A Government of Laws (Flabbergasted Part 2)

The following is only a part of the second installment of the Operation Flabbergasted diary from yesterday. Hopefully it's enough to give you the general idea, then you can click to read the rest, (and recommend, if you're a Booman Tribune member) and do what you can to spread the word. You can also recommend the diary at Kos and MyDD.

GOALS (slightly modified from yesterday to take account of comments)

As far as possible, our declared goals must be as clear, straightforward, plausible, and uncontroversial as possible. I have no illusions that it will be easy to achieve these goals; George Bush and friends stonewall almost as a matter of course. But our declared goals must throw into stark relief the illegality of the administration's policies and the nature of the constitutional crisis.

I propose that we ask each U.S. Senator on Monday to demand that President Bush:

* immediately reverse this directive on domestic spying

* promise to desist in the future from warrantless spying on Americans

* cooperate fully with a bi-partisan investigation of the policy

* release the texts of the directives along with the legal opinions they were based on

* immediately petition the FISA court to grant warrants for all such surveillance conducted by this administration since 2001

* identify the number of residents of the US who were targets of unconstitutional surveillance between 2001 and 2005, and report to all appropriate Senate committees the name of any of those residents for whom the FISA court refuses now to grant a warrant

I think it would help to have something eye-catching and succinct to hand out in the offline world. I checked with Demetrius to see if I could volunteer him to design something we could make available for people to download and print. Because of the crazy schedule right before Christmas, he can only do this if someone else provides the copy. But he's thinking it could maybe be 3 to a page, with a simple graphic like a magnifying glass. I figure it needs to state simply what is happening--without "ranting" or partisan sounding language, and give people a simple action item.

FYI, here is some of his previous printable work
http://protest.bmgbiz.net
http://dean2004.bmgbiz.net

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