“An honest politician is one who when he’s bought stays bought.” 
— Attributed to Simon Cameron, Pennsylvania (1799-1899).

And so, we consider the  relative positions of our President and the House of Representatives.  The set up is easy enough.  According to the President, if the House allows his surveillance bill, already passed by our pristine Senate, to expire (as it did last Friday), then they are exposing the United States to terrorism.  But within the bill is that minor detail immunizing Telecoms for past transgressions.

So, our President says our lives are threatened should the House refuse to pass the bill, but he insists that the bill retain the immunity provision.  It is more important to the President of the United States of America that telecoms who engage in illegal conduct at the behest of the administration  receive retroactive immunity than that the people of the United States of America are protected from terrorism.

I just want to make sure we were all clear about this.

The House let the surveillance bill lapse.  Not that I buy into the argument that empowering the government to engage in what used to be illegal surveillance is the sine qua non of security from terrorism, since it’s just more of the same old claptrap fear-mongering that the government uses to convince the “common sense” crowd to happily hand over my personal freedom so that they can pretend to be good Americans and sleep well at night in the knowledge that the “price of freedom isn’t free.”  I just like to point out the flaws on the argument. 

Nice to know that the House of Representatives earned its salary on Friday.