Protect America Act of 2007, S1927, was passed by house and senate recently. It is to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act of 1978 to provide additional procedures for authorizing certain aquisitions of foreign intelligence information and for other purposes. The most significant purpose of the law is to listen in and observe communications from known terrorists and citizens of USA. A month ago a federal appeals court authorized the procedure known as wiretapping, so the law will stand as constitutional.

The law passed in the house by vote of 227 yea and 183 nay. By party vote Republicans 186 yea and 2 nay and Democrats 41 yea and 181 nay.
Senate vote was 60 yea and 28 nay and all 28 nay votes were Democrats. Among the nays were high ranking Democrats such as Clinton, Kennedy, Obama and Reid. John Kerry failed to vote because he was ascared that he might flip flop.

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As written in the New York Times, "To do this work, the United Nations will need additional political, financial, logistical and security support from states with interests in the region. In addition the coalition will need to mantain forces in Iraq to build on the initial positive security results of our new strategy in Iraq, and to work with the United Nations to ensure the coalition's military strategy supports the internal and regional mediation efforts. The United States recognizes it's responsibilities and is prepared to do it's part."

A federal appeals court removed a serious legal challenge to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program. President Bush authorized the wiretapping to eavesdrop on communications involving potential terrorists shortly after the Sept 11,2001, attacks. The decision found that the American Civil Liberties Union, lawyers, privacy advocates and many Democrats did not have standing to sue. Many of the plaintifs have professional ties with people and organizations suspected of terrorism and they could not show anyone that had been injured directly by the surveillance.

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alanrph2@msn.com

..."I do not speak for my church on public matters; and my church does not speak for me." This was to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association shortly before the 1960 election.

Dick Nixon's reply: " There is only one way I can see religion being a legitimate issue in an American election, that would be if one of the candidates for the presidency had no religious belief.

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alanrph2@msn.com

A letter written by Bernie Hesse in reply to column written by Senator Norm Coleman titled "Why I oppose misleading name Employee Free Choice Act." I can relate to this from personal experience as an employee of Snyder Bros Drug when trying to organize a union in 1974. We had a large majority of employees sign the authorization cards and that was followed by a secret ballot election. After signing the cards they then had time to think about and seek advice from friends, family and others that they could trust. With the secret ballot they were able to vote their own conscience with no interference form management or union. As it turned out, a majority voted against the union.

With the new bill, H.R.800, the union would be automatically authorized without the protection of secret ballot as we have in all other elections in this country.

To quote Mr. Hesse "He (Sen Coleman) twisted and turned the facts around, and we would expect no less from the artful dodger." I call that a personal attack. Hesse never addressed the issue at hand, but went on and on describing abuse by management on workers. I can understand that from experience and that was my reason to organize and I do regret that we failed.

Naturally the Democrats would support this bill, voting 228 for and 2 against, because the United Food and Commercial Workers donate 98% of their political donations to the Democratic party as do most other unions. This can be seen at www.opensecrets.org/pacs/topacs.asp.

I report, U decide
alanrph2@msn.com