more extreme views under wraps when he first ran. While many people out here are conservative, few that I have met are on the right-wing, lunatic fringe as Akin seems to be.