Left In Lowell

I’ll be honest, I still haven’t had as much time for blogging as I would like, this week. Or for being outraged. Or whatever. Or maybe not much is happening. So here’s an open thread.

Sharing the blog is the reason why I want to do the aforementioned LiL upgrade even more - on days or weeks where the news is going crazy but so are my clients, I’d like to have all that great content that I know many of you can produce. So far, I have about $350 in generous pledges (thank you guys!), but I need to reach $1500 in order to really get this software development going. So if you are still interested in throwing into the kitty (well, pledging to throw into the kitty) we still need you! I did want to clarify that in that post, I mentioned that user post status will not be given automatically, though priority will be given to those with a good comment posting history, those who are in other local towns we can’t cover, progressives (though it won’t be required), along with candidates and elected officials because we want to encourage them to interact with the public.

I’ll tell you what, though, this FISA thing scares the crap out of me. It’s like the House Dems can’t give away our civil rights fast enough. Last night on some show we were watching (Olbermann I think?) the conversation turned to this strange phenomenon of Dems wanting to give Bush everything he wants on FISA. They surmised that the Democratic leadership (Rep. Steny Hoyer for one) has their own you-know-what’s to cover, so they’re happy to sell out the American people and civil liberties to do it. By giving the telcos immunity, they in effect give it to Bush and his illegal spying programs (past, present and future) and give it to themselves since some of them knew about it.

Some Democrats in the Senate are already crying foul and stating that it will not pass in the Senate. I hope so. Russ, we never needed you more than now.