The FISA Fight and Congress

Daily Kos had some good coverage of the FISA fight this week, an important issue I have been lax about covering. Here's the article with some really good suggestions about what to do:

The "Defense of Democracies" group, those great patriots who are trying to shred the Constitution by running deceptive, fear-mongering ads against Democrats, have just placed another ad buy. They've also been using robocalls and push polling to try to define this debate.

Their target continues to be the group of freshman who who they consider to be particularly vulnerable , or who refused to be bullied by the administration on FISA and retroactive amnesty for the telcos. They see these members as the weak link in the coalition standing against the administration and the Republicans.

These industry funded groups have a really big stick compared to us. And they are using it to pound these vulnerable Freshman. It's a wedge the right is driving into the Democratic caucus, and it has the effect of making leadership start looking for "compromise" because they are worried about losing a good chunk of their majority-preserving margin.

We can counterbalance that pressure by supporting those targeted Dems who continue to stand up to Bush.

* Jason Altmire (PA-04)
* Mike Arcuri (NY-24)
* Nancy Boyda (KS-02)
* Joe Courtney (CT-02)
* Joe Donnelly (IN-02)
* Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-08)
* Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20)
* Paul Hodes (NH-02)
* Steve Kagen (WI-08)
* Ron Klein (FL-22)
* Tim Mahoney (FL-16)
* Jerry McNerney (CA-11)
* Harry Mitchell (AZ-05)
* Christopher Murphy (CT-05)
* Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01)
* Tim Walz (MN-01)

How to help? Contact them and let them know you support their standing up to Bush. If you can afford it, send them some financial love. Russ Feingold, through his Progressive Patriots fund, set up a contributions page to help them. This FISA Fight ActBlue page allows you to pick a member to support.

Help them the help us stand up to Bush and reject telco amnesty.

Some of these freshmen have been excellent on many, many issues, and I cover them on my Freshman Allstars Act Blue page. Please take some time to help counter the attacks.