Tag: hope and change

The more things Hope and Change…

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

There is a school of thought that says, Do not delight in reminding your extremist ideological opponents that they are being betrayed by their own.  The underlying rationale is that doing so help make the people doing the betrayal appear to be ‘moderate,’ even when they’re really not.  Given that said extremist ideologues will also still vote for their betrayers in the future, the argument is that pragmatically there’s not enough of an upside to mocking them for it.  I respect the reasoning behind of this school of thought.

It’s just that sometimes I don’t give a tinker’s dam. Via AoSHQ, not a Photoshop or parody. This is real:

mpphv

And the neocons laugh. Oh, how we laugh.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Hope and Change Watch: AG Holder upholding PATRIOT Act.

Actually, in this context ‘same as the old boss’ would be a comfort. To me, at least, if not the folks who made such a hullabaloo over the PATRIOT Act; I’m not worried about the government abusing its authority so much as I worry about it making an utter hash of its attempt to try to use it. But of course said ‘abuse’ was not the least common election-year theme – usually in the context of how things would change, once the Republicans weren’t running things.  And usually argued by people who really should have known better.

Which is why I’m more amused than anything else about this:

Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the Senate’s version of legislation that would extend three provisions of the Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year.

Holder wrote in a letter today to Senate Judiciary Committee members that he offers “strong support” for the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act, which would reauthorize the “lone wolf,” records and “roving wiretap” powers. By contrast, a House version of the bill would not continue the “lone wolf” provision, which lets the government track targets who don’t have any discernible affiliation with terrorist or other foreign groups.

…although I admit that I’m kind of curious of which member of the current ruling party thought that it was a good idea to hamper lone wolf surveillance.  The timing for that seems… suboptimal.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.