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Dick Ford

Published: February 23, 2008

Recently, Nancy Pelosi has put your life and my life at risk. How? By refusing yo renew the government's ability to monitor terrorists' communications overseas.

At issue is the Protect America Act passed last August, which allows our intelligence agencies to monitor "foreigner to foreigner" communications without a warrant. For six months the Congress has been aware that this bill would be up for renewal. The Senate, by a bipartisian majority, passed legislation to prevent the authority from lapsing.

However, the House Democratic leadership, led by Nancy Pelosi, refused to let the House vote on the bill. Why? Not because it lacked bipartisan support, but because it lacked trial lawyer support. The Senate bill contains a provision granting immunity from lawsuits to telephone compairs that have been cooperating with the government in the war on terror. To keep from puting her fellow Democrats in a position of making them vote publicly for the safety of us citizens or the trial lawyers, she left Washington for a vacation.

The trial lawyers, one of the most important sources of political contributions for the Democrats, incidentally, have filed several law suits for millions of dollars against the communication companies providing information, to intelligence agencies, about terrorist communications, without a warrant.

This just another instance of the professional politicians in our government taking care of their sources of money before even considering the protection of the cirizens of this country. Is it any wonder that those talking "change" are more fervently accepted than the old political "hacks" of Washington.

Dick Ford
Sebring

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